Spending your Birthday with Jesus

I heard an incredible story very recently from a friend who flew half way across the country to spend her birthday on retreat alone with Jesus. We all spend a good share of time alone in solitude, sometimes lonely.. And we fail to use this time to talk with our creator & our counsel The Holy Spirit. But we can encounter an amazing 'birthday gift" by going on a spiritual retreat with Jesus as my friend did. I spend my share of time alone, but I never feel alone, I feel I am in a 'preparation state' where God 'conditions' & 'prepares' us for. ' battle' against the ways of the world. As I listened to my friends story of spending her birthday with Jesus, I thought, what a perfect thing to do, to honor the one who was the source of the fruit of our mothers womb, by drawing near Him in Praise & Adoration. I recalled doing something very similar when I was in High School, I struck out with a backpack on my birthday down an abandoned stretch of railroad tracks in my home state of Indiana, I remember it well, I wasn't looking to encounter God, but that's most often when we do, in the wind, the woods, the solitude of life. Although my friends 'Birthday with Jesus' is an amazing testimony to drawing near Him, we can all, and we must each travel to that place of aloneness with Him to be fed & nourished In the ways He will reveal to return to our world to impact lives with the tools He gives us. We can have those 'Birthday times alone' in the middle of our day or night, we can close our eyes & lift our hearts in focus on His Voice & receive a perfectly wrapped 'Birthday Gift' to deliver to a hungering world. Praise God that my friend came home with that 'Birthday Gift' God gave her & that she shared it with me. We must all go to The Father to receive His Gifts & then use these gifts to demonstrate His Love to one another. JESUS WAS ALWAYS SPENDING ALONE TIME WITH THE FATHER, WE ARE TO DO THE SAME.