Soul Care by Rebecca Cho

[from the November, 2009 issue of the Anvil]

For me, the Prime Ministry’s Soul Care Retreat began, ended, and continues even now with one verse: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Ps. 46:10)

A couple of months ago, Pastor David Kim first told the Single Adult Ministry Team (S.A.L.T.), of which I’m a member, about his desire for an intimate retreat designed for the attendees’ solitude and meditation on God. He had a desire to encourage prayer and reflection to be an integral part of each Primer’s spiritual walk.

As a result of Pastor David’s conviction, a group of about ten of us arrived on Friday, Nov. 16 at Aliso Creek Inn in Laguna Beach. After an ordeal, both humorous and suspenseful, that involved the substantially sized church van getting stuck in a parking space between a pole, a wall, and a truck (you had to be there), we retired to our rooms.

The next morning, we gathered in the women’s suite to sing songs and prepare for the day. The most difficult part of the retreat for me was the fact that there was no schedule. Apart from our meal times, we did not see each other and were left to ourselves. There was no cell phone or planner or internet competing for my attention and informing me how to fill my day.

As I sat the first morning of the retreat in a room of our suite with God’s words

before me, I thought about what I wanted out of my time here. I had signed up for the ministry’s first retreat designed to encourage godly solitude with a vague notion of slowing down and re- connecting with God away from the high-speed pace of my daily life.

I realized I had come to the retreat with a lot of demands from God—for answers, insights, and understanding about the trials I had faced in the past year. But as I continued to pray and just sit, God silenced all my demands with the above mentioned verse. The New American Standard Bible translated the same verse: “Cease striving and know that I am God.”

Those words hit me because in so many ways, I felt my life’s course, especially in the last year, had been one of striving—for the perfect career, friendships, family and church life. But in that verse, I saw that God did not bring me to this retreat to answer all my burning questions. He called me here to tell me to simply know Him.

I spent the rest of the day sitting on the sand and rocks of the chilly strip of beach nearby observing His creation, praying and jotting down my thoughts in a journal. In many ways, through the ceaseless rush of the waves pounding the jagged rocks and the profile of a lone fisherman working patiently in the morning fog, I saw God. I later took a nap in my room to give my body some rest.

Later in the evening, we went out near the beach where Pastor David grilled us

delicious burgers oozing with juice. In the eventual blackness created by the rolling fog and the night, we ate by the light of Pastor David’s iphone (which was the only phone kept on during the retreat to provide a means for our group to be reached).

Back at the suite, we had a special time of singing praise songs in one voice and sharing in a circle about our reasons for coming to the retreat and the convictions we received from God throughout the day. I was touched by the thirst I saw in each person for God and was amazed at how God spoke to each of us that day in a unique and personal way that was relevant to our different struggles.

The next day was Sunday and we ate breakfast and drove back to the Ministry Center in time to make it to Living Hope’s second service. I am continuing to reflect on God’s call to me to be still and know Him. And I am eager to hear stories of blessings from future attendees of the Soul Care Retreat. The next one will be on the weekend of January 22 at Arrowhead Pine Rose Cabins. I encourage all Primers to go, slow down, and sit still before a God who longs for you to hear His loving whispers, which too often get lost in the rush of our daily lives.