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Soaring with God – Post Retreat

Two weeks ago, we had a powerful encounter with God at the 2025 Congregational Retreat: Soaring. God worked powerfully through the sessions with Pastor Paul, the prayer and response times with Pastor Seth, the sharing times with our life stages, as well as the overall time spent with our LIFE groups. In this article, we will provide a brief recap of the four sessions we had with Pastor Paul and afterwards, we will suggest ways we can act on the different convictions we might have received at the retreat. 

Session 1: Living A Life Worthy of The Gospel 

In this session we learnt about how the Gospel is the foundation and our source of hope and what helps us overcome. We also learnt how competing affections can distract us from Jesus and the life He’s calling us to. As such, we should continuously surrender our lives to Jesus and declare the Word over our lives in order to break the strongholds that the devil places in our hearts and live freely.

Session 2: Our Trysting Place

In this session we learnt about the value of spending time to tryst (a meeting between two people who love each other, especially a secret one) with God. We also learned about how we sometimes treat God as our one among many options and priorities, as opposed to our all, and we fail to see how much of a privilege and blessing it is to be able to spend time with God. We also saw how God desires to spend time with us and that there is joy in dwelling in His presence. 

Session 3: Hearing Jesus’ voice

In this session we learnt about how we can listen and discern God’s voice when we come to Him with a pen, a journal and our Bibles. We learnt the difference between “logos” (the Word of God in its entirety and Jesus) and “rhema” (the Word as it is applied onto us and our lives). How important it is that God’s Word is applied onto our lives, so we are not just filled with head knowledge, but guided and transformed through His rhema, along with principles for hearing Jesus’ voice.

Session 4: Three Glimpses of Heaven

In this session, Pastor Paul shared about how God’s goodness is best understood by understanding His greatness. This can be seen through 3 particular glimpses that are: Creation (the intricacy and grandeur of all God has made), Cross (His suffering and goodness in reconciling Himself to us) and Conquest (the glory of Christ as He returns to judge all creation). When we do recognise how great He is compared to how small we are, the most rational response is for us to worship Him.

God spoke to each of us in powerful ways during the Congregational retreat. He might have given us certain convictions and realisations to follow through. He might have shown us certain things we need to repent of. He might even have given us direction for our future endeavours. Because of the intentional structure the retreat provided, as well as the “retreat” we had from our everyday lives, we were able to clearly hear God and commit to Him. Nevertheless, when we go back to our normal routines and jobs, it can be easy to forget what He said to us during the retreat. When the different stresses of life show up in our lives, it can be difficult to follow up on the commitments we have made. This does not mean that we did not experience God powerfully or that we are not doing enough for Him, but it is indeed the reality of the broken world in which we live and we need to constantly remind ourselves to be walking in the light. 

In this part of the article, we want to help give Biblical and practical ways to follow up on what we have heard from God over the last few weeks. 

  1. Write down our retreat experiences and reflections. When we write these things down, they become more cemented in our minds. Additionally, we are able to look back on these experiences and see God’s faithfulness throughout our lives. 

Here are some reflection questions which can help us process:

  • What has God been speaking to you during this season or at the retreat?
  • Were there any Bible verses that stood out to you or came to mind during this season or at the retreat? 
  • Is there anything you need to follow-up more with Him about?
  • Are there any ways you can continue dwelling in His presence even in your daily life? 
  • How can you make steps in obedience to what He has been speaking to you about? How can you make it Specific · Measurable · Set-time if appropriate?
  1. Share our experiences with others. This can be done in our LIFE groups or within our Life Change Groups (LCG). Sharing these reflections and experiences with people we trust can help keep us accountable during this process.  
  2. Use our experiences as an opportunity to share the Gospel with our pre-Christian friends and colleagues. 
  3. Make time for quiet time with God. Be in the word and dwell in Him. Take some time to worship Him and praise Him too. Spend time in nature and marvel at God’s greatness through His creation. 
  4. Are there any opportunities at church that can help you follow through (Easter, CityServe, etc)?

Our team has also provided resources that can help us as we endeavour to take steps of faith. These resources include articles, books and podcasts that can help deepen our understanding of who God is. They are not meant to replace reading the Bible and prayer, but we believe that God can speak through these different avenues to work in our lives. 

Retreat Playlist – Soaring 2025 Spotify Playlist

Articles

Books

Podcasts

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