Today I am on a retreat with staff. It is an opportunity to be alone with God and allow him to just love me. I brought with me my journal (obviously) and some reflective things I have left from LA Congress, my silent retreat reflections to finish and a book called PRAYERFULLNESS by Robert Wicks which one of the NDVision people talked about and recommended.

My goal is to experience God’s love and to rest in him. I want to revisit a few thoughts and organize some of my left over reflections. I want to enter into another Saint Terese of Avila book but I feel the need to tie up the loose ends so here it goes…

• In LA, one of the themes was “dying and rising” of course this is a common enough theme but the message was that we often put so much focus on the dying that when the rising comes we think that we are done. The dying and the rising are two equal parts like two halves of a whole. Both are equally difficult, both require much work.

  • Dying to Self - means letting go of earthly things and people so you rely completely on God

  • Rising with Christ - means keeping complete reliance on Christ despite all of the earthy things or temptations

• The other thing from LA was the overall conference theme, “Voice Infusing Life”. The things I wanted to spend time considering was whose voice is infusing my life?

  • Is it God’s voice? My own voice? or do I allow other’s voices to infuse my life? Whether it be members of my family or others in the world, or even the world.

  • What do I listen to when making choices? What filters do I run things through before I make a decision?