So you have a basic idea of what we did, I'll lay it out for you. Essentially, we ate, we walked up a mountain to have worship time, listened to a message, and then had free time. This happened four times. There was also an afternoon, yesturday afternoon, where we had "Olympics" in our FOCUS groups.
Getting to the more important part though, the messages were incredibly challenging.
If you look down and see what my last post was about, that will give you a deeper understanding of what I was feeling as I went into the retreat. I have woken up each morning thinking, "Today is a new day. Who knows what may happen today."
The theme of the retreat was Philippians 1:6 which reads:
...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Each of the messages focussed on a different part of this passage.
The first speaker talked about God's power and greatness. He is so large and so vast in power and wisdom and goodness and love that there is no way we can ever comprehend Him. Still, He loves us and died so that we would be able to spend eternity in His prescence.
This was powerful. Especially as I lay on the ground the next night and looked up at the thousands of stars that I could see with my own eyes, not to mention the ones across the galaxy, or in another galaxy altogether.
The message the second morning challenged my way of life. I realized that I hold onto a lot of things to make me feel better about myself. While I hold onto them to make me feel more secure, these are the very things that hold me back from actively pursuing my relationship with God. My main stumbling block, of course, being guys and flirtation. I decided that night to completely give up that part of my life. The part including the pursuit of guys and trying to please myself with what they have to offer me. Don't get me wrong, I am a virgin, but I hope you understand what I am trying to get at. It is so easy to become caught up in a guy when your focus could be on so many other things that are more constructive -namely God and the plan He has for you.
I realized that God loves me with a perfect love that no man will ever be able to give me. God cares about every part of me: my physical state, emotional state, spiritual state. While a man would have these things in mind, they never leave God's thoughts for one second because somewhere it states that God's thoughts toward man outnumber the sand on every beach. God never forgets about me, why should I waste time and energy pursuing and earthly man when I could be discovering all the perfect oportunities that God has for me.
Well, I have to get to bed now. First day of classes tomorrow! I hope I survive!
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