Last Sunday night at our Family Meeting, we called the church to participate with us again in three days of prayer and fasting for our church. This is something we did last year and something we hope will be a part of the beginning of every year in our church. Our corporate fast will begin on Monday and will continue through Wednesday of next week. We will close out this time with a corporate prayer meeting at the church on Wednesday night at 7:30. We are asking our church to join us for this important meeting as we seek the Lord and pray about our church in the year to come.
Also, we wanted to give you some brief information about fasting (the same information we gave last year). First, what is fasting? In Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life Donald Whitney writes, “A biblical definition of fasting is a Christian’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes. It is Christian, for fasting by a non-Christian obtains no 
eternal value because the Discipline’s motives and purposes are to be God-centered. It is voluntary in that fasting is not to be coerced. Fasting is more than just the ultimate crash diet for the body; it is abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.”
In my experience, fasting has been a way to deny my flesh for the purpose of crying out to God for spiritual requests through prayer. In fasting, we are saying to God that we want Him to speak, move or act more than we want food itself. Fasting is a way to say to God that we hunger for Him even as our bodies hunger for food, and it’s the very hunger we experience that reminds us how much we need God. Hunger also reminds us to pray.
Second, why should we fast? The Scriptures provide a variety of reasons for why God’s people should fast and John Piper has cataloged some those reasons here. The reason we are calling a fast is for the purpose of prayer for our church and all that is ahead in 2012. We believe we are desperate for God for all that we desire for Him to do in our midst. We don’t have the power in ourselves to carry out God’s plans among us. Only He can give power, only He can bring change, only can produce fruit, only He can save and make His gospel powerful and effective among us, in our lives, in our marriages, in our families, in the ministries of the church and in the way we reach our world. As we look ahead to all that God has for us, we know that we need His help, power, mercy and grace. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Ps. 127:1) Our desire is to cry out to the Lord together as we begin this year.
We plan to give specific prayer requests for our church in the next couple of days, but also recognize God may use this fast in a very specific and personal way for you. Times of prayer and fasting are key times in our lives. We believe the Lord is going to do many diverse and powerful things among us during this time.
So, would you please participate with us in some form during this time of prayer and fasting? You can fast one meal, one day, one meal each day, two days or all three days. Please make sure you are aware of any medical conditions or considerations as you think about how to participate. If you are interested in a comprehensive study of fasting, you can download John Piper’s book called A Hunger for God here. It is a wonderful treatment of the practice and power of Christian fasting.
Again, we plan to give more information on Sunday regarding next week, but thank you for considering this and we look forward to all that God is going to do among us next week and in the year to come.
On behalf of the pastors,
Eric
On Sunday we studied the final two parables in Mark 4. Jesus used two more farming metaphors to illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like. We learned about the surprisingly powerful nature of the Kingdom and the surprisingly pervasive nature of the Kingdom. Where the Kingdom is planted, it has power to grow – powerfully, automatically, sovereignly and completely. And where the Kingdom is growing, it will spread and conquer and dominate into the whole earth. This is meant to be profoundly encouraging to us! God is at work, more than we know! He has power to save and His gospel has power to spread and grow throughout the earth and throughout our lives. 
On Sunday Mike Napier served us well by preaching to us from Psalm 41. Mike drew our attention to the past, present and future elements of the Psalm as well as the way the Psalms ultimately point us to Christ. Our hope in the present is based on promises made in the past that will be fulfilled in the future. And in Psalm 41, our hope in the present is directly connected with the reality of resurrection; both Christ’s and ours. To know that one day we will be resurrected in glory because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the foundation for every hope we have in a broken world in which we face many trials. 
leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” (Psalm 1:1-3) This is a picture of health and growth that comes from delighting in and meditating on, digesting and applying God’s word. There are many other places in Scripture that commend to us the regular practice of spending time in God’s word – reading, listening, understanding and applying. No matter what else happens in 2012, a prayer and goal for every Christian should be to go deeper in the knowledge of God through His word.
I trust you had a wonderful Christmas! I wanted to thank everyone who joined us for our Christmas Eve service and our Christmas Day service. Both went very well. We even had to set up an extra 5 rows of chairs on Saturday night to accommodate everyone! My biggest hope is that the seed of the gospel that was sown will bear fruit and grow in all who heard! Thanks for bringing family and friends to join us, and for all who were out of town – we missed you!
