An Opportunity to Come Away to Reclaim the True You
The long awaited moment arrives: the time when the names on paper become people that we can meet and embrace! The Reclaim Retreat team has been praying for each participant long before they even register because our publicity strategy is to pray daily for God to bring “Persons of Peace” (PoP).
What’s a PoP? A PoP is one who is prepared and ready to receive the message of Reclaim Identity. To reclaim is to take a vast wilderness and make it beautiful and productive again. It’s always amazing to me to see how God moves to bring just the people He has designed to be present at each retreat.
Welcome to this Sacred Space
The welcome is palpable. Each retreat attendee is given a personal tour of the retreat space: the meeting room with the world’s largest couch, the kitchen where delicious, healthy gourmet food is served and celebrated, the bathrooms, (of course!), and the yard where space exists for quiet reflection with God in privacy and beauty.
After everyone has arrived, we gather. We share why we have come. The retreat team shares why they continue to come month after month to support the retreats. The reasons for serving on the team are varied: life transitions are often a theme. Going through a large challenge is another. Great hunger for God and a chance to build a stronger identity foundation is yet another.
A Support Team Dedicated to Serving You
Our team prayer is for an opportunity to experience a glimpse of what life in God’s family can be. Everyone included. Everyone valued for their presence and for their part in the family. Different life stages, backgrounds, and ethnicities are celebrated as everyone brings their piece to complete God’s family.
I am thrilled that God has been so gracious in bringing diversity to our retreat team: we have all the life stages represented from 20-somethings to retirement. We have different ethnicities: African American, Hispanic, Jewish Christian, and Caucasian. When we are all together, none of it matters. We only experience our unity in understanding how valuable we all are to our Heavenly Father.
Tuesday: Day 1: Preparation Day
After the attendees introduce themselves and share briefly why they came, we all begin to worship as we prepare ourselves to receive everything our Heavenly Father wants to give us during the retreat. We explore our true purpose and imagine life in the Garden of Eden: the life we were created to live. We discover how doubt led Eve to question whether God was for her and if He had her best at heart. Her decision to eat from the Tree of Knowledge changed everything and life has never been the same, for any of us.
Afternoon Session
After a delicious lunch where introductions turn into acquaintances, we gather again to worship and discover why a slave can’t teach a king how to live.
Opportunities are given for some of the benefits of the retreat: one on one prayer appointments, time with the Reclaim Mom and Dad to experience prayer and nurture, and a heavenly massage from Jewell: one that is not just focused on our physical bodies but on healing the whole person.
Our last hour in the afternoon is one of solitude as we begin to discover those areas of our lives where we’ve experienced identity theft. Jesus laid it out there in John 10:10 where he stated, “The thief came to rob, kill, steal and destroy, but I came to give you a fulfilling and fruitful life.”
We gather for dinner. Before we eat, our Reclaim tradition is to celebrate and give thanks to our Heavenly Father for His good gifts in our lives.
Evening Session
Our evening session starts with worship and then moves to the different opportunities for one on one prayer, ministry, or massage, as well as an opportunity to focus on developing a reclamation decree.
The reclamation decree is an experiential presentation based on each attendees learning style to reclaim what has been stolen from them in their identity and in life and to take back, hence reclaim, the territory. Team members are present to help with the reclamation decrees as well as to listen, to process, and to pray with the attendees.
Wednesday, Day 2: Adoption Day
I love Day 2 because it is the day when everyone begins to relax and receive the gifts our Heavenly Father is pouring out: meaningful connection, rest and nurture, healing and transformation.
Morning Session
Our morning session is the most important of the retreat. It is the day when we move out of the houses of rebellion and religious rule following into the house of relationship. We begin by identifying the extreme identity theft that comes through the orphan spirit. When we identify the fruits of the root of the orphan spirit, we cut them off together. We list the fruits on a white board and as each person leaves the house, they erase those fruits as a symbol of never returning to the orphan life again.
Our retreat coordinator takes everyone on a walk through the garden as a symbol of leaving the houses of rebellion and religious rule following and then to the front door. I stand at the door welcoming each individual by name to the house of relationship, and Robert and Lovie, our Reclaim Mom and Dad, give each person a hug.
After being welcomed, we go to work to identify the fruit of the adoption spirit. This list encourages and delights; and when we have fully adopted the adoption spirit and its fruit, the atmosphere literally changes.
Just as God told the Israelites not to bring any old stuff into the Promised Land, we do not want to bring our old mindsets, agreements, belief systems, etc. into the house of relationship. So, we do an important exercise called the “funnel plunging.”
We identify our funnel clogs (barriers) and then set apart asking Jesus to plunge or eliminate them. This is a meaningful time where our loving Heavenly Father shows us what we do not have to live with any longer. People actually express that their bodies, minds, and emotions feel different, cleaner and clearer!
Following the funnel plunging exercise, an opportunity is given to sign an adoption certificate! This certificate is a symbol of our willingness to acknowledge our Heavenly Father’s invitation not to just receive salvation to heaven, but to enter intentionally into life in His family.
Many times, as people are preparing for their adoption signing, they hear the Lord whisper a new name in their ear. It doesn’t always happen at that moment, but often comes shortly after returning home!
Our move ends with a communion celebration as we acknowledge Jesus’ invitation to come to the table as part of His family! Our afternoon session is focused on the power of our agreements. We often see a vast difference between our Father’s promises in Scripture and our own experience. Part of the reason for the Grand Canyon chasm is the agreements we either consciously or subconsciously make. We end the afternoon writing “affirmation cards.” These are vital in taking what happens at the retreat and implementing it into our everyday life. I like to call it the “Re-orientation” into the adoption of God’s family!
Evening Session
Our dinner begins with sharing our new name and adoption and how God moved us into a new house….sometimes we are so full from sharing our celebrations, our physical appetite is barely present.
Wednesday night ends with a fire where an opportunity is given for people to surrender their broken dreams to the Lord and ask Him to reclaim them! It’s a meaningful time of recognizing how much He wants to fulfill our dreams; and as we surrender them to Him, He is free to work to bring them from heaven to earth.
Thursday, Day 3: Reclamation Day
The Reclamation Send Off is a slice of heaven on earth. After worshipping, each attendee is given an opportunity to share their reclamation decree in the way they developed it. They all look different. It’s delightful to experience each one. They range from written declarations, to vision boards, to songs (some even written for the reclamation), to dramas and skits, to even a rap!
After the reclamation decrees, ministry time takes place as Jewell and I prophesy over each person, they pick a key as a sign of their key to the house of relationship, receive communion, and prayer from other team members.
Before they go through this process, they are able to choose from a variety of objects which represent the different resources they’ve been given by their loving father: a sword, a key ring, a crown, a scepter, a cross, an angel, a veil.
In a recent experience, I gave one woman the word that she was a burst of light and warmth of the sun to each situation she entered and when I looked around for something to represent the sun, one person taking pictures showed us the sun pouring in through the front window to land right over her head. This happened despite the fact it was raining outside!
It’s always hard to say goodbye as God takes literal strangers and turns us into a family. However, the bonds of family are hard to break; and we go forth knowing none of us will ever be the same.
Benediction
Go forth in your identity as a beloved child in God’s family, being loved lavishly by Him and embraced lovingly into as a sibling in His family! You too can come away to experience an opportunity to reclaim the true you by registering for our next retreat. Dates and locations are regularly updated on my retreat page at reclaimidentity.org. Click on the audio file below to take a few minutes and listen to a sample of what some recent retreat participants had to say about their experience.
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