ACF Winter Retreat
Jan. 16-19, 2004
Lambton Retreat Center, Forest, Ontario
Just a little warning before you guys read: IT"S MASSIVELY LONG.
I haven’t really had time to reflect on what had happened this weekend, but I need to write this down before I forget…or at least lose the emotion that I feel.
Going into the retreat were questions that I had posted about before. Questions whether God is calling me to go to China or not….doubts…fears…
I don’t really know where to start, but I guess I’ll just start from where ever.
I was asked about a week before the retreat if I would like to serve on the worship team for retreat. Getting this chance was like the best thing that happened to me. Without being on the worship team, I don’t think I would have felt the things or experienced the tremendous actions of the people I was serving with. Even in the (limited, ahem) practices that we had, I had felt that I was somewhat lacking something. While we were going through the sets, I could see in the team’s faces…how much they loved God and that they were doing this for Him…praising Him…even in practices. I was lacking that. I thought being on the worship team was…a JOB. Actually, thinking it as a job would be wrong….I really thought….honestly…was that…I would be performing…and I can show people what I’m about….equally as bad as thinking of it as a job. I technically wanted to show myself off to people.
So we were off to retreat. Now I need to give you guys the low down on what was happening before the retreat. My roommate, and very close friends on the floor and in the residence, the 7 of us, were looking at houses where we could potentially live next year. We had found this AMAZING house—a little far from campus, but right near a bus, price was like…AMAZING (312 per person?!) and it was like…A HOUSE: full dining room and living room, kitchen, backyard… not like those student ghettos near the school. We knew for sure that we would be getting that house. We even had leases sent to us and in turn sent to our parents! Anyway, the day after, one of the 7 of us had to drop out of the house because her parents did not agree with us. Sad, but we decided that we would still get the house with the 6 of us. Higher rent yes, but still worth it. So off to retreat I go, fully expecting to get the house as soon as I got back.
Friday Night
We get to the retreat center first (I was in a car…one of the first--Yay to privileges of worship team!) and it was just GORGEOUS! There was this massive field filled with snow—snow that was untouched by humans…..and WAH. It was almost sunset, so the sun was reflecting off it….BEAUTIFUL. To bad I didn’t have my camera. BOOURNS.
Anyway, there was worship and a speaker that night.
There was this one song in our worship set that was like called Give you Everything. More on that later. But anyway, the speaker was one of our counselors—Roger—an elderly gentleman (but not that elderly), from England, who spoke with a lot of truth and no sugarcoating the message. His message was from Deut. Chapters 5 to 11 (no…not all the verses!) Mainly his message was about how the Isrealites going towards their promised land and never actually reaching it because of their fears and doubts.
Deut. Chapter 5
The Ten Commandments
I’m sure all of you know the ten commandments, perhaps not by heart, but you know of them at least. What he did with these 10 was to paint a picture in our minds.
Imagine that if the whole world kept one of the ten—lets say—you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or anything he owns—how would the world be if they did not want/envy other people’s things? Think about it for a second. Where would we be? We wouldn’t be as materialistic as we are now,…and it’s just so “unreal” to me that I can’t even give examples of how the world WOULD be!? Also imagine that if we didn’t’ commit adultery, how would the world be? Divorce rate would be down by 50%, less hearts broken, and a whole lot more changes. What if, everyone in the world kept the 10 commandments? That would be a perfect world would it not? If you can imagine the world keeping these 10 commandments, you would think (or rather I thought) that it would be utopia…where it would be a perfect world…that wouldn’t exist right? But what I think is that it would exist. This would be the promised land that God gave us, that God gave to the Isrealites—the promised land that—imagine this—“flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 6) How amazing and awesome would that be?!
Deut. Chapter 7
Driving out the Nations
Verse 17: You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear.
The Isrealites were afraid of the people who were living in their promised land—big, giants…oh man, I’d be scared too! But God was on their side…and still they feared, still they didn’t trust.
At that point, Roger was saying that we can’t let our fears stop us from following God.
I was sitting in my seat and seriously, my mind was going insane. What he said about us putting aside our fears because God can overcome them (duh—we should know that already), was exactly what was in my mind, was exactly what was stopping me from actually deciding to send in an interest letter for the missions trip to China. Coincidence? I think NOT.
Actually, a little more background info. As I said before, I went to the retreat asking questions and looking for answers. I asked God to give me confirmation about whether I should go or not. Specifically, I asked that if He made me break down and bawl my heart out by the end of the weekend—that would be my final and biggest confirmation.
So, back to where I was. The giving up your fears for Go was one of the many signs of confirmation that I received.
On another note, going back to the song Give you Everything, the lyrics were of course about praising God, but on line sands out in my head: I will give you all my best, give you my firstborn if you asked.
Now a little bit more about Roger. He’s the kind of guy as I said before that does not sugar coat anything. Just straight to the point, the truth, even if it’s hard for us to hear.
So, in his message as a side note, he was talking about how we were praising God—using other people’s lyrics, other people’s emotions to praise God when we don’t even understand what we were singing. “Giving you my firstborn” didn’t even apply to us of course, and he just said it with so much truth that we were all reflecting upon it and realizing how true it was. Worship is not about just singing songs that are on the overhead, it’s about what we feel about God, how much we love Him to praise Him with all our hearts and soul. That hit home right there. So in a side not to worship leaders who are reading this, what I learned was that because we were leaders, we LEAD the people and the people FOLLOW us. Be careful what songs you choose….if the songs are good because we like them…uh oh. I may not have put this paragraph in the right words as I am thinking right now, but hms…perhaps there might be more clarity as you read on.
Sat. Jan. 17
Saturday morning
The worship leader came up to us and told us that he had a totally different worship set. Before we started, he poured out his heart about how Roger was totally right—that as leaders we should not really lead, but set an example about how to worship God, but it is up to the people, the congregation on how they want to worship in their own way. I was totally blown away at this and I had to examine myself and at how I’m worshiping God myself.
The speaker was a man called Barry Usher. His sermon was on ENCOURAGEMENT. The theme for this retreat was to Love One Another.
Notes:
People are lacking with a true relationship with God—hence we feel alone, unsatisfied…
Being familiar and being intimate with God is very different…
Ephesians 5: I want you to experience God
God desired INTIMACY
God’s plan to battle hurt, isolation etc is to LOVE one another.
When we actively LOVE Christ, it will uplift you and it will ENCOURAGE you.
John 13: 34-35
So I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved You…
A funny and interesting thing Barry told us to do is to insert out name wherever “love” is in the passage of 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
“Love is patient, love is kind.” So, insert your name: “JO is patient, JO is kind”….uh…totally NOT RIGHT!!!!!!!!! Interesting huh?...yeah….the passage may be familiar with us, but it doesn’t actually…apply…..
Saturday night
Now this is where all the action happened =)
Before worship, the team had a prayer meeting. One of the prayers I don’t exactly remember, but pretty much it was something along the lines of breaking away from our chains, fears that were holding us back, doubts etc. It was also a prayer for each of us, that we would trust and obey God and not let anything get in the way of us having a relationship with Him. Again, that hit home. It was another confirmation for myself to get my butt of this chair and get going.
As we were getting ready to play, Caleb—the worship leader for that night said to me in a jokingly manner: “so you’re gonna pray that your strings don’t break right?” to which I answered “my strings don’t break—I don’t play hard enough for them to.”
So there I was playing along…the first song….and *twang*! My D string broke……..coincidence again?!!!! I THINK NOT!
I stood there with my guitar while everyone was still worshiping and I was just thinking about it and it shocked me. But, as I thought about it more, I realized that God was trying to tell me something. It was about how my PRIDE was hindering me from fully praising Him. As I wrote above, I was playing for worship with a whole different perspective. It was a job, and it was me showing off. God just took that and went BAM! And squashed me back down to where I was supposed to be—the very bottom. My “bubble” of pride just went POP and I just felt God there telling me to worship Him with my heart.
After the worship, ACF exec person came up to the front to introduce the speaker. But instead, he shared something that was in his heart and was troubling him. That turned into like, an hour or two of just pure sharing by different people in the fellowship and just pure pouring out of hearts and mad prayer. That night, as I watched people just be honest and brave by going up, I just felt something different in me. I had never experienced worship like that, just pure intensity and truth. I’m usually not expressive in worship, but that night, I couldn’t HELP it but just pray out loud. Not extremely loud, but not in my head. We had this response song: Hallelujah (your love is amazing), and every time they sang hallelujah, I couldn’t help but to add in something that praised God (ie. Hallelujah…for you love, for your mercy etc.) I surprised myself, but I knew that God was there, in that room, just showing Himself to everyone. Amazing experience? TOTALLY. Like, I dunno…I can’t truly explain how it felt and the setting it was in, it was almost…sacred to me….almost….that’s how great it was.
After the message and cleanup and everything, I just hung out with people, playing ball etc. I went in the house to get something to drink and someone told me to go upstairs into a room where someone wanted to talk to me. I went in and Josh—the guy in the worship team who had this big long spiel was waiting for me. I was like—hey! What’s going on? And he was just like…”is it ok if I wash your feet”.
What would you have done in my place? I honestly was like…huh? But also I was like…WOW. So brave, so much courage, so much…obedience that he would actually go and wash people’s feet when he was called upon to do so. So I said sure. You can wash my feet. Keep in mind though that I had been in my shoes for like..the whole day, played football in them, basketball…oh man…gross?! And he just washed them. Not just pour water oh them and done, he actually cupped water in his hands and washed my feet. Even the stuff even between my toes?!!! Getting squirmy? I am just thinking about it! WAH. That just made my day almost. It was just an amazing experience and just an awesome example that Jesus had set but now I have actually SEEN. It’s different between reading and imagining it and actually experiencing it.
Sunday morning
Worship was worship, but it was different. Normally you would just stick to the worship set and when it was done, it was done. But not this time. God was still there in that morning and worship just went from planning this song to going to just pure praise from the people. Not stopping at where we expected it to, but just forgetting all the structural stuff for worship and just doing it from our hearts. Just AMAZING. I kinda wish you all to be there, but oh man…that weekend was just the greatest thing that had happened to me as of yet. I just had a smile on my face, and I just couldn’t get rid of it!
So going back home, disappointed that the weekend was over, and I just prayed to God that I wouldn’t let this experience just pass me by, that I would remember it and as I got back to the brutal reality of everyday life, I would not falter in my faith. I was put to the test as soon as I got back because I found out that the perfect house that I was talking about earlier, another friend dropped out. SHOCK.
So now the 5 that were left had a little meeting. We had to look for other places for 5 and I can’t explain it, but there was doubt in my heart. The funniest thing was when the question of if anyone else had doubts, say it now. So I did. And oh man…that just created all this tension and “pissyness” from everyone. And I was on the verge of tears because I didn’t understand why I had those doubts. So everyone left me alone except for Sarah, one of the Christians on the floor and one who were living with us. Thank goodness for her and her understanding because I just poured out my heart to her and how I was feeling and how I KNEW God had called me to go on the missions trip. And you remember how I said that if I bawled by the end of the weekend it would be my FINAL and deciding confirmation? Well,……I BAWLED MY EYES OUT.
The rest of the night is kinda unimportant so I won’t get into it as it’s long enuf already. So, this weekend was the turning point in my life, or I want it to be. I learned so much and I just know that I have to give my all, my heart, my soul, my trust to God because He will take care of me in all I do.
Jan. 16-19, 2004
Lambton Retreat Center, Forest, Ontario
Just a little warning before you guys read: IT"S MASSIVELY LONG.
I haven’t really had time to reflect on what had happened this weekend, but I need to write this down before I forget…or at least lose the emotion that I feel.
Going into the retreat were questions that I had posted about before. Questions whether God is calling me to go to China or not….doubts…fears…
I don’t really know where to start, but I guess I’ll just start from where ever.
I was asked about a week before the retreat if I would like to serve on the worship team for retreat. Getting this chance was like the best thing that happened to me. Without being on the worship team, I don’t think I would have felt the things or experienced the tremendous actions of the people I was serving with. Even in the (limited, ahem) practices that we had, I had felt that I was somewhat lacking something. While we were going through the sets, I could see in the team’s faces…how much they loved God and that they were doing this for Him…praising Him…even in practices. I was lacking that. I thought being on the worship team was…a JOB. Actually, thinking it as a job would be wrong….I really thought….honestly…was that…I would be performing…and I can show people what I’m about….equally as bad as thinking of it as a job. I technically wanted to show myself off to people.
So we were off to retreat. Now I need to give you guys the low down on what was happening before the retreat. My roommate, and very close friends on the floor and in the residence, the 7 of us, were looking at houses where we could potentially live next year. We had found this AMAZING house—a little far from campus, but right near a bus, price was like…AMAZING (312 per person?!) and it was like…A HOUSE: full dining room and living room, kitchen, backyard… not like those student ghettos near the school. We knew for sure that we would be getting that house. We even had leases sent to us and in turn sent to our parents! Anyway, the day after, one of the 7 of us had to drop out of the house because her parents did not agree with us. Sad, but we decided that we would still get the house with the 6 of us. Higher rent yes, but still worth it. So off to retreat I go, fully expecting to get the house as soon as I got back.
Friday Night
We get to the retreat center first (I was in a car…one of the first--Yay to privileges of worship team!) and it was just GORGEOUS! There was this massive field filled with snow—snow that was untouched by humans…..and WAH. It was almost sunset, so the sun was reflecting off it….BEAUTIFUL. To bad I didn’t have my camera. BOOURNS.
Anyway, there was worship and a speaker that night.
There was this one song in our worship set that was like called Give you Everything. More on that later. But anyway, the speaker was one of our counselors—Roger—an elderly gentleman (but not that elderly), from England, who spoke with a lot of truth and no sugarcoating the message. His message was from Deut. Chapters 5 to 11 (no…not all the verses!) Mainly his message was about how the Isrealites going towards their promised land and never actually reaching it because of their fears and doubts.
Deut. Chapter 5
The Ten Commandments
I’m sure all of you know the ten commandments, perhaps not by heart, but you know of them at least. What he did with these 10 was to paint a picture in our minds.
Imagine that if the whole world kept one of the ten—lets say—you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or anything he owns—how would the world be if they did not want/envy other people’s things? Think about it for a second. Where would we be? We wouldn’t be as materialistic as we are now,…and it’s just so “unreal” to me that I can’t even give examples of how the world WOULD be!? Also imagine that if we didn’t’ commit adultery, how would the world be? Divorce rate would be down by 50%, less hearts broken, and a whole lot more changes. What if, everyone in the world kept the 10 commandments? That would be a perfect world would it not? If you can imagine the world keeping these 10 commandments, you would think (or rather I thought) that it would be utopia…where it would be a perfect world…that wouldn’t exist right? But what I think is that it would exist. This would be the promised land that God gave us, that God gave to the Isrealites—the promised land that—imagine this—“flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 6) How amazing and awesome would that be?!
Deut. Chapter 7
Driving out the Nations
Verse 17: You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear.
The Isrealites were afraid of the people who were living in their promised land—big, giants…oh man, I’d be scared too! But God was on their side…and still they feared, still they didn’t trust.
At that point, Roger was saying that we can’t let our fears stop us from following God.
I was sitting in my seat and seriously, my mind was going insane. What he said about us putting aside our fears because God can overcome them (duh—we should know that already), was exactly what was in my mind, was exactly what was stopping me from actually deciding to send in an interest letter for the missions trip to China. Coincidence? I think NOT.
Actually, a little more background info. As I said before, I went to the retreat asking questions and looking for answers. I asked God to give me confirmation about whether I should go or not. Specifically, I asked that if He made me break down and bawl my heart out by the end of the weekend—that would be my final and biggest confirmation.
So, back to where I was. The giving up your fears for Go was one of the many signs of confirmation that I received.
On another note, going back to the song Give you Everything, the lyrics were of course about praising God, but on line sands out in my head: I will give you all my best, give you my firstborn if you asked.
Now a little bit more about Roger. He’s the kind of guy as I said before that does not sugar coat anything. Just straight to the point, the truth, even if it’s hard for us to hear.
So, in his message as a side note, he was talking about how we were praising God—using other people’s lyrics, other people’s emotions to praise God when we don’t even understand what we were singing. “Giving you my firstborn” didn’t even apply to us of course, and he just said it with so much truth that we were all reflecting upon it and realizing how true it was. Worship is not about just singing songs that are on the overhead, it’s about what we feel about God, how much we love Him to praise Him with all our hearts and soul. That hit home right there. So in a side not to worship leaders who are reading this, what I learned was that because we were leaders, we LEAD the people and the people FOLLOW us. Be careful what songs you choose….if the songs are good because we like them…uh oh. I may not have put this paragraph in the right words as I am thinking right now, but hms…perhaps there might be more clarity as you read on.
Sat. Jan. 17
Saturday morning
The worship leader came up to us and told us that he had a totally different worship set. Before we started, he poured out his heart about how Roger was totally right—that as leaders we should not really lead, but set an example about how to worship God, but it is up to the people, the congregation on how they want to worship in their own way. I was totally blown away at this and I had to examine myself and at how I’m worshiping God myself.
The speaker was a man called Barry Usher. His sermon was on ENCOURAGEMENT. The theme for this retreat was to Love One Another.
Notes:
People are lacking with a true relationship with God—hence we feel alone, unsatisfied…
Being familiar and being intimate with God is very different…
Ephesians 5: I want you to experience God
God desired INTIMACY
God’s plan to battle hurt, isolation etc is to LOVE one another.
When we actively LOVE Christ, it will uplift you and it will ENCOURAGE you.
John 13: 34-35
So I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved You…
A funny and interesting thing Barry told us to do is to insert out name wherever “love” is in the passage of 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
“Love is patient, love is kind.” So, insert your name: “JO is patient, JO is kind”….uh…totally NOT RIGHT!!!!!!!!! Interesting huh?...yeah….the passage may be familiar with us, but it doesn’t actually…apply…..
Saturday night
Now this is where all the action happened =)
Before worship, the team had a prayer meeting. One of the prayers I don’t exactly remember, but pretty much it was something along the lines of breaking away from our chains, fears that were holding us back, doubts etc. It was also a prayer for each of us, that we would trust and obey God and not let anything get in the way of us having a relationship with Him. Again, that hit home. It was another confirmation for myself to get my butt of this chair and get going.
As we were getting ready to play, Caleb—the worship leader for that night said to me in a jokingly manner: “so you’re gonna pray that your strings don’t break right?” to which I answered “my strings don’t break—I don’t play hard enough for them to.”
So there I was playing along…the first song….and *twang*! My D string broke……..coincidence again?!!!! I THINK NOT!
I stood there with my guitar while everyone was still worshiping and I was just thinking about it and it shocked me. But, as I thought about it more, I realized that God was trying to tell me something. It was about how my PRIDE was hindering me from fully praising Him. As I wrote above, I was playing for worship with a whole different perspective. It was a job, and it was me showing off. God just took that and went BAM! And squashed me back down to where I was supposed to be—the very bottom. My “bubble” of pride just went POP and I just felt God there telling me to worship Him with my heart.
After the worship, ACF exec person came up to the front to introduce the speaker. But instead, he shared something that was in his heart and was troubling him. That turned into like, an hour or two of just pure sharing by different people in the fellowship and just pure pouring out of hearts and mad prayer. That night, as I watched people just be honest and brave by going up, I just felt something different in me. I had never experienced worship like that, just pure intensity and truth. I’m usually not expressive in worship, but that night, I couldn’t HELP it but just pray out loud. Not extremely loud, but not in my head. We had this response song: Hallelujah (your love is amazing), and every time they sang hallelujah, I couldn’t help but to add in something that praised God (ie. Hallelujah…for you love, for your mercy etc.) I surprised myself, but I knew that God was there, in that room, just showing Himself to everyone. Amazing experience? TOTALLY. Like, I dunno…I can’t truly explain how it felt and the setting it was in, it was almost…sacred to me….almost….that’s how great it was.
After the message and cleanup and everything, I just hung out with people, playing ball etc. I went in the house to get something to drink and someone told me to go upstairs into a room where someone wanted to talk to me. I went in and Josh—the guy in the worship team who had this big long spiel was waiting for me. I was like—hey! What’s going on? And he was just like…”is it ok if I wash your feet”.
What would you have done in my place? I honestly was like…huh? But also I was like…WOW. So brave, so much courage, so much…obedience that he would actually go and wash people’s feet when he was called upon to do so. So I said sure. You can wash my feet. Keep in mind though that I had been in my shoes for like..the whole day, played football in them, basketball…oh man…gross?! And he just washed them. Not just pour water oh them and done, he actually cupped water in his hands and washed my feet. Even the stuff even between my toes?!!! Getting squirmy? I am just thinking about it! WAH. That just made my day almost. It was just an amazing experience and just an awesome example that Jesus had set but now I have actually SEEN. It’s different between reading and imagining it and actually experiencing it.
Sunday morning
Worship was worship, but it was different. Normally you would just stick to the worship set and when it was done, it was done. But not this time. God was still there in that morning and worship just went from planning this song to going to just pure praise from the people. Not stopping at where we expected it to, but just forgetting all the structural stuff for worship and just doing it from our hearts. Just AMAZING. I kinda wish you all to be there, but oh man…that weekend was just the greatest thing that had happened to me as of yet. I just had a smile on my face, and I just couldn’t get rid of it!
So going back home, disappointed that the weekend was over, and I just prayed to God that I wouldn’t let this experience just pass me by, that I would remember it and as I got back to the brutal reality of everyday life, I would not falter in my faith. I was put to the test as soon as I got back because I found out that the perfect house that I was talking about earlier, another friend dropped out. SHOCK.
So now the 5 that were left had a little meeting. We had to look for other places for 5 and I can’t explain it, but there was doubt in my heart. The funniest thing was when the question of if anyone else had doubts, say it now. So I did. And oh man…that just created all this tension and “pissyness” from everyone. And I was on the verge of tears because I didn’t understand why I had those doubts. So everyone left me alone except for Sarah, one of the Christians on the floor and one who were living with us. Thank goodness for her and her understanding because I just poured out my heart to her and how I was feeling and how I KNEW God had called me to go on the missions trip. And you remember how I said that if I bawled by the end of the weekend it would be my FINAL and deciding confirmation? Well,……I BAWLED MY EYES OUT.
The rest of the night is kinda unimportant so I won’t get into it as it’s long enuf already. So, this weekend was the turning point in my life, or I want it to be. I learned so much and I just know that I have to give my all, my heart, my soul, my trust to God because He will take care of me in all I do.
