Strategic Withdrawal aka “Retreat”
A spiritual retreat is medicine for soul starvation. Through silence, solitary practice, and simple living, we begin to fill the empty reservoir. This lifts the veils, dissolves the masks, and creates space within for the feelings of forgiveness, compassion, and loving-kindness that are so often blocked. —David A. Cooper
In her wonderful book Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God, seasoned spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton picks up on the military connotation of the word retreat. We often think of a military retreat as losing ground, cowardly backing away from a fight, or as a disorderly panic. I immediately think of the hilarious “Run Away” scenes from the iconic Monty Python movie The Holy Grail. Instead, Barton argues that sometimes a retreat has wise, strategic importance— “an opportunity to rest the troops and tend to their wounds, to stop the enemy’s momentum, or to step back to get a panoramic view of what’s going on and set new strategies.” Barton reports that the military recently transitioned to using the more positive term strategic withdrawal rather than retreat.
When used in churches or work contexts, “going on retreat” usually means getting away somewhere to work more intensely for more hours than usual or attending lots of talks with very little quiet or rest. We often come back from such retreats needing to recover! But there is another kind of retreat—or strategic withdrawal— modeled after those that Jesus took up the mountain or into the desert to meet with God more deliberately. In addition to His regular rhythms of prayer and worship, Jesus sometimes went off by Himself for several hours (once even for forty days!) to pray. He stopped all of His normal work and ministry, evading exacerbated disciples and hordes of needy followers, and sought silence and solitude in the presence of His Father. Was He looking for guidance? Affirmation? Peace? At least. We know that on His longest retreat He overcame great temptation, was comforted by angels, and came back ready to begin His earthly ministry (Matthew 4). Another time, after an intense showdown with the Pharisees, He went up a mountain to pray all night, then came back down and selected His twelve disciples (Luke 6). These withdrawals seemed crucial to His ministry strategy. They certainly were not a waste of time. And yet, He was not out there brainstorming with His entire team. He was simply with God, waiting and attentive.
Christians, especially those who want to grow closer to God, must deliberately pursue time with God, not merely reading Scripture or telling Him what we want Him to do for us, but slowing down to a full stop so that we can give Him the attention He deserves. We need space to remember who He is and who we are before Him. Most of us are lucky to regularly set aside a snippet in our day to spend with God—if that. For many of us, it has been a long time since we have spent any time at all sitting in silence and waiting on God to speak to us. We continually slash our way through the front lines of our daily battles with no real spiritual rest and don’t even realize that we are bleeding out. Or that we are fighting the wrong enemy and on the wrong front. Maybe we are warring against our friends rather than our foes and haven’t noticed how the real enemy gloats. God is inviting us to come away from the fight and rest with Him for awhile, but we often can’t hear Him over the din of noise. We have forgotten our Commander’s voice and are no longer serving His kingdom purposes. We believe that if we rest, we will lose the fight. In reality, the opposite is true.
Strategic withdrawal. Sabbath-keepers sometimes need more intentional focus than they find in their weekly rhythms of prayer and rest. But this is even more true for those who find it hard to carve out any regular time away from family members, church responsibilities, and demanding jobs to simply be with God. Vacations can provide necessary breaks from work. But we should also take time alone with God, away from our homes and their unending distractions, to intentionally grow into the silence that is necessary for attending to the voice of God.
Schedule a retreat. Put it on your calendar. I like to schedule one every quarter. There are plenty of resources to guide you through if you’ve never tried this. Start with just three to four hours once every month or two. Take turns with your spouse if you have kids. Work up to overnight. Don’t bring books to read or work to catch up on. Push through the boredom.
Just ask God to speak to you. And wait. I promise. It will be worth it.
