So this past weekend, I went to a retreat with my church here in WashDC. It was held at the Skycroft Conference Center in Middletown, Maryland and the theme of the weekend was prayer. Here are some quick highlights, since I dont feel like making proper sentences.

• cafeteria kept running out of forks (how is that possible???)
• kids making noise at every session, but they are so cute ;p
• decent food, it’s funny / interesting that the retreat conferences I’ve been to with chinese churches have usually tried to actually make chinese food, usually with sub par results. this time was ok I thought.
• cold! snowing, and it’s almost may! but it was just a little flurry
• indoor volleyball and basketball. i played volleyball, because dispite my height, I can’t really play basketball if my life depended on it. However, that means I can block at the volleyball net more easily
• leading worship with a slightly out-of-tune guitar, wasnt really that bad… but I noticed ;p
• hanging out with friends from church
• praying together
• baby sarah said my name, except I think she was just making random noises… cuz she didn’t say it again

Here are some notes I took during the sessions, Toby Larson was our speaker for the weekend:

• pray the word of God, to get the will of God
• prepare to pray, set aside time
• what motivates you to pray? word of god motivated daniel
• vocalize your prayers
• on the cross, Jesus prayed scriptures 3 out of 7 times
• be intentional
• why is prayer difficult? God is spirit, not really in our ‘dimension’
• we are sinful, but God is holy
• sin hinders our prayers
• Lord speaks through our conciousness
• prayers dont have to be long (Lords prayer can be spoken under 30 seconds)
• Pray to God through Jesus
• “Give us this day, our daily bread”, wets our appitite for God with His goodness and provision
• it’s give us, not give me.
• confessing our sins is useless without forgiveness
• covering a sin, means out of sight
• God doesn’t remember our sins, however God can’t make himeself forget a sin
• To remember something, means to take it into account and acting positively or negatively upon it. If our sins are forgiven, then they will not be taken into account on the day of judgement.
• Can’t forgive someone, yet keep rubbing their face in it.
• Measure by which you forgive others will be used to forgive you
• Sins are forgiven, but there are still earthly consequences
• “Lead us not into temptation”, but God cannot be tempted nor tempt
• Temptation has 3 meanings: temptation (what we normally understand it to be), testing, and trials.
• temptation here refers to trials, which are events which we are bound to fail absolutely without God intervention. Flood, Sodom & Gomorrah.

And that’s all I have to say about that