A Fresh Call, A Fresh Response

Alpine flowers growing out of rocks

photo credit

...come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place
and get some rest.

- Mark 6:31

Truly my soul silently waits for God;

From Him comes my salvation.

My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him.

- Psalm 62:1, 5

We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people. As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words.

- Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

I returned to Bacolod City last Monday.

One of the unexpected highlights for me as the month of June is about to end was the weekend retreat that I attended the past two days. Our church invited all those involved in the prayer and intercession ministry to a time away from our busy schedules...to be replenished, renewed, and refreshed.

It was held at a quiet retreat house by the sea, located just a few kilometers outside Bacolod City.



The retreat speakers were Herman and Mercy Moldez. Herman and Mercy are dear friends to Ernie and me; our friendship dates back to our early Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) days more than 30 years ago. It was good to reconnect with them and discover that their relationship with the Lord has indeed deepened and matured.

The retreat, entitled "A Heart Open to God," encouraged us to develop the spiritual disciplines of solitude and contemplation. Indeed, these past two days God did speak quietly but powerfully to my heart.

It was a beautiful reminder to me of the days I spent in Rasa, Switzerland in 1997, where I, for a whole month under the mentorship of Dr. Hans Burki, learned the importance of the spiritual disciplines of meditation, solitude, and contemplation.

(Related posts on my Rasa Experience: Rasa Revisited, Learning to Rest in His Love)


The spiritual discipline of solitude prepares the ground of our hearts for God to meet us regularly. This keeps our heart open to receive the rain of His Spirit, thus keeping it soft, pliable, and fertile... ensuring that we never reach the dangerous point where our inner resources are depleted...or dried up...or burned out.




Herman spoke to us with such gentleness but with deep conviction. This man truly lived his message.

Ministry and worship should emerge from the place where we are being formed to be like Jesus...rooted in our intimacy with God.

The quiet place of rest is where the soul can be renewed and receive a fresh call to love and serve God.

We retreat with Jesus to quietly clarify our doubt, cleanse our heart, and cultivate our soul to be God's dwelling place.

Only then can we return to our life and ministry with inner surges of joy instead of spurts of duty.

Only then can our broken lives become a blessing to others.

Only then can our static journey become a dynamic pilgrimage of growth in the Lord.

It is when we develop a rhythm of work and worship, of service and solitude, of play and prayer that we can give our best in the ministry.

One of the first activities was for each of us to make a poster describing our personal longing and expectation for this retreat.

The longing of my heart was for it to be in touch with the heart of God, looking to Him as my source...seeking to be emptied of anything that was not pleasing to Him, to be filled anew, and thereby be a channel of His love and life and light as I ministered to others.





As I was reminded anew of the benefits of contemplative prayer, I heard a Yes resonating within my human spirit.


Henri Nouwen writes,

Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of out time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance....

Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issues presents itself to them....

But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain

flexible without being relativistic,

convinced without being rigid,

willing to confront without being offensive,

gentle and forgiving without being soft, and

true witnesses without being manipulative.

On Friday night, at the end of the first day, we were asked to reflect on the events of the day and give the day a name.

I named it, "A Fresh Call, A Fresh Response."


My journal entry for that day:

I hear You my Father giving me a fresh invitation to start afresh with You, an invitation so special, it is a gift of grace to me!

God's gift of grace to me is His heart reaching out, His heart so precious!

He has been reaching out to me, inviting me to go deeper, and to drink from His river of delight. I have resisted this gift again and again, and have settled instead for lesser loves.

But today, in this place, hearing the lessons and the meditations, I respond to the fresh invitation to accept His gift.

And I do receive it, Father, yes I do.

My hands are outstretched and open...ready to receive Your gift -

of intimacy,

a closer walk with with You,

a higher calling.



What a delightful gift this retreat was to me! It was a continuation of the renewing work that God has been doing in my life the past weeks.

Again, what can I say in response to such an unexpected gift?

I can only say, Thank You, my dear Father for thinking of what I need even before I asked!

Herman, Mercy, me and Jing

In Quietness and Confidence

Caben Coch Reservoir overflowing

photo credit

Above all guard your heart
for it is the wellspring of life.

- Proverbs 4:23

For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:
“ In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”

- Isaiah 30:15

Summer speaks of much activity, warm sunshine, blue skies, flowers in full bloom, bright splashes of color.

Then comes fall, that gentle, quiet season. The very word "fall" paints a picture deep with meaning. This season invites us to slow down, drink in the beauty, reflect, do a spiritual inventory.

It has been very hot and dry here in our province these past weeks. There was hardly any rain and I have had to get up before daybreak just to water my garden. The water pressure has been low; more often than not, only a mere trickle would flow out of the garden hose. It was much easier to use my watering can, and fill it with water from the old fashioned hand pump. Doing this of course required many trips to and from the pump located at the back of our house. But I didn't mind. The garden was very thirsty and longed for water. What little moisture the night mist left behind was gone by sunrise.

After months of piling dried leaves, left over vegetables and fruit peel into a compost heap, I decided this week to "harvest" the soil that has been forming underneath. There is a garden shop near our house that sells organic material composed of dried cow dung, rice chaff, wood ash, and press mud (a solid waste obtained from the sugar mills). I have also availed myself of several packs of coffee grounds that Starbucks gives out to anyone who wants them.

This morning, after mixing all of this organic stuff, I had a big mound of nutrient rich garden soil. My maid and I spent three hours putting all the soil around the plants. I know that in just a few days, I'll be seeing much evidence of growth around my garden again.

After lunch, there was a heavy downpour, just the very thing that the garden needed!

How grateful I am to be spending these weeks here at home. Aside from doing yard work, I was also able to supervise the repairs being done. My British friend Trudi and I discovered that we could buy a big sack of assorted broken tiles from Citi Hardware for only a hundred pesos (US$ 2.00). I asked my carpenter to make a long wooden table with a mosaic tile top. It was an inexpensive and creative way of adding color and beauty to the laundry area.

There is much progress, and my heart fills up with hope.

How much easier to look at a glass half filled, and see it as half empty...or to walk into a room and see nothing but imperfections.

But once again, I choose to look at my life in light of the glorious possibilities available to me from my Father's heart.



Last week I had the wonderful opportunity of spending time with Jane Rubietta. Getting to know her heart is one of the Lord's best gifts to me this year.

Our church had two events with her; one was the two-day Women's Conference 2009 entitled Come Closer, and the other was a weekend retreat, Simply Resting.

Jane spoke of things very close to my heart. She talked about the longings of our heart.

"What we as women desire is unfailing love," she said, quoting from Proverbs 19:22.

"The longing for perfect is God-given. We were created for heaven - for Eden. We were created for perfect."

And yet, the truth stares us in the eye. Daily we find ourselves struggling with disappointment, with discontent. Running away from the pain. We choose to live frantic and frenzied busy lives to "keep us from having to face who we are and who we are not."

And we end up settling for less than what God intended us to be.

We were not created for this. "Deep inside our hearts is a longing for quiet."

"Silence is healing," Jane says." It is one of the ways that we create space for God."

During one of the sessions, she shared this lovely quote written by Bernard of Clairvaux:

If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, and a reservoir waits in stillness until it is filled before overflowing, and thus, without loss to itself, communicates its superabundant water.

I know Jane's coming to our city at this time is not an accident or a mere coincidence.

She shared with us lessons she had learned first hand from the Lord, things that we ourselves needed to hear.

I've never met Jane before. But while listening to her, I felt like I'd known her for a long time...

She addressed our feelings of failure, and disappointments with ourselves. She called them our "not enough-ness." People will fail and disappoint us as well. No one person can really meet our expectations perfectly.

But failure is not fatal, they are always redeemable by God. Our pain prepares a way for us to function in our gifts.

It really amazes me how God used Jane to speak hope into my own heart. Tears came to my eyes as she shared words that God had personally spoken to her:

"I am loving you perfectly from heaven, but I am doing it through imperfect people. Are you willing to let me do that?"

Silence is this holy place where you just let God love you. In this place you are accepted...in this place you are given the freedom to be yourself.


Jeremiah 50:6 pretty much summarizes the condition of our hearts:

They have forgotten their resting place.

God invites us to come home to His heart where we have an encounter with the healing power of beauty.


I don't want to live in Babylon anymore, Jane says.


That line spoke so much to my heart. Once again, I knew God was calling me to find my rest in Him alone...

Jane shared the ways rest can come:

Rest by starting over.

Rest in conflict.

Rest by admitting our need.

Rest by grieving.



Finding rest by grieving...this was an eye-opener. John Eldredge says that we need time each day to worship and to grieve.

What a fitting ending to this season, as autumn gently and quietly gives way to the cold and dark days of winter!

For isn't autumn is a kind of grieving? A willingness to let go, and start over? A relinquishing?


I am reminded of the words of Joyce Rupp who talks about befriending our inner darkness. She writes:

...darkness has become less of an enemy for me and more of a place of silent nurturance, where the slow, steady gestation needed for my soul's growth can occur.

Joyce Rupp, Little Pieces of Light

Yes...I definitely can say "Yes" to that.

My heart resonates as I realize that

to accept God's fullness is to be in touch with my own emptiness...

to receive His comfort, I need to face my own pain...

to appreciate the lasting quality of eternity, I must be willing to live with uncertainty for now.



I came across this beautiful meditation written by a pastor in Dusseldorf, Germany. His words fit perfectly into what Jane has been saying! Let me end this post by quoting a portion of what he has written:

You are more than your circumstances. Your failures are not the final comment on your life. Your outward limitations do not deprive you of eternity touching your soul. An arid moral environment does not mean that you cannot be filled with the Living Water of holiness.

... guard your heart and fill your thoughts with the true, noble, and pure things of God. This is your life and He is your Wellspring to give you strength and encouragement in times of difficulty.

Read more here.

My Prayer:

Dear Father, how I want You to be my joy, my strength, my all in all!

I ask You to fill me, and help me be as a reservoir, that I may minister to others out of the overflow

... from a sense of fullness, rather than a sense of emptiness.

Enable me to create quiet places in my heart for You! How I desire to tap into the wellspring of Your heart, to that river that never runs dry!

Help me to hold on to hope, even as the year ends, and I am on the threshold of another year, another beginning!




Here are a few pictures I took at the CICM Retreat House in Talisay City where we had our weekend retreat:

Sunday early evening, sun had just set; tide beginning to come in. (November 15)

Monday, early morning, low tide, and clouds just beginning to form. (November 16)

Grassy place with trees and small huts for times alone with God

Young bamboo and coconut trees growing by the seawall

Jane and me, kindred spirits