Take time to quiet yourself and ask God to meet you within your time.

The truth is: It takes work to rest well.

With this being said, this week I’m asking each of us (me included) to carve out time for a 4-hour personal spiritual retreat. This 4-hour time will be given to practicing spiritual disciplines in a restful and restorative manner. You will prayerfully choose 4 spiritual disciplines from Calhoun’s Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. What is God inviting you to do as you spend time with Him?

During your personal soul care retreat, each of the 4 disciplines chosen should be practiced in a way that exhibits both intentionality and grace for yourself. These disciplines are not something to be conquered but savored.

The following may serve as a guide for practicing the disciplines:

Find a quiet place where interruptions will be at a minimum.
Take time to quiet yourself and ask God to meet you within your time.
Review the disciplines that you intend to practice during this time.
Pause and be reflective about what you have studied prior to entering into practice.
Take time to practice the spiritual disciplines. Allow God to direct your pace and path with these disciplines.
When the time is right, bring the practice to an end. Take time to be present. Don’t rush into the next practice. Be attentive to your soul and notice the themes that may be arising during that moment.
If you’ve never conducted a personal retreat before, I would highly recommend reading the article “Trusting God in Everything Download Trusting God in Everything” by Jan Johnson. She does an excellent job of introducing the idea and provides some very helpful tips and practical wisdom about how to plan for and then go on a personal soul care retreat. Douglas Jones also wrote 2 articles, “Practical Tips for a Personal Retreat Download Practical Tips for a Personal Retreat” and “Why We Need Retreats Download Why We Need Retreats,” that further expand on the concept of personal retreats. [Note that these 2 articles may not be displaying properly in Canvas. Try downloading them for a better reading experience.]

Once the retreat is completed, you will write a 3-4 page paper evaluating your personal soul care retreat. Your paper should include the following:

Describe the four spiritual disciplines that you selected and why you selected them.
Briefly describe the retreat experience itself – where did you go? what did you do? what was it like?
Reflect on the retreat experience – what went well? what struggles or roadblocks did you encounter? what insights did you have?
Finally, answer the following question: If I were to do a personal retreat again, what would I do differently?
Your paper is intended to help you further process your experience. As I assess your submission, I am looking for your intentionality with the activity and your personal processing. Please do not feel the pressure to perform for a grade with this activity (i.e. you do not need to have a life-changing encounter with God in order to earn an A.).

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