We are moving forward in our series about the spiritual discipline of prayer; about creating a rhythm of life that it is in communication with Jesus. Prayer, as we looked at last week, it NOT about asking for things – even good things.
The goal of prayer is to get to know God! It is about bring our heart, soul, lives into unity with God.
In keeping with that theme, we will be talking about prayer and fasting (click here to listen to the audio version of this talk). Next week, on March 30th, we will be kicking off a 21-day corporate prayer and fasting period. This has become a tradition in our church with this year marking the fourth year we have done this. It is interesting to me how God has used this periods of fasting and prayer within the life of our church
o 2011 – Pastoral transition from Brian to Emily and me
o 2012 – Looking at buying property; we actually bought the land right after the fast ended
o 2013 – A period of looking at our souls, our family, our jobs, our calling
* It was a tough time in the church
* The evil one was attacking us from all sides
o 2014 – We are combining all the elements from the last three years
* Pastor transition
* Building plans
* Renewed life with God
* Fighting off attacks
Because of all of the stuff that is going on, we need to be in tune with God more than ever. Remember, fasting is not about getting answers to these problems per say. We are not trying to change God’s mind or force Him to talk to us. We are not trying to get God to like us better
Fasting is about re-aligning OUR mind, heart and soul coming into line with God’s
We get distracted; we get confused; we get sidetracked. We need to re-tune our lives so that we are inline with God’s plumb-line.
Psalms 139:23-24
• Let us turn to Psalms 139 for a bit
• This is a song of King David
o The most famous king of ancient Israel
o The man whom God testified about saying ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ –Acts 13:22