Article5 Benefits of Spiritual Retreat for Christians

Retreats are one of the activities that are quite often organised by the church. This activity is a form of strengthening faith, both individually and as a group.

Did you know that in the Bible, the term retreat has existed since the time of Jesus. It is stated that Jesus often went alone to the mountainside, desert, to the garden of Gethsemane to spend time in silence and solitude, and pray to God.

Departing from the story of Jesus in the Bible, the church often holds retreats for its congregation. Starting from special student retreats, special retreats for young families, to retreats for senior groups. Have you gone on a retreat?

Getting to Know the Retreat

Retreat is an activity to distance yourself from the environment and everyday life for a while. During this period, both individuals and groups will carry out various deepening of faith and reflective self-evaluation. Both from a spiritual, intellectual, social, and so forth.

The retreat is also a momentum for improvement and self-organisation to become a mature and better person in the future. For this reason, retreats can also be interpreted as spiritual activities carried out to foster and increase faith in every member of the community. Apart from that, retreat means retreat, solitude, solitude, distancing oneself from the daily grind and even leaving the hustle and bustle of the world.

5 Benefits of a Spiritual Retreat for You as a Christian

Here are five benefits of a spiritual retreat that you will get:

Adding Congregational Relations

The real benefit that is felt by attending a spiritual retreat is expanding and increasing relationships with brothers and sisters in faith. Especially if you attend a retreat that is held by involving congregations from other areas (one residency).

If you can only greet each other briefly when attending services every Sunday, by attending a spiritual retreat, you will be involved in one activity together for quite a long time. Like teamwork, spiritual retreat activities will certainly strengthen the bonds of brotherhood in faith.

Not infrequently, through spiritual retreat activities many church youths meet each other with a faith anchor. This further strengthens the deepening of faith in Jesus for each individual.

Providing Assistance

Retreat activities that involve a lot of deepening of faith will certainly provide spiritual assistance for the people. When doing a retreat with a group of people from the church community, you can take advantage of this moment to dig into the Bible and get immersed in an intimate relationship with God.

Retreat also helps you to reflect on the journey of life that has been passed. By reflecting on themselves and remembering His words, it is hoped that the retreat participants will be able to become better individuals in the future.

Recovering

Continuing the benefits of the second point, retreats are also able to recover from worldly fatigue. Be it physical or emotional exhaustion. When referring to the busy life of today, a spiritual retreat can be a moment for you to get away from all forms of distractions such as the phone, the media, work, family, the demands of life, and so on.

Studying the scriptures and other spiritual activities during the retreat will help you to focus only on yourself. Not only that, you will also undergo physical and emotional recovery by enjoying God's creation in a retreat that is still new to you.

Experiencing God Realistically

Following a retreat is the same as stepping aside for a moment from the hustle and bustle of the routine. A brief moment like this is the most ideal moment to experience God in a real way.

Seek God, just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. Because when we fall down and kneel down with all the tiredness of life, that is when God will be present.

God can be present in many ways, it can be with joy that appears in your heart. It can be through voice and it can also be through every word that you read. Take time to be still in silence. Allow God to speak to your heart and listen to His voice.

Back Renewed by the Holy Spirit

By being serious about taking part in a spiritual retreat, it is not uncommon for it to be a moment that changes your faith to become stronger. As written in the Bible when Jesus managed to face His fear in the crucifixion seconds after He faced God in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There is a new sense of peace and strength that Jesus experienced after spending time praying. You will experience the same thing when you truly want to put the burdens of our lives under His feet.

Not infrequently, after getting closer to God in two or three days, all of a sudden the burdens of life and the anxieties that are faced feel gone. This condition makes the heart become calmer and surrender to God. It is during these retreats that our vessels are again filled with the Holy Spirit.

With the various benefits felt from spiritual retreats, of course routine retreat activities are not something that is impossible to carry out regularly. To help manage a digitalized retreat schedule, church administrators can take advantage of the church management software.

Erista, comes as a church management software that is quite systematic and makes it easier for you as a church administrator. With the Group Management feature that is owned by the Erista church management software, administrators can more easily make retreat schedules and collect data on retreat participants.

Not only that, you can also send notification messages to the congregation simultaneously via Email, WhatsApp and SMS. Of course, this feature will really help the congregation not to forget their schedule at church.

Read also: Church management system to improve quality of ministry

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