Last Evening Of Our 21-Day Fast
It’s a little before 10pm. Today was just juice and water again; no vegetables or solid anything. I wanted to go stringent again here at the last because this is not just about food! I want to discipline my body to remember that I’m in charge of it, not the other way around. I want to hear from the Lord and not just have one more fast under my belt. I want more than anything to have a surety of my connection with Jesus being stronger than ever. I want to hear from God.
I read that when a rescue boat goes out to pick up survivors of shipwrecks, the most dangerous time is the period between when the victim sees the rescuers, and when the rescuers actually can pick them up. The victims tend to relax and stop trying so hard, relieved that somebody else is going to rescue them. Can you imagine giving up right before the rescue?
I’ve also seen an Olympic swimmer who was ahead of the competition for an easy win swing his arms for one last stroke and glide to the finishing touch at the end of the pool, only to look up and see that somebody else was hungrier for the win, and stole that gold medal right from him because that other person swam with all his might ALL the way to the finish. No gliding. Can you imagine? Silver medal because he coasted in the end.
I am going to finish this fast well. I’m going to eat tomorrow night with thanksgiving, but until then, I’m still going to fast well. I’m going to pray like God is going to answer, because He does. I’m going to pray like it’s up to me to pray, because it is. I’m going to believe like it will make all the difference, because it does.
And that is why we are going further and farther than we’ve ever gone before. The person I used to be was not willing or even able to go the distances I can go today. That’s one reason I didn’t receive the blessings back then that God gives me today.
Take inventory of yourself, and keep swimming! Don’t give up! God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him! Be diligent and He will reward!!
Reading Over The Past Week
Over the last week or so I’ve had a ton on my plate. The tyranny of the urgent! That’s what it’s called. This blog is important, just like watering the lawn, weeding it, and reseeding it for the coming spring are all important. But when you’re putting out fires, it’s a battle between the important and the urgent. Some things you can delegate, and some things require my personal attention. Pray for your pastors! 
In the last few days, our reading has been a lot…a WHOLE lot of what God gave to Moses to lay down as laws for the Children of Israel as they wandered around in the wilderness.
First, they missed their opportunity to trust in God and take the Promised Land. Side note here: Isn’t that awful that one People could just go where they wanted and take land by force? They would just wash right in, fight a war, kill all the inhabitants, and take over their land. That’s the way things were back then. It’s just the way things were. Anybody who buys into that whole, “These others were here first so they have the right to have it all back,” needs to look at the USA. Apache, Navajo, and all the tribes of Native America were here in their home, and settling immigrants took it by force. I’m here because of a violent taking of California. Can we please, please change our thinking to a place where we are where we are and let’s do as much good as we can! Okay, enough politics.
So they didn’t trust God enough to take the land promised to them. So God would have to march them around the wilderness for 40 years to allow a generation to pass away, and bring up a new generation that wasn’t stuck in the old way of thinking. That’s a key. Let’s let God change our way of thinking so He doesn’t have to wait on the next generation to do something He would like to do through you. Believe He can do a miracle, and bless your work.
While they’re traveling in circles for decades, I love the way the Bible takes a bunch of chapters and shows us all the rules God gave Moses. One reason is this. Lawlessness has always been shown in a godless environment. God gave 613 mitzvot, or laws, that would keep the children of Israel safely in His plan. And they would show anybody was out of line and not healthy for His children to associate with.
There are things ranging from how to prepare food to how to mete out judgment to how to live morally…it’s all in there! I’m not as hung up on WHAT those Old Testament laws were, as I am interested in HOW much God is interested in the tiny littlest things in life. For me. Today! He really does care how we present ourselves in private and public. Ex 23:4 says if you meet your enemy’s ox while you’re going about your business, take it back to your enemy. He’s talking about enemies INSIDE the family!? Day by day, finding a dollar that was dropped by somebody who owes me big time is not an answer to prayer. It’s a test to see if I’m honorable enough to return what is not mine.
See how the rule is the same for morality and Godly life, but not a stumbling-block that says, “You broke a law now you die!”
We don’t live under the Old Testement, we are living in the New Testament. We have a sweet liberty that is incredible! That’s why it’s so important to actually read the Bible. Knowing the voice of God through the Bible is the best…I said BEST way to recognize when something we haven’t read in the Bible comes our way. “Hmmm. That sounds like a great idea, and if it were in the Bible, it would agree with the rest of the book!” That, my friends, is exactly what we are looking for in life!
So enjoy reading the history of the children of Israel. Get to know the voice of the Father as He instructed them, guided them, and brought them through some incredible circumstances. I encourage you to try and take a template from their experience and layer that onto your own life. That doesn’t mean if somebody get’s gored by your ox, you have to go shoot the ox. (Okay, if somebody gets hit by your car you don’t have to take it out on the car.) But it does mean that when something happens to somebody else and it’s connected to you somehow, get involved in trying to make it right!
Keep reading. It’s the BEST way to get familiar with God’s voice in your own life. These last 2 days of this 21-day fast are the time to pray like never before. Pray!
What Have You Been Reading?
Karen and I have been in church all our lives. On the surface that sounds like a blessing, and it is a great blessing! But it’s come with a cost. We’ve heard soooo many different opinions placed forward as if they were the Word from on high! We’ve seen soooo many things in the church that it could cause us to make some decisions that would have kept us from filling our role in history.
I heard a minister on TV crying to the camera, “I’m the only one bringing the true Gospel through the airwaves, and if I don’t have your support…” You know the drill. Then I tune in a couple hours later and there’s a minister preaching the very pure truth of the Gospel, and not crying about needing more funds.
So which one would you listen to? Truth is: they’re both men, and they’re fallible.
Then hear a minister who says, “We have a bunch of books in our church bookstore, and I don’t want anybody just running down to the local Bible book store to buy things willy-nilly. Don’t buy things there because we haven’t screened them. You just buy the things we’ve approved.”
And then I heard a minister trying his best to say that the things God tells him are as inspired and infallible as the words the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible writers to record, and that they’re just as legitimate for edification, correction, and instruction.
Ummm…wait just a minute!
There really is one Bible. The 66 books in what we call The Holy Bible are the Word of God. Apologetics is an entire study on how and why the books we have in the Bible are really the Word, and that study is a whole library by itself! But when somebody, anybody promotes his own words to the level of God’s word, that’s the same spirit that got Lucifer kicked out of heaven. And although I like the idea of a minister reading and previewing healthy materials and offering the to the congregation, I am a little skittish about telling people, “Only buy what I tell you.”
When I was teaching at the Bible school at Southhills, one day I brought out a genuine $2 bill and a high quality photo copy of one. (Relax, I destroyed the fake afterwards…I’m not a counterfeiter!) The whole exercise was to show that you can really tell a fake when you know the real thing very well.
I think that’s what I’m trying to say here. Get to know the real thing so well that anything that’s not, no matter how good it looks, can’t convince you it is the real thing. If you know what the real thing looks like and even feels like, you can spot a fake no matter how good it is.
Read the Bible. First, and most, read the Bible! When somebody prints a book about their life and what they’ve learned, you can tell if it lines up with what God says because you know what God says! For me, even when I haven’t had a black-and-white example in scripture, I can tell if something is of the same kind as scripture is. You know: it’s like I’ve said a ton of times. The Bible doesn’t say anything about bicycles or the Internet, but it says everything about the people using them.
Oh, and that minister who said his words are on par with James, Peter, and Paul? He’s still out there. Still stumping his wares. And you know what? He’s got a lot of fruit in his ministry that shows he is moving the cause of Christ forward. I’ll let God deal with him on His terms.
Meanwhile, you and I need to read the Word, get to know God’s voice, get more time spent with His Holy Spirit speaking into our spirit, and grow closer to God. That way He can whisper into our spiritual ear and tell us, “This is what I’m saying to you, and here’s how it applies to you, and here’s how I want you to tell it to others too.”
Exodus 25 – 27
Today is Day 26 on our plan to read the bible in a year.
At the risk of summing this up TOO completely, I love these 3 chapters. Why? Because it’s a beautiful example of how God wants His house built. He told Moses to take up a love offering. It’s not Tithes. It’s not the sin offering, or the heave offering, or the wave offering, or an oblation or anything else that was not only needed, it was commanded.
Nope. This time God says to have people give as much as they can give with a willing heart. On the outside it looks like God is asking for money. But think about that one and you’ll realize how silly that sounds. So why would God want PEOPLE to give to something that He could have just provided for — say, like they’re stomping around the wilderness and a goat falls into a canyon cracked open by a quake that reveals a huge gold vein…you know, something like that — but He says no, He wants everybody who is willing to participate, to jump in and do it.
Then there are a couple chapters about how excellent He wants the job done.
So here I am, just a willing pastor with a building program going on. Hahaha. Here’s God showing me in His word that I’m not the first minister in history with a calling to build a sacred place for His Presence, and need to pull some money together to do it. I wonder if Moses looked around for a gold-filled canyon?
The real reason I think God wants them to give is so they can have the legal right to be blessed! You have to sow before you get to reap. Period.
There’s a truth in history: if you want Bible results, you need to do Bible things. Dig deep, find the depth of your willing heart, and give! We are going to finish the job God has put before us, and wouldn’t you like to be part of a great thing He has done? From the Biblical example, I see that is His plan.
It’s Thursday
Last night during Bible Study, we saw that the Apostle Paul teaches us this:
Use whatever reason you can find to send you to prayer!
Like that time I bought flowers for Karen because it was Wednesday. Or the time you called that friend because you saw a flock of seagulls and it reminded you of a concert where you saw somebody who reminded you of them. It doesn’t matter what the reason is, as long as you use it as a reason to go to God like it matters!
So….it’s Thursday. What are you going to do? I know what I’m doing.
Quoting a GREAT Comment!
Hey! Did everybody see how Stacy ended her last post?
“I have made a conscious choice after today to no longer allow Flesh people to have a voice in my life. ”
That is the smartest thing anybody could say!!
None of us are alone. All of us need each other. See you in the morning for the Word and Worship!
Fasting and Prayer Day # 10
We are just about half way through!
Ruth commented earlier about something of great importance. Water.
Drink water people! Drink it when you get up. Drink it throughout the day. Drink it before you go to sleep. Yes, even if you have to get up in the middle of the night for a bathroom visit, you’re still flushing out the bad, irrigating the good, and lubricating your whole system.
Water. There! That’s our practical reminder for today!
As I finished this post, my stomach growled loudly. Hahaha. Don’t have time to feed the flesh today, I’m empowering my spirit.
Bible Reading Plan for Promise Church
I’ve been putting this link into posts from time to time this year, but HERE is the Reading Plan we’re doing for 2012. We got it directly from Pastor Jentezen Franklin’s website. It’s a really good one, so jump in and start reading! Today is Day 17 of the Plan.
In case that link doesn’t work above, cut and paste this into your browser:
http://www.promise.pro/assets/2012_Bible.pdf
The Word of God is full of life folks! Read it everyday!
Testing *OR* Proving
In the Bible, the word ‘Test” and the word “Prove” are sometimes used interchangably, depending on the English translation you’re looking at.
We can look at a grammer school test that shows whether or not we’ve learned to talk right. I mean speak correctly. Or maybe in Junior High, (or what’s called Middle School nowadays,) the test may show whether we have improoved our speling. I mean that our spelling has improved. Or by the time we reached High School, we might have had a test that was called a Pre-test that showed us where we still needed to grow in order to actuallyu pass the test when it comes along.
Then we grow up and the real tests begin, huh?
We all really do have something to prove. The only way to show that it’s really provable is to test it. Now the purpose of the test isn’t to show our shortcoming. It’s not even to show whether or not we’ve learned a lesson. It’s to show we HAVE learned. Not whether or not. Just whether. Yes. Not Yes or No.
3 x 3 = 9
It always will. It always has. And when that equation is written on a page and it sits in front of me, it’s not to test whether or not I know it. Duh. I got that one. I can work that out. Even if the 9 isn’t filled in for me, I can finish that equation because it’s inside of me; it was taught to me and I’ve experienced in my own life that it is true, and nobody can talk me out of it. 3 x 3 = 9. Everytime.
To me, that’s not a test. It’s a proof. Semantics, I know, but go with me on this.
There are non-negotiables inside of me which have been taught to me – by one teacher or another – and that I’ve expereinced to be true, and they become part of my very soul. I know them and nobody can talk me out of them. I’m married to them and it’s ’til death do we part! Still, from time to time, circumstances set a page in front of me with a question on it that asks me to confirm, “Is this really true?”
When I got to college I had developed a system inside of myself for taking tests. I usually didn’t get an “A” on my first test of any class. In fact, most times I got a B- or a C+. Shock! Me! A smarty-pants genius, getting a C? Yeah. That first test was, in my young mind, a throw-away that would get dwarfed by my successive victories. What I did on that first test was get to know how my professor tested. I learned, “Oh! That is the type of thing he is looking for,” so when I studied for tests, I knew what types of things to emphasize. “A+” after that made several of them ask me what I changed to boost my grade. My answer was that I studied better, and that satisfied them. The whole truth was that I studied my prof, and knew what they’d be looking for.
Gladly, I didn’t have any professors who actually *wanted* to trip up students in the tests. They wanted to have the students Prove they’d grasped the materials. They wanted to confirm that we understood.
Ah! Now we’re looking at a difference. Subtle, and trust me: not consistent, but a difference.
I think, for me anyway, that Testing shows where I can go until I fail, and Proving shows that I can succeed.
Sometimes we equate Tested with Tempted, and maybe that’s a good evaluation, but only sometimes. A temptation that two people experience may be a temptation for one person to stumble, and a confirmation to another that it’s not that big of a deal. Demand a four-year old to work their multiplication table up through their 3′s, and you’ll get a crying child. You’ve tested them and found them lacking.
God loves you. And when you are Tested in the way I described above, by a loving Teacher, it’s not to show how bad you are or how much of a failure you are or how dumb you are. It’s to show you your limits right now and to be there to offer this: In your weakness, God’s strength is shown to be perfect and complete for you!
Here’s the important part! Whenever you reach a testing time, have you noticed that the Teacher is usually quiet? He’s already taught you some things, and during the test the teacher is typically quiet. And since our Teacher is the Lord, you can count on two things:
1. If this is a Test, it’s not just going to show where you come up short, but shows where He can step in and fill that gap.
2. If this is a Proving time, it’s not just going to show you how far you’ve come, but shows a new high-water mark in your life.
Welcome Testing, as embarrassing and humiliating and hard as it may be, because with the right attitude it can make us rely on God so much more. Welcome Proving, as hurtful and painful and frightening as it may be, because He has brought you so much further than you’ve ever been, and farther than you ever thought you’d be. Look at yourself! Do you realize what a successful testimony you already are?
We were lost! We were a big fat “F”! You may have been a good person, but just like a smart person who doesn’t know the materials, you couldn’t pass an examination.
I guess that’s what I’m saying here. It’s an examination. It gives a genuine analysis of where you really are right now. An honest assessment of your capability right now allows you to know the capacity of what you can do right now. Then you go back to class (Thank you God for the school of hard knocks,) and learn the material because you have another test coming. Or a proving time. It’s an exam.
Fasting and Prayer Day 16
If you’re fasting a total fast — drinking only clear liquids, you know you have to stay close to the bathroom still. (Can you believe how honest this blog is?) All those toxins and waste and buildup are letting loose, and you’re cleaning your system out like never before! But the headaches might still be there. And you don’t have the stamina you have had before. Don’t despair! This is only a few short weeks, and the fast isn’t designed to make your physical body amazingly strong. It’s to make your spirit strong; it’s drawing you closer to God while you pray and read the Word.
There’s also the mental clarity that is coming. God can give you ideas clearer than you’ve had before. I tease that it’s because you no longer have that food stuck in your spiritual ears. Maybe there’s some truth to that. I will quickly add that every single idea that runs through our minds isn’t necessarily from the throneroom of the Almighty. Weigh your decisions wisely with prayer and the Word. Nothing’s wrong with counsel. Ideas right now from God don’t have to get shot down in committee, but you might actually amaze those in your counsel circle by the clarity and value of those ideas right now.
If you’re living on a modified fast, including fruits and vegetables, you’re doing so excellent! It worked for Daniel and his friends, and at the end of their testing period they looked healthier and more wholesome than peers who ate and drank anything they wanted. Isn’t it funny? Discipline in our diets is good. Not using discipline in our diets makes for an undisciplined lifestyle and none of us what that anyway!
If you have particular food items you’ve removed from your diet during the fast, and if there are activities on top of that food restriction that you’ve removed (TV, Web-browsing, etc.,) be sure to couple all that with reading the bible and praying. God can absolutely honor that. He will meet you where you are and bless your obedience to Him.
Temptation is a regular visitor in everyone’s life, and I guess in every area of life too. Temptation is NOT a sin!! Did you get that? Temptation is not a sin. It’s a trial. A test. It’s a proof that you are made of sterner stuff than the temptation. Yesterday after church, Christopher and I went to the store to pick up something after church and they were cooking ribs on the barbecue out front. Grrr. It smelled like a corner of heaven will probably be. Okay, maybe they won’t be cooking pork ribs in heaven, but you know what I mean.
So the test came. Peer pressure would keep us from falling because my son doesn’t want to disappoint his daddy, and Daddy wants to set a great example for his son. Plus, it’s not going to kill me not to eat flesh for a few weeks. Because my son is 14 and active in baseball at school and still growing, his fast is not as stringent as mine. It’s not a go-to-hell-for-breaking-fast sin for him to have some ribs! But he made me laugh when he took a great big sniff, sighed, and said, “Well, we’re coming back here in a couple weeks!”
You will feel better about yourself for holding true to your commitment through to the end. You may stumble and mess up and “cheat.” Don’t give up! You’re not disqualified. Get up and keep going forward. Pray like you really mean it!! Pray for your own strength. Pray for your Pastors. Pray for Promise. Pray for our city, state, nation, world! Pray for the church around the globe fighting for their faith when we have such freedom here. Read the bible and see what God has done for His children throughout history.
He’s still on the job. He’s still a faithful God. He’s the ONLY faithful God! And I promise, He is proud of you for your sacrifice and obedience. Keep moving forward. He has plans for you that are coming to pass.
