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2009 Retreat Reflections

How did God Connect with you at Retreat this year?  Through Toni or Margie or other friends?  Through the beauty of His nature at Cascades Camp?  Through the worship music?  If you have a retreat story to share, we'd love to hear from you: chair@npc-cwm.org.

Praise! Praise God
For the Tricky, Troublesome Ticket Items in Life! Pray the Word of God!  Pray it again.

by Suzann McLamb (Crossroads Covenant Church, Burlington)

Adoration

Will wonders ever cease?  No -- not a chance because You -- my God and the ultimate Creator - are omnipresent and everlasting!  I see you at work in the my sisters doing wondrous things with their lives.  You are so near to some they can't even see You there with them.  I know because I see You shining from their lives.  You embody Your people with wonder, and wonders never cease!  Your love will never cease and THAT is a wonder!

Confession

I confess in the stark trials of life that I forget to wonder at You and your greatness and power to overcome every heartache, every nuisance, every dish in the sink.  No problem is so small or so big that you will not champion for Your daughter.  I forget to ask for Your help as I try to move a mountain of laundry or carry a loss that is simply too big for any mere human to life alone.  For my omission of claiming Your sufficiency, I ask Your forgiveness.  For sheltering my hurts and insecurities with that great pride of believing that I am the only one in existence who can understand my own woes, I plead your mercy and invite you in.  If the joy of the Lord is supposed to be my strength, I have too long dragged along this long chain of sorrows and vices.  For this too, I apologize and return the key to unlock it back to You.

Thanksgiving

And I wait ... and I wonder ... and I welcome ... and I thank You my dear Father for being everything I will ever need.  I thank You for the indescribable wonder of You.  I thank you for my trials purposed to lead me to perseverance which works on my maturity.  I see my trials allow You to work at completing me.  I don't like it so much -- who likes being uncomfortable?  But I am thankful for everything that draws me into an image that is closer to a reflection of You.  I am immensely thankful for the sisterhood of believers and their vulnerability.  I see You in each of them as You color them in with the darker hues of trial and the brighter shades of joy.  They are gorgeous and I am grateful You Art.

Supplication

I ask You to key into our locked up sins and burdens and lives in general and set these captives free.
I ask for Your divine intimacy to be sensed by each sister in remarkably personal ways.
I ask You to have Your way with each of us.
I ask for the joy of You to fill each of us to overflowing so we have the strength to bear the intensity of Your love.
I ask You to write each of our stories with wild abandon and draw us with great depth.
I ask for a hungering desire to consume Your Word.
I ask for our praise to burn as heady incense of wonderment that lifts straight into Your throne room.
I ask for our will to be Your will as we make choices to delight our King.
I ask for deep friendships and daily belly-laughs to conquer the loneliness of womanhood and solitude with You to achieve the deep cleansing breath of peace and healing we each desire.