"Allowed me to put together the pieces of my life”

When I registered to participate in the Listen to My Life retreat at Leadership Network in Dallas, I was hoping to reflect on who the Lord had made me to be and what He had made me to do.  Because of what had been going on in my life during the last three to four years, I knew that I was ready to move forward in my relationship with the Lord, and I felt compelled to serve Him more. I knew that the program would help me to "listen to the still small voice of God as He led me toward the next phase in my life journey."

After getting married, I moved to the Dallas area four and a half years ago from Colombia.  The last years for me have been full of changes - a new culture, a new way of life, creating a new family, starting a new church, etc. The fact that my husband and I work together both professionally and at our church helped me a lot to adapt to my new life, but at the same time I was not being very "proactive" and was just "going with the flow".  After the Listen to My Life retreat, I re-gained energy to start doing more things both at a professional level and at my church. I was able to identify how my talents could be used to serve God, so I started doing that.  I knew in my heart that I had to start a group and become a Listen to My Life facilitator. I started a small group with ladies from our church in April 2008, and they are all very committed to listen to their lives, to God and to find what the Lord wants them to be and do.  

I've always loved to share and talk with others about experiences that touch my life, so I started doing it one more time with Listen to My Life materials. What I received as a gift from God, I wanted to pass to others around me. I wanted other people to re-discover God in the story of their lives and to reach to Him more deeply in search of their spiritual transformation. Because of my gifts, talents and experience, I knew that I could facilitate the program with a small group, and I felt in my heart that was what the Lord wanted me to do. I felt honored that I could do this for God and found that starting at a "small scale" was the best for me, since I had never facilitated Bible studies or prayer groups before.

Participating in the Listen to My Life retreat was a life changing experience for me. The process allowed me to put together the pieces of my life with a new perspective, to recognize the patterns or themes that define who I am and what my talents/gifts are, and finally, it started helping me to clarify how I could serve the Lord. My whole spiritual life has gone to another level since the retreat. I am noticing God more than ever before in my life, have developed a new way for my devotional times, and sense Him with me at all times during my days. I love sharing about all that I experience with my husband and my small group, so they are now incorporating some new spiritual disciplines in their spiritual journeys too.   The "listening process" that I learned during the retreat also impacted me a lot. I now realize that my ability to listen to others is a “gift from Lord”, so I am doing it more intentionally, studying more about it, and I believe this will continue impacting the people around me.

Throughout this experience God has showed me that I have work to do with women.  I started the group with the ladies from my church and left this "feeling" kind of in the back burner. To my surprise, my Mom, who is a devoted Christian, started telling me few months ago that she sees that my ministry is with women. Later, a friend of mine invited me to be the guest speaker at her Hispanic women’s small group. I had never even participated in their small group, so I was really surprised to receive that invitation. Only the Lord could have put in her heart the willingness to call me. I can see that the Lord has been guiding me all along during the last year and has been preparing me for what He has in store for me. Now I know that He is already using me, and I am just ready for the next challenge He brings my way.

The words I would use to describe the place Listen to My Life materials can play in a person's spiritual development are: discovery, listening to God's still voice, deepening, restoration, alignment.  I love the imagery in the maps and the fact that you can draw, write, etc... it all depends on your preferences, so I think that with this you can impact a lot of different people. I like the sequence of the maps. It guides you into more and more discoveries about your story, and each map prepares you for the next one.  For me, it has been very useful to have the reflection questions at the end of each map, so I can journal and think deeply on the meaning of my discoveries, and what God is telling me through it all. During the retreat, I learned for the first time about "Spiritual Disciplines" and that is something that has fascinated me. I started reading, studying and practicing different disciplines on a regular basis and I think this is what has also helped me in my journey and in my spiritual transformation.

The sequence of the maps is really helpful. This in fact, has helped our group in our journey. As we share more and more of our story with each map, we have a deeper understanding of our own story and each other's. We've found that some of us have faced the same challenges in our families and the same "things you don't want others to know about", which has helped us to support each other better in prayer and as spiritual friends. We know that we can talk openly about different issues, because we know most of the deepest "secrets" of our lives. This has also helped us to rejoice together when we see how our prayers have been answered, and when we go back to our journals and discover that something we had written about is clearer or the Lord has given us answers for, we all rejoice with that. We can tell that it is because of our prayers together, our support to each other, the way we listen to each other now and the answers that we have been finding as we go along our journeys listening to our lives and each other's lives.

Share Your Story... We would love to hear what God is doing in your life through Listen to My Life.