Thursday, December 10, 2009

Advent Prayer and Fasting Challenge

This note was uploaded to Facebook via the author's blog.

During the season of Advent New Season Church will be having a season of corporate prayer and fasting. We are challenging regular attendees at New Season to fast once a week and pray every day during Advent. This is obviously all voluntary but we hope you will participate if you are able.

The idea behind fasting is to simply take our focus off of our physical wants, needs, and desires in order to better focus on our spiritual wants, needs, and desires. It is an intentional way for us to worship God and proclaim our need for Him. Though there are several relevant variations of fasting practiced in our current culture, we are inviting you to participate in a fast where we abstain from food in order to have heightened awareness of our craving for God.
(But please note, if you have any type of eating disorder, do not attempt to fast. If you have any kind of medical condition, please talk to your doctor before participating in this fast.)

Why are we doing this?
Scripture regards several instances where God calls his people to cooperate in a fast. As God prompted then, we believe we are responding to the Holy Spirit’s prompting now. We know God desires our church to move deeper in our intimacy and in our relationship with Him. This fast is our obedient response.

Second, we want to seek and ask God to continue to move each of us to the place where the love of God is the consistent foundation for everything we do. As quickly as each of us can move back to a place of dependency on so many other things, this fast is a statement of our desire to be dependent solely on the love of God.

Check out the whole Advent Prayer and Fasting Challenge here.

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