Ladies Retreat - Saturday Session 2 - Suffering and Death

This message is on the suffering and death of Jesus. Only with God, does the place of death become a place of life. (Matt 27, Ro 5:3)

We have been (past tense) crucified with Christ. It's done once, not over and over (Gal 2:20).

You may ask, if that's true, why do we still struggle? It's because we still have flesh. Why do we have to deal with flesh if it's put to death? The old man was put to death in our life, but our own flesh still exits.

An parallel of how this works would be if a car manufacturing plant was destroyed, there would still be cars made in that plan driving around on the roads.

Gal 5:17-21. The flesh and spirit are in opposition. We cannot do what we please. We can use the term self-life to describe the flesh. We like to rule over our own self life, but we're to lay it down before God.

We try to satisfy with self-indulgence like eating, spending money, etc, but only Jesus can satisfy our desires.

We try self-seeking, self-glorification and self confidence, but can we be confident in anything in our flesh?

We try self pity, complacency, self-consciousness, or thinking you're not good enough or smart enough. There is just as much pride in walking in self-condemnation as self-glory.

We are to recognize (reckon) that we are dead to so. It's not that we die daily, but that we recognize it. We don't have to walk in the flesh. Gal 3:13 - Without Christ's death, there would be no deliverance since we would still be under the law.

Ro. 6:6-7 - we are free from our flesh. Nothing good dwells in our flesh. We must recognize it's dead and realize we are free.

The pictures in this post are from the small groups. I enjoyed being in a small group with people from my church. Other conferences such as New Attitude and Urbana also had small groups. The difference there is that you will probably never see the people in your small group again. Being in a small group with friends is cool since we already understood a lot of where we were coming from and I think were more able to encourage one another.

Ladies Retreat Photos

The pictures from the Ladies Retreat can now be seen on our Church Picasa Photo Album by clicking here.

Ladies Retreat - Saturday, Session 1

The theme for these messages was Buried in Suffering, Risen in Joy. This message is called Gethsemene to the Cross - Road of Suffering

On Saturday morning, Mary Heather continued the theme by speaking more about suffering. We read Matthew 26 beginning in verse 36 about Jesus in Gethsemane praying alone while his disciples slept. We learned that:

Because God wants our holiness even more than our happiness, we need to change our right to happiness to a right to holiness

We are not put here to get from God, we're not spiritual consumers. God may have suffering in store for us. We are here to serve and glorify God

Suffering has the ability to make us holy. We have the choice though of anger and bitterness instead, but let God move you from anger to embrace suffering (Phil 3:10). To know Christ, there are seasons of suffering.

God wants us to look like him, not like unbelievers. So, God uses all things for our good (which is for our holiness) Ro. 8:28

Suffering is a place of loneliness (Matt 26:40). It's an OK place to be. God tells us to make Him our husband, that he will satisfy us in our suffering (Psalm 142). We do need the church body. It's not that we're to always keep our suffering to ourselves, but lower your expectations of people. They don't know what you're going through, especially if you don't tell them . God can satisfy you in suffering.
Jesus has experienced that utter loneliness. Withhold judgement on someone elses suffering. Speak carefully to that person so you don't become like Job's friends and increase their suffering.

Suffering can come from loss or physical death or even the death of a dream.

Ps 34: I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise will always be on my lips. Mourning is a part of suffering and we must go through it for as long as it takes (Eccl 3)
If you are suffering and you know that you have sinned, repent and move on. If you don't think it is due to sin, don't entertain Satan's accusations, wait on God.

In your suffering, make it your goal to know Him (Phil 3:10)

October Ladies Retreat

I had a great time at the Ladies Retreat this past weekend! We had times of fun, good discussion as well as good teaching and singing. I'm either great at condensing things down to a point of non-information or not very good at summarizing things down enough. (The condensing too much often is done to my family - So far all they got out of me about the Ladies retreat was that "it was good"). The too much or not short enough parts usually come when I start writing here. At least this way, those who don't want to hear about it, don't have to read it. It's almost 10, so I think I'll just use tonight's post to describe the first night.

I drove to Lake Martin with Tammy. I enjoyed the time to catch up on her life. Its fun to have the time to chat about the many aspects of life that she is going through as her kids get older. Hearing dreams and learning more about where people have been and desires they have for the future is neat. We enjoyed the short drive and got there in time to relax for a little bit before the first session entitled "Getting God."

Mary Heather was our speaker. She's an awesome mother of 9 kids who I've known for many many years. She had an American Girl doll club at here house while I was in high school which I helped out at since my sisters went to it one summer. Her family attends our church and I've gotten to know some of her children through AWANA and Sunday School classes there. Mary Heather teaches the ladies Sunday school class. Though I've never gone to the class, I've heard from others that it's an awesome class. For the first session, she spoke about some of the things that keep us from God: Wrong ideas about God, sin, the flesh, unforgiveness and self-centeredness.

She illustrated how sin and our reaction to sin can vary so drastically and have terrible consequences by having us look at the lives of both Saul and David. Both men sinned: Saul offered a sacrifice instead of waiting for Samuel (1 Sam 15) and David sinned through adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam 11).

They both sinned, yet Saul responded by blaming the people and claiming to be doing what God said. Saul was so self centered that he even blamed Samuel for being the cause of his sin because he did not show up in time to make the sacrifice. Only when Saul heard that God had rejected him as king did Saul seem to maybe repent. Even then, it seems like he was only repenting for show, so that Samuel would honor him in front of the people.

David's reaction couldn't have been different. I look at David's sin and would tend to even consider it to be worse, yet through David's response, God forgave him. David immediately acknowledged that he had sinned against God. He didn't blame anyone else, but turned to God. The other example of David had to do with his desire to build a temple for God. He had the idea, yet it wasn't God's idea for David to do. Instead of being upset that God didn't want to honor him that way, David responds with humility and thanks God for his promise to establish David's kingdom forever.

Saul was self-centered, but David was God focused. Saul didn't want to wait on God's time-table, but David was glad to allow his son to have the honor of building the temple.

Which one more represents who you are?

After that session, we enjoyed refreshments and then Marilyn led us in some of her family's "crazy group games!" The pictures of Bibity Bibity Bop were a lot of fun to take as people had to think fast to act like an elephant, rabbit, or kamikaze. There was laughter all around as we tried to think quick and act crazy! Eventually the group game broke up and ten of us went to the cabin where we continued playing games until about midnight. We played a fun game of Taboo. It's amazing how quickly some words are gotten! Sometimes brains are linked in a crazy way. Soon it was time to get some sleep (as it is now!).