"God speaks in the silence of the heart.
Listening is the beginning of prayer. "
Friday, August 24, 2007
Monday, August 06, 2007
Conference on Life in the Spirit Seminar (LISS)
My reflections on this conference tt happened on 4 & 5 Aug 2007. The first day was a struggle to get thru the day man! To me, the first session was dry, but as i continued to listen to the 2nd session, i learnt new things. If not for Angele, would not be there on the second day...n the 2nd day was much more interesting in terms of content. This might get a lil lengthy caz I'm summarising 18 hrs worth of the conference into this tiny lil page...haha!k to be truthful, i think i only caught 4 hrs worth of it..so Angele can share her experience too so u'll get a fuller understanding.
The theme for this year's LISS is 'As by a New Pentecost'. As we all know, Pentecost is the day when the disciples experienced the Holy Spirit. As Fr. Gino explained, having a God experience is different from having a Baptism in the Holy Spirit. A personal God experience might change ur life, we look at things differently after that. You may have more than one God experience but the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is when YOU give God that promise of surrendering ur all to HIM, a definitive YES! to everything He wants u to do. The thought of what I want to do fades off and in every single little thing, we seek God's advice. At this point, I gotta admit, i have had a few God experiences but i have not given Him the definitive YES! yet but I'm striving towards it...slowly...in my own lil ways. I encourage you to do so too =) caz God loves us so much, i just feel I owe Him something...i mean..EVERYTHING!
Basically the definitive YES! requires my obedience/ submission to Him, and my prayers (I just realised how impt this is, n I'm so guilty of not praying deeply enough.I usually treat prayer as a sleeping pill..say already sure fall asleep one. well tt jus goes to show my spiritual level ain't to high...tts y im working on it).
As for the gifts of the Holy Spirit...they are cool! n its a WOW! experience when you get them but Fr. Gino was warning us that as time passes, we tend to use these gifts, neither for the good of others, nor to glorify God but we use it to show off, or get power, then we get arrogant and proud and all so yeah...Fr. Gino calls this spiritual warfare. One example is that when we read the Bible n all we think we know better than the priest so we either not listen in mass or we think the priest is talking bullshit. so he reminds us not to succumb to the attractions of the world, and he assures us that God is with us to fight off all these but we ourselves must be prepared.
The interesting thing i learnt on the first day was where my spiritual level is at...i shy to tell u what my is la but here are the 2 general levels: the feeling level, and the spirit level. Feeling level refers to when we feel holy then we do good but when we dun feel tt God is close then we stray. so eg when we sin, we go 4 confession then we feel all gd again so for a while we keep away from tt sin. but when temptation comes we fall back into tt sin , n we feel all horrible again then we go 4 confession again...we end up repeating our sins caz we do not have on going repentence. this leads to the sin becoming a habit and then its a sin attitude, lastly it becomes complusion.
Spirit level would be when we are able to use the gifts for the glory of God no matter how far away we feel we are from God. n a tis level, u wud have a love for scripture and u are open to share the faith with others. I think this is the gist of a new Pentecost, where we receive the gifts and we go out to evangelise.
Qn we reflected on day 1:
1. Have I fully surrendered my life to Jesus whereby He is the center of my life?
-Do I consult Him in everything I do?
-Do I do what He wants me to do or what I want to do?
2. Do I pray deeply in the Spirit?
-Do I have intimacy with God in my prayers?
-How much time do I spend each day in prayer?
-Is my prayer time more than the time i spend with my loved ones?
-Do I strive to make it better?
3.Do I have the hunger for the Word of God?
Hope these questions will help you reflect on ur spiritual life =)
and Day 2...
In us, we have our emotions, our mind and our inner being( this is where God dwells).
when we have a God experience, it vibrates thru our body, if affects our emotions and our mind. we feel at peace and we mature. anw, Fr. Gino was trying to explain to us how immature and mature actions work thru our mind, emotions and our inner being. this is a simple eg ...when someone is late for a meeting ur in charge of...
immature: emotion-we feel angry
mind- y is he always late? scold!
mature: inner being-keep calm, pple have their reasons for being like that
emotions- trying to cool down
mind- dun scold...smile and welcome the person.
eventually the person might feel guilty tt u din scold him n he will apologize...haha! if not he'll still think ur nice..n he'll wonder y? hopefully he'll find out tt its the God in u tt makes u so nice.
therefore being guided by the inner being will lead u to maturity. come to think of it...maybe tts y i get irritated so easily some times...i chucked my inner being away somewhere...
Day2 Qn: What was my God experience and how did that change my life?
The purpose of LISS is to help pple b more aware of the Holy Spirit.
they also gave some tips on how to conduct a LISS on our own...n well i gtg eat now...they actually have a manual on how to conduct LISS. Anw..Angele i really think this is not even half of what they tried to impart to us, so u can continue =) thanks! =p
Fran =)
The theme for this year's LISS is 'As by a New Pentecost'. As we all know, Pentecost is the day when the disciples experienced the Holy Spirit. As Fr. Gino explained, having a God experience is different from having a Baptism in the Holy Spirit. A personal God experience might change ur life, we look at things differently after that. You may have more than one God experience but the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is when YOU give God that promise of surrendering ur all to HIM, a definitive YES! to everything He wants u to do. The thought of what I want to do fades off and in every single little thing, we seek God's advice. At this point, I gotta admit, i have had a few God experiences but i have not given Him the definitive YES! yet but I'm striving towards it...slowly...in my own lil ways. I encourage you to do so too =) caz God loves us so much, i just feel I owe Him something...i mean..EVERYTHING!
Basically the definitive YES! requires my obedience/ submission to Him, and my prayers (I just realised how impt this is, n I'm so guilty of not praying deeply enough.I usually treat prayer as a sleeping pill..say already sure fall asleep one. well tt jus goes to show my spiritual level ain't to high...tts y im working on it).
As for the gifts of the Holy Spirit...they are cool! n its a WOW! experience when you get them but Fr. Gino was warning us that as time passes, we tend to use these gifts, neither for the good of others, nor to glorify God but we use it to show off, or get power, then we get arrogant and proud and all so yeah...Fr. Gino calls this spiritual warfare. One example is that when we read the Bible n all we think we know better than the priest so we either not listen in mass or we think the priest is talking bullshit. so he reminds us not to succumb to the attractions of the world, and he assures us that God is with us to fight off all these but we ourselves must be prepared.
The interesting thing i learnt on the first day was where my spiritual level is at...i shy to tell u what my is la but here are the 2 general levels: the feeling level, and the spirit level. Feeling level refers to when we feel holy then we do good but when we dun feel tt God is close then we stray. so eg when we sin, we go 4 confession then we feel all gd again so for a while we keep away from tt sin. but when temptation comes we fall back into tt sin , n we feel all horrible again then we go 4 confession again...we end up repeating our sins caz we do not have on going repentence. this leads to the sin becoming a habit and then its a sin attitude, lastly it becomes complusion.
Spirit level would be when we are able to use the gifts for the glory of God no matter how far away we feel we are from God. n a tis level, u wud have a love for scripture and u are open to share the faith with others. I think this is the gist of a new Pentecost, where we receive the gifts and we go out to evangelise.
Qn we reflected on day 1:
1. Have I fully surrendered my life to Jesus whereby He is the center of my life?
-Do I consult Him in everything I do?
-Do I do what He wants me to do or what I want to do?
2. Do I pray deeply in the Spirit?
-Do I have intimacy with God in my prayers?
-How much time do I spend each day in prayer?
-Is my prayer time more than the time i spend with my loved ones?
-Do I strive to make it better?
3.Do I have the hunger for the Word of God?
Hope these questions will help you reflect on ur spiritual life =)
and Day 2...
In us, we have our emotions, our mind and our inner being( this is where God dwells).
when we have a God experience, it vibrates thru our body, if affects our emotions and our mind. we feel at peace and we mature. anw, Fr. Gino was trying to explain to us how immature and mature actions work thru our mind, emotions and our inner being. this is a simple eg ...when someone is late for a meeting ur in charge of...
immature: emotion-we feel angry
mind- y is he always late? scold!
mature: inner being-keep calm, pple have their reasons for being like that
emotions- trying to cool down
mind- dun scold...smile and welcome the person.
eventually the person might feel guilty tt u din scold him n he will apologize...haha! if not he'll still think ur nice..n he'll wonder y? hopefully he'll find out tt its the God in u tt makes u so nice.
therefore being guided by the inner being will lead u to maturity. come to think of it...maybe tts y i get irritated so easily some times...i chucked my inner being away somewhere...
Day2 Qn: What was my God experience and how did that change my life?
The purpose of LISS is to help pple b more aware of the Holy Spirit.
they also gave some tips on how to conduct a LISS on our own...n well i gtg eat now...they actually have a manual on how to conduct LISS. Anw..Angele i really think this is not even half of what they tried to impart to us, so u can continue =) thanks! =p
Fran =)
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