“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.” - Romans 12:1-2 MSG
This week, we got to host an incredible group of middle school girls for our All Girls Retreat. We had a tea party, worshipped authentically and sincerely, relaxed at the “spa”, played on the lake, and enjoyed being together a whole lot. It was a really sweet and delightful time full of joy.
We started off the retreat diving into the themes we saw in the movie we watched: Inside Out 2. It was such a great conversation starter and was so applicable to all of us, but especially middle school girls. We got to discuss how we all have a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings like joy and anxiety. However, we want to be anchored in truth when our emotions are a swirling mess.
Melissa asked the girls what one truth was that they wanted to hold onto throughout the week. They got to have a lot of small group time to discuss their emotions and how God’s truth speaks into all those spaces. They had some really insightful truth to share in our meetings:
“God wants to hear from me, and He wants me to hear from Him.”
“Jesus loves me, and I am never alone.”
“I can talk with Him anytime.”
“He can help me not to be jealous.”
“He won’t be shaken or abandon me.”
“My emotions are normal and I don’t need to feel bad for feeling them.”
“God has a path for me even when I can’t see it.”
Then we read Romans 12 in the Message and were reminded of how God’s truth changes us from the... inside out!
Throughout the week, we spent a lot of time in small groups discussing Romans 12. We got to practice giving our lives to God by writing our names on rocks and bringing them to the foot of the cross we have in our prayer garden at Hopetown. Each camper also got to write their burdens on a rock and place them at the foot of the cross. We learned to recognize that we need Jesus to help us carry our worries, fears, doubts, and hurts.
After bringing our burdens to God, we talked a lot about joy. In the movie, Riley calls joy, and joy comes. We, too, can call on joy through all kinds of things like worship, prayer, gratitude, or giving to others. We practiced all those this week in many different ways, like singing worship songs at the end of each day or giving beads to each other to symbolize qualities we admire in one another!
On our last day of camp, each girl got a new backpack full of reminders of their identity in Christ. While we placed our burdens down, we got to carry packs full of the truth of who we are in Him! We even got to give Christmas gifts to one another as a reminder of the Joy to the World that Christ is. And, we got to read scriptures about what Christ-like joy looks like:
“For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” - Nehemiah 8:10
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” - John 17:13
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” - Romans 12:12
It was an incredibly warm-hearted week full of unity and depth. It’s so refreshing to see a group of middle school girls be so kind and sincere with one another, and we feel very grateful to get to witness their authentic joy. God used them to teach us all so much!
