Jesus is our great example and pattern of how we are to live our lives in loving obedience to God, mercy and compassion to our enemies, grace and humility to our neighbors, and joy in suffering for the cause of the gospel. However, I believe that there are certain aspects of Jesus life and ministry which we perceive as optional or even unimportant as we contemplate who He is and how He lived. The two great disappointments in most churches is a direct result of such thinking. These two spiritual disciplines are fasting and prayer. If ever my heart has been broken as a pastor, it was because of the lack of interest and delight from God’s people to starve our flesh and feed our spirit through our purposeful subjection of our physical desires for that of spiritual hunger and deep, profound, specific petitions to the one and only true God.

As a ministry which has committed its existence to delight in God above all else, exalt His name among all peoples, for His glory, through Jesus Christ, these two joy filling and God glorifying disciplines become the lifeblood of fulfilling our great mission and vision for our church. Realizing the challenge in our day to gather a group of brothers and sisters that want to go hard after God, I emphatically commend each of us to consider why we are calling every member and every guest of Kaleo to join us in crying out to God as a body of followers as we say no to our fleshly body and yes to the will and desire of Jesus our King.

FASTING

Matthew 4:1-4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus, the Son of God, who came to the world He created and dwelled in our midst, began his earthly ministry with a fast. Not a 48 hour fast, not a fast from Coke, not a fast from television, but a fast from food for 40 days. This should cause us to seriously consider His pattern for doing the will of the Father by first killing the will of the flesh. Why would Jesus start His ministry in this way? Why did God lead Him to it? And what about you and I? Is it possible for our church to be so awestruck by the majesty of God that we respond by viewing a 24 or 48 hour fast as miniscule in comparison our Savior?

My goal in commending that we follow Christ, especially in His example of fasting, is not designed to give a lesson or lecture on the doctrine of fasting. Rather, I commend each of you to open your Bible and allow God’s word to come to you fresh in this matter so that you are convinced for the word’s sake that this beautiful and sin crushing time is not optional, because God’s glory is not optional. We are fighting for His glory and the way to His glory is through our joy in Him above all else, even food.

On Tuesday the 22nd of March, Kaleo is beginning its corporate fast from lunch that day until after our gathering together for prayer and the ending of our fast on Wednesday the 23rd at 6:30 PM. I want to encourage each of you to join us in this time as we want nothing more than to ask God for a greater hunger for Him, and to stir up a homesickness for God that has eluded many of us over the years.

PRAYER

What do we do when you and I don’t desire the Word of God? Or when we don’t see or sense anything that gives us joy in God? Or when our joy is so weak that it feels pale in comparison to all the physical goods this world offers? What do you do when you are not satisfied in the God of the Bible but prefer the pleasures of the world?
Do we see examples of the saints in the bible and through history that ever struggled with this? The answer is yes! They did struggle and fight like I am calling each of us to in this fast. We should take great comfort in knowing this. We all struggle with seasons of lukewarm faith and spiritual numbness of heart. There are times as a pastor when my hunger for God becomes weak, and darkness looms overhead and seems to consume the light. Even my memories of the days of joy in God seem distant at times, and if this is you as well, I can not suggest enough our need to come together and like a deer pants for the water, allow our soul to thirst and pant after God.
So how do we fight for joy when our desires seem to fade and we have no hunger for God’s Word? The answer is simple…prayer. The key to joy in God is God’s transforming grace, bought by Jesus, applied by the Holy Spirit, and wakened by the Word, and laid hold of by faith through prayer.

The central definition of prayer is this- “an offering up of our desires unto God.” So then, prayer is the revealer of our heart. What a person prays for shows the spiritual condition of his heart. If we don’t pray for spiritual things (like the glory of Christ, and the salvation of sinners, and fame of God’s name, and the holiness of our heart, and the advance of the gospel, and conviction of sin, and fullness of the Spirit, and the coming of the kingdom, and the joy of knowing Christ as our treasure), then it’s probably because we don’t desire these things.

The fight for joy with the weapon of prayer is deadly serious. Ultimately, the glory of God is at stake. This is true because God is most glorified when man is most satisfied in Him. Praying for such liberating joy in God is one of the most worshipful and loving things a person can do.

Praying for Joy is not the emotional pampering of joyless people. It is preparation for sacrifice. What’s at stake in the fight for joy is the radiance of the worth of Jesus made visible for the world to see in sacrifices of love flowing form the joy of you and I as blood-bought, soul-satisfied, Christ-exalting people. When Paul said that we was laboring for our joy, he wasn’t saying that he wanted to pamper you. He wanted to work for the joy of God’s people so that they can be the kind of living sacrifices of love that God intended us to be.

John 16:24 Jesus says “Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.”

Every payer, no matter what it is for, should be a prayer for the fullness of joy in Christ. Why? Prayer is for glorifying God and magnifying His Son. Jesus said- John 14:13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

When all else around us fails, the ground for our joy remains…God. Therefore, every prayer for life and health and home and family and job and ministry is secondary. And the great purpose of prayer is to ask that – in and through all his gifts- God would be our joy. This type of fighting for joy in our prayers and desiring to delight in God for His glory, is not an easy task. It takes work to move from our self-absorbed, me, myself, and I mentality. We must see this task of prayer and its focus as another of our great fights to see and savor Christ as treasure.
As we come together and pray to the God of glory that we would hunger for Him more, find greater joy in Him, delight in Him, find our ultimate meaning and satisfaction all that God is for us in Jesus, let’s do so with stomachs that are empty so that our hearts may be full. Let’s come as a family and dedicate our lives to the single pursuit of His glory through our delight in Him above all else.

If you are not able to fast from food for reasons of physical ailment, I ask that you consider in what other ways you might say no to your flesh. Perhaps television, or the internet, or caffeine, or something that we have find has its grip upon us that would jolt us from our daily routine. I also ask that if you can’t fast that you would still come out and join your brothers and sisters in God’s family as we gather for a time of contemplative and heart-felt petitions to God through Christ.

I am looking forward to stepping out in faith with each of you and trusting that God will meet us where we are. This is a great privilege for Drew and I as your elders and I can’t wait to see you there on Wednesday the 23rd at 6:30.

If you have any questions at all, please email Drew or I and we would be happy to help in any way we can.

Slaves in Christ,

David Fairchild and Drew Goodmanson- Pastors