Wednesday, February 1, 2012

And the Journey Begins...

Today the church I pastor, Hilldale Baptist Church, begins a 40-day challenge of prayer and fasting. As we embark upon this journey toward spiritual breakthrough, I want to spend a few days addressing a few of the basics.

I can’t help but think about how fasting is connected to prayer and the power of God in that fasting ties prayer and God’s power together. It serves like an umbilical cord between the two, a conduit through which we communicate and commune with God and He with us. If you think about it, we can talk about prayer without mentioning fasting and we can talk about the power of God without addressing fasting…but how can we talk about fasting without including prayer and the power of God?

Daniel 9:3 is a good example of the earnest appeal that fasting epitomizes in our prayers. The prophet wrote, “So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting...”

I sometimes think of fasting like the experiment I conducted as a kid with a magnifying glass, sunshine, and a leaf. Did you ever do that? The sun shines all around us, but a magnifying glass can magnify and intensify sunlight into a laser that can burn a hole in a leaf! That’s what fasting does to our prayers, if our fasting is genuine. Prayer coupled with fasting can “burn a hole” in the walls that stifle our spiritual lives…that’s spiritual breakthrough!

I encourage you to take this season of prayer and fasting seriously. Let this be a time of unusual intensity in your prayer life and pursuit of God’s holiness. Don’t rob yourself of what God wants to bring about in your life and our church.

I really believe spiritual breakthrough is coming…

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