NTU CSA Charismatic Prayer Group

I just came back from the weekend retreat for LSCO’s LISS 2010 (woots many acronyms) and the experience was great! I feel like I’ve learnt so much once again and I wasn’t even a participant. Personally I think the Lord knows that I won’t learn under pressure, and so He caters to me by letting me learn while I’m “on the job” so that I’m pushed inspired to learn in order for me to help others learn.

I’ve joined the LISS service team as a prayer warrior. Basically, I’m supposed to pray. I pray for people’s intentions and for the intentions of my group. I pray for the intentions of the LISS in general as well. Most of the time, what I do in LISS is to pray. And this is God’s greatest gift to me in these few weeks – an opportunity to pray. He knows that if I were left to myself, I’d probably neglect prayer like 3-5 out of 7 days a week. So, He placed me in this position to learn about prayer and to commit to prayer. As I shared with the other prayer warriors, I don’t think this happened by chance, and I’m really grateful for this chance to do some self-improvement.

Anyways so a few people know that I started this blog as a resolution to come closer to God by reading the daily reading at least thrice a week and then posting up my refelctions on it. Only problem was my resolution tanked after like 2 weeks. Whoopiedoo. I must be the one person I know who has the strongest resolution.

Yet the Lord didn’t give up on me, and here I am writing once again. In this journey of LISS thus far, I’ve felt myself come to open up more easily to God. This isn’t something that’s easy for me, since I’m actually a very shy person (TRUTH) and I don’t enjoy public displays of anything. Yet now it comes more easily to me. Great and awesome is He, and I believe firmly that it is He who’s inspired me to become so “thick-skinned”. =P

Yesterday’s mass was so apt as a closure for the LISS weekend retreat. I mean, St. Paul told us that since we’ve been liberated by Christ, we should then stand firm and live by the Spirit to “keep” our freedom. I really felt that this was a strong reminder that each of us, in going through this LISS, should put in the effort to at least maintain ourselves to live in the Spirit. Otherwise, the whole experience would have gone to waste and will eventually just become a distant memory.

Then we come to today. Today’s actually supposed to be the Vigil mass for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, but I ended up reading the reading for Ordinary time instead. And it’s a good thing I did. Today’s reading serves as another reminder that it is important to live in the Spirit, as otherwise God might just decide to “smite” you (from Amos 2:13-16). It’s a bit more dark and horrifying as compared to yesterday’s reminder, but nevertheless it’s a strong reminder that we must maintain our spiritual life or risk distancing ourselves from God.

I think nothing sums up what we have to do like the quote below:

“Consider this, you who forget God, lest I rend you and there be no one to rescue you. He that offers me praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.” – Psalm 50:22-23

If anyone is reading this, please know that I personally struggle greatly with discipline. I find it a chore at times to do daily prayer (and have foregone it at times), and I dread going for confession. Please continue to pray for me, that I may have the discipline like the rest of you to keep to this commitment of daily prayer (which I am restarting and will hopefully be able to keep to). Thanks!