Safehaven's 4th Annual Retreat

Shine Jesus Shine!

Micasa Hotel Apartments, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

14-16 June 2002

by Jason Wee


First session
 [Day One] Over 40 of us are crowded in room 628 eating our potluck dinner. It's quite an amazing spread; you find out who are the chefs among us (Chris), who's not (we won't mention any names), and who's creative enough to buy KL favourites back, such as black hokkien mee, and dim sum. We are having a good time here; well-equipped gym that rivals Planet Fitness', convenient shuttles that take us to KLCC, spacious apartments with comfortable beds. Sharon woke while half the world still lay sleeping, at 6.30 in the morning, to be the first at the gym when it opened. Haveners are such healthy people! Eric and Andrew even brought their supplements along. :-)
We are also reviving our spirits again. Daily worship sessions do that to you. Boon Long spoke about leaving our baggage behind in Singapore, and he did not mean it literally. We placed thoughts of work, family, Singapore friends, and other daily patterns on the back burner while we focused for a while on each other, on Safehaven, and on God. We opened yesterday with a short sermon by Jason on the background of the Colossians and how the historic tensions between Gnosticism and the infant church influenced Paul's writing. We were asked how such a particular event might still have relevance to our lives, how often we are still trying to make our way to God through our own efforts, how we, by our own efforts, grow spiritual pride that mislead our eyes to see only the speck in our neighbour's eye, but not the plank in our own.
We also listened to Clarence speak of moral development, of the need to bring our lives into greater contact with our spirituality, how we need to integrate the two by not being afraid to use our spirituality to confront our lives (such as by being spiritual in what is usually thought of as 'unspiritual' areas, such as clubs, pubs, workplace, social spaces. We should also not be afraid to confront God with our lives, speaking honestly, frankly, even brutally. We also listened to Boon Long and Daniel lead the two tracks of the afternoon, which finished just a couple of hours ago. Daniel spoke about relationship dynamics, while Boon Long taught about leadership, and led a facilitators' discussion.


Eager faces

In such a short time, we have squeezed in quite a bit, and we still have a bit more to pack it. Going off to an evening sermon now, where we'll explore Colossians on suffering with Clarence. The people, and the Holy Spirit, awaits. :-)

[Day Two] A brutally honest night, last night: the sermon was off. Clarence called for open reflection on the impact of the retreat. Clarence and I took some punches, cried intensely in the midst of worship, and I shared of my fear that after 4 years of this ministry I may finally have run myself to the ground dry of any salvageable fuel. I can go no further on my own strength, my own ambitions, which have only taken me thus far. If the Lord wants this ministry to grow, then He had better bless the people involved and better be prepared to provide the strength, talent and resolve needed because at this point, I sure haven't any.

Praise and worship session
I did ask for something - prayers; whenever a complaint, a suggestion, a comment, an accusation, is first offered to us, pray for Clarence and I first. What was emotionally a drain piped into my spirits a stronger thirst for revival, i.e. to see life change, burned from the core, so that all our idols are ashes when revealed. That truly the holy of holies that is our heart will be filled with the spirit of Christ, self-sacrificing, people-oriented, doggedly committed to seeing good be done in the lives of others. In other words, through the revival fires I see men and women, youthful, dedicated, bound to each other by love and passionate about the Lord.

Of course, after all that, what is an exhausted preacher do but rest. Which is what I did. Twenty-five others less exhausted than me, had other ideas. They danced the night away till three in the morning, and by all accounts, was good clean fun. Our last morning was inevitably slower by a few turtle's paces. You can tell who stayed up on the dance floor the night before by observing faces for their eye bags and crows' feet. Incriminating evidence of a party person.

But once we settled down with fresh eggs and milk in our tummies, eyes brightening from the nutrition running through our system, Roger's worship was the final wake-up call to the Lord. Kenneth followed with a brief sermon on his personal conflicts with the Bible, his journey towards, and away, from God, how often he struggled with a God who was willing to kill an entire earth for its sins (Gen 9). Ken suggests that perhaps God too, learns to relate to His new creations, these new beings already at a distance from Himself. It was followed a prayerful communion, after which we all stood to sing 'All that I am/ All that I have/ I lay them down before you, Lord/'

Jason took over with a demo of a stretching song, before moving on the more serious. Picking up the first day's motif of the luggage, I asked if we had truly left something behind. And what's the new thing we are bringing back with us? Do we really want revival?
What is passion, the thing that can grip our attentions and our entire beings to focus on our hobbies, or our loved ones, or our jobs, but our God? Who will take up Christ's offer of a heavy cross of suffering, and a yoke of comfort, easy to bear? This tension between suffering and salvation is resolved in the face of Christ, which is present in the faces of all our brothers and sisters. Will we take each other up? Will we bear with one another, encouraging one another, loving, sharing, giving? Who will take care of the gay boy that sniffs a popper, pops an E then dance the floor away. Or how about the boy who cruises on Ang Siang Hill. Who will be a sister to him?

The Haveners
We closed singing 'Shine Jesus Shine', this time the words seem to take stronger hold as a commitment to have Christ above all else, and to see visible fruits of such an enthronement. We want to see, and we want others to see, Jesus lifted high.

[PostScript]

Four years at the helm, and I'm finally tired and ready to quit. But at the same time, I have never been as excited, been as able to see the potential that I am sure God sees in this organization, the potentiality for growth, for social change, for dynamism, for the kingdom to come. I hear echoes coming from the lips of those who worship with me. Will we truly see revival? Will we grow exponentially again in numbers? Will we make greater impact on our societies? Tune in next year July. [To Be Continued ... ala The Lord of The Rings]