Fasting

I recently started the Daniel Fast with my church. The point was to make a sacrifice to God saying, "I will give up eating and drinking all but fruit and vegetables (no preservatives, dairy, meat, seafood, sugar) so that You may build our church in numbers, in monetary funds (so we can get a building), in seeing people come to know you.

Which is great. However, as I started this fast I realized a couple of things that made me uneasy. The point of Fasting is to sacrifice something of ourselves to grow that relationship we have with God. When I started this fast, though, I really started it because the rest of my flatmates were doing it. Don't get me wrong, I am passionate about seeing this young church grow and be built up to be something that influences the whole of Dunedin - but it wasn't "truly" the reason I started the fast. I hadn't actually thought about why I was doing it in much detail at all.

So I sat down tonight and had a think about it. When I did, I realised that my time with God hadn't increased at all, my motives were wrong (fitting in rather than desiring God to move in our church), cooking "Daniel Fast" foods took longer than normal meals, and I was spending most of my day thinking how hungry I was - which usually resulted ion me letting others know I was fasting.

This was a problem, because although I was making a sacrifice, it actually was sacrificing anything to God. Really I was sacrificing to conformity and looking good around others. So I had to revamp what I was doing. The Daniel fast is not for me at this time. But I do want to ask God to change our church, to build people up within it as leaders, evangelists, to see people saved, to grow our funds so that we can have a permanent building (which will allow us more free time as we have to set up and pack down every Church service, Change service and Primal service) and so we can better advertise our church to draw people in. So there are a lot of things I want to see happen in the church, and I am willing to sacrifice something of myself to God in my persistent petitions regarding this subject. After talking to God and the youth pastor, I concluded a better approach would be to ditch the Daniel fast and to instead go completely off computer games for the three weeks which should free up a little bit of time which I can give to God. As well as this, I am going to fast during lunch time, giving me more time to spend reading His word during the day.

So I just pray that as I sacrifice these coming weeks these things that I desire - God would build higher my desire for His Kingdom here on earth, that he will provide for His church as it grows through evangelism by His Spirit through the people of c3 church, that His church would willingly and cheerfully give of what you give them for a bigger vision, a bigger hope for the future of bigger city. Amen