A New Season

The weather is getting cooler with each day. There is a dampness in the air that chills you to the bone. Experiencing BC fall is a lot different than Manitoba fall. Tis the season of big, chunky sweaters, snuggling up with blankets on the couch and sipping warm beverages while the colors of the leaves change right before your eyes. I love it. I love everything about this time of year.

The weather and the leaves are not the only things changing these days. My heart has been on an overhaul of sorts. God is changing my heart - refining it, re-shaping it and transforming it. It is good.

I have just finished a 48 hour silent retreat. Talk about goodness in every way, shape and form! God and I had some good, quality time together - something that felt long overdue. God and I have spent time together over the last number of weeks and months, but there was a lack of intimacy.

At 12:30pm on Thursday, all went completely quiet at the Mark Centre. People generally recommend sleeping a fair bit during a silent retreat, so I took them up on that suggestion and had a nap (and by nap I mean I definitely slept for 4 hours), but I figured, what better way to start a silent retreat than resting in the presence of Jesus. I woke up feeling energized and ready to be with God.

I started off the retreat asking God if there was anything in my heart that needed his light shined on. God very quickly responded and brought forth some things that I thought I had dealt with previously, but I guess I had not exactly finished. I kept having the words "I have redeemed you" running through my head over and over again. I read through the book of Hosea 3 times. This was God speaking. I felt freedom and completely forgiven.
God needed to remove some of that other stuff that was taking up space in my heart in order for us to go deeper in this silent retreat and through the rest of my life.

Day 2 was spent asking God and doing a lot of listening about who God has made me to be - my passions, things in my life that drain me and what makes me feel fully alive in the presence of Jesus. I felt very much led to read through Psalm 139 - I mean really read through it. I spent a good 30 hours with that Psalm - soaking in each and every word. God was reminding me that I am His beloved and He is pleased with me. God delights in me. He craves relationship with me - He has made me a perfect creation - I am made in the image of God. Because I am made in the image of God, I possess some of the same qualities of God. I am a thought of God that has not been or ever will be repeated throughout all of time. I am incapable of seeing and understanding the greatness of the God who created me. Thus, I am never going to see myself or fully understand God. If I attempt to see myself how God sees me and believe that my personality and characteristics resemble that of God, then I am as close as I can be to seeing and experiencing the reality of God because He lives and abides in me. When I acknowledge these characteristics of God in me and see myself as God sees me, then I believe I am fully alive in the presence of Jesus. How cool is that??

This silent retreat thing is definitely something I want to be making space for in my life. My future retreats probably won't be 48 hours long, but maybe it's a day or even just a few hours. God invites me to spend time in his presence and he delights in me doing so. I felt rejuvinated and refreshed. I loved the intimacy with God and I am excited about where God will continue to lead me. I want to soak up more of Jesus. I want to be fully alive in his presence. There have been so many years in my life (not so much in the last 4 years or so) where I have felt anything but alive and now I have this unspeakable joy and fullness bubbling in within me and I don't want it to end. I want the presence of the Holy Spirit to wash over me and move through me always.