I started a fast a week ago and I had people ask me to share
my thoughts along the way.
Sometimes we need renewal in our spiritual lives. Fasting has been a way to cleanse my body and
aid the process of communicating with Father God. God is raising up people in this hour who do
not want a diet of just “church as normal” any longer. These people are hungry and desperate for a
closer relationship with God
If we are not careful, we can allow life to get us into the
same old ruts and routines without even realizing it. Our relationship with the Lord can suffer the
same fate. When we don’t do what it
takes to stay sharp and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, our praise, worship,
offerings, and even preaching can become heartless routines to God. As a believer, we can pray, read our Bible,
and go to church week after week and still be losing sight of our first
love. It is not that we don’t love the
Lord, but the business of life can bring us to a point of losing our desire,
our freshness, our hunger, our enthusiasm, and our sensitivity to His Spirit
and what pleases Him.
I remember as a kid eating potatoes in one form or another
every night. I had potatoes this and
potatoes that, over and over. Same old
stuff every night. What if God was
hungry and all we have to feed Him is our same dull religious routines
(potatoes) day after day? Where is our overwhelming
hunger for Him? Is all we have to offer
Him is potatoes?
God does not want or need our routines. He does not savor heartless activity. He does not want our “leftovers” when He can
get “fed” elsewhere. God is a jealous
God and He wants us to put Him first (Deuteronomy
4:24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God). True worship that comes from our hearts
feeds Him and satisfies Him. It is
something He desires and deserves. Our
religiosity of going through the motions once a week does not please Him as
much as our obedience to Him and His Word.
Fasting is a constant means of renewing yourself
spiritually. The discipline of fasting
breaks us out of the world’s routines.
It is a form of worship offering your body to God as a living sacrifice
that is pleasing to Him (Romans 12:1
NASB Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
service of worship). The discipline
of fasting will humble us, remind us of our dependency on God, and bring us
back to our first love. It causes the
roots of our relationship with Jesus to go deeper.
There are dimensions of our God that will never be revealed
to the casual, disinterested worshiper.
There are walls of intercession that will never be scaled by
dispassionate religious service. But
when we take steps to break out of the ordinary and worship Him as He deserves,
we will begin to see facets of His being you never knew existed. He will begin to share secrets, visions,
discernment, wisdom, knowledge, revelation, and peace that we never knew
existed. He will share His plans and
desires for you.
When we are truly hungry for God, we will push past the
routines, we will set aside the rituals, rules, regulations, and traditional
thinking to more of His presence, more of His power to turn situations around,
more of His healing power, and more of His miracle-working power! When we worship God as He deserves, He is
magnified and we are blessed.
Through the fasting God has reminded me how important it is
to be humble. He has reminded me the
importance of having compassion. For
without compassion, we cannot love those around us and those who offend
us. He brought to my attention that I
must pray God’s perfect love over individuals in my family and in the Healing
Room so that they may overcome fear (1
John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because
fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love).
Lasting, I am praying for many out there for breakthrough in
your lives. I thank you for your prayers
during my time of fasting and prayer. Tony Sanchez 1-11-15
