YEF Singapore had joint Easter Retreat with Singapore Immanuel Church. The retreat started on 10th April 2020 in the evening and ended with Easter Sunday service on 12th April 2020.
All the members received abundant grace through the retreat.
One member shared her reflection:
This Easter Retreat, I received a lot of grace from God through a deeper understanding of Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
As we studied how Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, we see the weakness of Jesus. His path to the cross was really not easy but extremely difficult. Three times He asked God to take away this cup from Him, yet He asked for God’s will be done over His own. In His pain, He cried and prayed to God. We can become very desensitized to pain that Jesus has bore for us after hearing about the cross many times and have the wrong idea that the cross is something easy for Jesus to walk because He is God.
Instead, Jesus took on the flesh of man with its weaknesses and walked the entire path of the cross. This is the love Jesus has for us. But we cannot say the same thing for ourselves. The disciples were more preoccupied with their secular ambitions and their own things rather than praying with Jesus or understanding His heart. Truly Jesus has always served the disciples and us rather than it being the other way around.
As I walked 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter, God opened my eyes to see the many sins and idols I have in my life. My heart always had something else rather than God. So when problems happen, I start looking for a solution by myself rather than going to God. This sometimes spirals into a bigger problem where I start wallowing in my own self-pity and I forget God and everyone else. Everything just becomes about myself.
Jesus never once forgot about His disciples even in His pain of carrying the sins of the world. He comforted and washed their feet. He served them even though He is the master. This is the same even now. We forget about Jesus who died for our sins when it should have been ourselves. We also are spiritually incapable of seeing the pain of God when we turn our backs on Him and we forget the grace given to us.
On Sunday, we covered Jesus’ resurrection. I never really placed an emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus but this Easter, I really understood why it is so important. Jesus’ resurrection is why we have hope. The resurrection really is testimony to Jesus’ victory over death and all of our sins. Now satan has no hold on us nor death can separate us from God. We can share in Jesus’ victory because He willingly bore the cross.
During this Easter Retreat, it made me reflect a lot on my 40 days of Lent walk and also on truly what matters in life. Being a Christian is a lifetime of sanctification and dying to my past self so that I can truly be resurrected with Christ to enjoy this wonderful relationship of love with God for eternity. But the process of sanctification is painful and sometimes we get dejected and run away from God. We get scared when we read our ancestors’ struggles and worry about the persecution. This is indeed what Jesus faced as well except on a scale greater than we can imagine.
It makes me wonder why do I have to suffer for the world and for God? How is it joyous for me to walk with God if I have to suffer?
The truth is when we really have tasted the sweetest fruits of walking and working together with God, we know that nothing in this world can ever compare to the joy that this brings. God does not need anything from us. But by His grace that we can walk and work with Him, we can gain great joy for ourselves. God wants us to have joy and that can be achieved if we walk with Him.
In our lives, what matters is really holding onto God preciously in our hearts. Even when we cannot feel God near, we must hold onto the faith and His word in our hearts. Preacher shared that the word of God truly is so powerful. Memorising bible verses really helps us to hold the word powerfully in our hearts even when we cannot feel.
I am thankful that now I really feel more spiritually connected with God and also to know the importance of reading the bible and praying. It helps me to want to set standards and goals for myself to really hold God’s word close to my heart and to seek more of the truth. Much as God wants to help us understand the word and to grow in faith, if we do not seek Him (eg do not open the bible), how can God help us understand His word? If we seek, He surely will answer as His word promises. Therefore, I really do want to try memorising one verse a day and to keep up with praying and reading the bible, alongside to the listening of messages. Amen.