New thread and update

The Sacred Retreat is here and remains here for whomever would show up, to pray, to worship the Lord, to tell of His name.

Michael Newnham has shut down the Phoenix Preacher blog and it seems to be permanent. I am without part of my community now, as PP represented a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week venue that helped me cope with the lack of access to my church community due to personal matters. Now it’s gone…but I need to keep in mind that the God Michael sought to proclaim is alive and well, and that He not only knew what would happen but is in control. So I go forward with Jesus, and invite you to do the same, and if your journey brings you along this path that is fine.

New thread: April 15

Please post your praise and prayer requests here.

New thread: October 21

Post to your heart’s content.

I’ve checked the dashboard, and there are no legit posts that fell into spam or moderation. Everything, best I can tell, that’s supposed to be online is online.

New thread, June 1

Let’s start new conversations, prayers (and prayer requests), and praises (and praise reports) on this thread.

The other thread was getting a little long, so I wanted everyone to start off on a clean slate. The older thread, of course, is still up if you want to read it – or post on it

Thanks for supporting the Sacred Retreat…feel free to relax here and chill, and fellowship, and talk of the things of the Lord.

PP update

From Michael’s blog, earlier today:

We appear to have lost the entire comment database and the ability to comment period.

I have a hunch we may lose the whole site at some point.

I am not in a place where I can diagnose the cause or attempt a fix.

Prayers for us would be good…

Send up a prayer of thanks as well…today is Sarahs birthday and she truly has been a gift from God to me and this ministry.

God is sovereign.

PS…hacking the site has never stopped me.

Never will.

Period.

I’ll be back.

He already is, thanks to the help of a long-time friend:

Over the next couple of days I am going to be making some updates to the backend of the site to secure it. So please be patient if not everything is functioning.

Thanks for your understanding.

Jacob Lee
Friend of Michaels

New thread!

Please post new prayers, prayer requests, praise reports on this thread.

For future reference, I’ll likely post new threads as current threads surpass the 100-post mark.

I also want to apologize for not being more active here, and also for not paying as much attention to our spam filter. CHPH had 12 posts fall into the spam filter   and I apologize for not fishing them out sooner I promise to take better care of this and be a better steward in the future.

Also, if you need to get ahold of me in the future: email me at briandmail@gmail.com

Poll results

Not too many people voted – but 4 out of 6 voted to keep threads open until the comments get too long.

So for now, that is what I’ll go along with. When the currently active thread gets too long, I’ll open up a new one.

Poll: how often should we update here?

When Sacred Retreat was at From the Ashes, it was set up as a single thread, with everything – prayer requests, encouragement, posting of Scripture verses, prayers, fellowship – happening in the comments section of that thread.

As we did with another thread, ERunner’s Porch, we would begin a new thread when there were so many comments readers had trouble refreshing their browsers, or it became too much of a hassle to scroll down for the latest post.

My question for you is:

How we got here from FTA

The Sacred Retreat started out as a couple of threads at the From the Ashes blog. It was intended as a place where people could discuss the things of God, encourage one another, post Scripture and worship videos, basically to be an online version of the place you go to to get away from the uproar of everyday life – including everyday life on the blog.

On January 6 and 7, the moderators of From the Ashes decided to end the FTA blog, believing its mission had been fulfilled and season had come to a close. One of the ongoing threads we noticed had some life in it was the Sacred Retreat thread. I had this in mind when I chose to begin a Sacred Retreat blog at wordpress.com.

I wanted to keep its ministry going, apart from dependence upon the existence of FTA, and give it a fighting chance to make a name and place for itself. I also wanted for those who were interested in the Sacred Retreat to have somewhere on the internet they could come and feel comfortable.

Time will tell how this site develops. But it is here to glorify God and bless His people, without the drama and contention one can find in the blogosphere.

For those who are interested, this is the official announcement from FTA’s “financier” and tech guy, MrFixIt, on its fate:

Ecclesiastes 3

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

As BrianD has said, our From the Ashes blog accomplished it’s initial mission and much more, but now is time for it to fade away, its season has passed. Michael has the Phoenix Preacher up and running strong once again. All of us have learned much about community blogging, and many of us will continue blogging on other blogs across the internet, connected always by the PP blog and especialy Google. If you have an interest in the Sacred Retreat blog, click on over there and join in.

Should anyone want to resurrect this blog, I will have backups of the database and file systems, in *.tar.gz format. They are very very large files and would best be sent by CD rom. If you have an interest let me know.

Take care everyone. May God abundantly bless each and every one of you this year.

MrFixit

Hello everyone

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.  For,

“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.

~1 Peter 1:22-25