Have you ever been on a spiritual retreat with the Lord?

I love to go on a spiritual retreat with the Lord once a year or so. I have  friends who live on a lake and on one of my retreats, they let me use their home for the day when they were going to be out of town – so I had it all to myself.

Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 6:31: “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” (NASB)

I don’t know about you but it is hard for me to leave my normal work schedule – especially when there is so much to be done – and carve out time to sit at Jesus’ feet. But I am always so glad when I make this happen.

Want to know what I did on my personal spiritual retreat?

I spent time praising Him by going through the alphabet and praising Him for something starting with every letter. Later I did the same process with thanking Him – all the way through the alphabet with multiple things for each letter.

Singing worship songs, reading His Word, and being still and quiet to listen to what He wanted to say to me were all a part of my day.

I also worked on updating my mission statement.

I read Stephen Covey’s First Things First (this is an affiliate link) so I like to include working on my mission statement – you know, how I want to live my life. He gives some guidelines and inspiration in this book. Now this is not about your business goals or even your life goals.

Rather it is about how you want to be living your life – who you are at the core.

I came up with seven different aspects of how I want to live my life deliberately and to honor the Lord and how He has created me.

Here they are:

• To seek to know God and obey Him & to grow in holiness because He is holy.
• To live each day gifted to me gratefully with discipline, purpose, peace, and as an adventure.
• To proactively nurture relationships with my family and friends, affirming their unique worth in love and accepting graciously what they have to give and teach me.
• To share my experiences and knowledge God has entrusted to me to inspire others to take their next step in their life journeys in the areas of faith, health, and other aspects of purposeful and healthy living.
• To live a life of truth, simplicity, joy, and contentment – devoid of busyness and overwhelm. I acknowledge that how I live each day is a matter of my personal choice.

• To recognize that I am not an owner of anything, but am a steward of trust from my Heavenly Father.
• To honor how God has made me by purposefully crafting an organized and disciplined life that is characterized by peace, and taking time to appreciate beauty all around me.

What do you think? Every adjective and every verb was carefully chosen to mean more to me than a simple concept.

When I read over it, I read slowly and carefully so that the deep meaning will be absorbed by my brain!  My next step is to choose verses to go with each statement.

Have you ever taken a spiritual retreat? Or have you crafted your own mission statement?