Quick Route to Fasting

Yesterday (Jan 18), our second week lesson of learning to live into our "single word" for the year was on fasting.

Seriously?  Fasting?  Yuck, right?

It's possibly one of the least popular topics we can imagine, and ranks even lower than making sacrifices because of it's apparent lack of return on results.

Yet Sunday wasn't a drag at all.  Not even because of my preaching, the lesson it was simply powerful and engaging.  Fasting turns out to be a lost art and practice that once was as common as prayer.  Additionally, it's one of the primary components we must practice if we truly wish to see our word for the year flourish in our lives.

Because fasting is so important, it only seems fitting to provide some additional resources and guiding thoughts below:

Fasting Definition:

Fasting is abstaining, for a designated period of time, from a comfort, need, or habit for the sake of renewing or redirecting one's spiritual focus.

Fasting is NOT a practice of morality in which we stop doing harmful or hurtful things.  That's called following Christ.

Fasting simply means interrupting typically harmless routines, regimes, and other habits so that our hearts, bodies, and souls wake up from their slumbers of monotony and remember to focus spiritually.  It is choosing to put prayer, scripture, or spiritual meditation in the holes that are left.

Fasting is NOT giving something up completely (like in the season of Lent).  It is interrupting or altering your use or participation in it for the sake of greater spiritual focus.

Fasting is most traditionally associated with abstaining from food, but can include other things to reach the same goal.

Fasting is NOT a form of dieting or self-improvement.

Fasting may result in physical, emotional, or social suffering.

Fasting in the Bible:

• Deuteronomy 9:9-18
• 1 Kings 19:4-8
• Ezra 10:7-17
• Daniel 1:3-15
• Acts 13:4, 14:23
• Luke 2:37, 5:33
• 1 Corinthians 7:1-5

Fasting Suggestions:

• A meal, consecutive meals, a food or beverage
• Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, other routine/habit-forming social media outlets
• Candy Crush, Trivia Crack, video games, other routine gaming habits
• Television routines or specific programs
• Recreational/ritualized shopping 
• Over-working
• Worrying patterns
• Over-planning habits

Fasting Examples:

• Drink only water for 1 or 2 meals consecutively per week.  Increase number of meals as practice develops (see resources before beginning).
• Refrain from nightly television habits or phone-game habits certain nights of the week.
• Draw boundaries around amount of time spent on Facebook and at what times during the day
  (i.e. refrain from looking at Facebook first thing every morning)

Fasting Resources:

• http://www.cru.org/train-and-grow/devotional-life/7-steps-to-fasting.html 
• http://www.ihopkc.org/about/fasting-guidelines-and-information/
• http://www.allaboutgod.com/christian-fasting.htm

Be safe in your fasting practices, especially if you choose to abstain from food.  And please, feel free to share your practice or experiences with me at jason@horizonschurch.org.  

More to come!


Jason <><

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Let New Life Begin!

It is now a full, 100%, full-speed-ahead, all engines go, 2015 new year.  The hardest week is out of the way, and life as we know it lunges forward!

To celebrate:

• Sarah and I made it through our first week apart and only missed one devotion!
  
• Even without Sarah's expert leadership, I managed to host all 22 confirmation students and leaders at our home on Friday
  
• Our "One Word" journey is off to a beautiful start; my word is "Confidence" (Jer 17:7)
  
• Our HOME Group is bigger and more cohesive than ever
  
• The Confirmands, parents, and Prayer Warriors have begun their official journey together
  
• 14 families are signed up for Financial Peace University
  
• New Disciple Groups and HOME Groups are on their way|
  
• Several new studies are being offered and a new Healthy Horizons initiative is on its way!

There is such great energy and momentum this time of year it is just about all we can handle.

HERE'S THE KICKER:  If we don't stay grounded and focused, we'll be swept away by the rush.  Wisdom in Proverbs reminds us "The plans of the diligent end up in profit, but those who hurry end up with loss" (21:5, Common English).  

As we were reminded in worship yesterday, without prayer, it's impossible to follow God's leading.  Without God's leading, how can we stay diligent to the right direction?

What often results instead of our diligence is our hurry, or as it's translated in the ESV, our haste.  We say yes to everything, rush like mad to accomplish everything, and burn out of everything by Feb.  

While every option is available to us in the beginning of the new year, not everything is specifically for us.  God knows what each of us needs and is happy to lead us toward the right things.  Here's to a life-filled 2015!

More to come!

Jason <><

4 Rules when Distance Nears

Starting today, for the next 8 weeks, Sarah will be living in Broken Bow with her parents during the week and commuting to Kearney for her third of four clinical rotations.  Thankfully, she'll be home most weekends.  Although the experience will be invaluable for Sarah, neither of us are looking forward to it.

Our lack of enthusiasm is not necessarily because we continue to have a young, fresh marriage and simply cannot bear the thought of being so far, far apart (although that's part of it).  It's primarily because we have poured a lot of time, care, priority, and effort into this thing we call our marriage, to the point we now heavily depend on it.  Our relationship and marriage have become the foundation of how we live--in our faith, our routines, our free-time, and in our hope.  It's simply not in line with the direction we've been heading.

So what do we do?

Sarah and I both know we have the tendency, like many people and couples, to become very invested in whatever it is we're doing--whether it be work, school, a project at home, vacation, etc.  For both of us, it'd be easy simply to let this time be a "time away and apart," knowing that we'll come back together and pick back up where we left off once we're together again.  Some relationships work that way.  But living in the illusion that although our relationship hasn't thrived that way in the past but will now somehow won't work.

Our best option is to commit to staying connected and hold ourselves and each other accountable to some practices.  These may be helpful suggestions for others in relationships as well:

1. Never be too busy to talk on the phone, any time of the day, even if it can only be a short call.
2. Don't allow circumstances of distance and differing circumstances validate disengagement.
3. Study a Bible-based devotion nightly and pray together.
4. Treat weekends like royal homecoming holidays!

God is good, and so, God willing, we'll grow even stronger in our faith and relationship through these simple practices.  There's even a good chance we'll keep these as rules even when we're NOT at a distance from each other!

More to come!

Jason <><