dennis martin papp

Days Twenty

This fast I tried something different. I chose to eat at only certain times: 9, 12, 3 and 6.

Each time was assigned a certain food:

9:00am--Two boiled eggs

12:00pm--Fish, usually a can of undoctored tuna

3:00pm--Fruit

6:00pm--An ordinary meal, but light portions and only one helping

Each food was tied to a prayer theme:

Eggs--New life. What new thing do you long to do in us God?

Fish--Fishers of men. God, give us compassion, conviction and courage to reach the lost.

Fruit--Bear much fruit. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. Make us fruitful Lord.

Ordinary meal--Much of life is lived in the ordinary. Praying for daily bread.

It was a good plan. It didn't always work. I missed 3:00pm the most. 

Why share this now? We are two days from done. What's your plan to engage God beyond these twenty-one days?

Maybe you will incorporate fasting as a weekly or monthly practice.

Perhaps you could tie a specific prayer to a daily meal or food item.

We will engage another season of fasting as a church in the future. Until then, what's your plan?

Today's Prayer Focus

Let's pray for tomorrow. What does God have in store for SouthField 2025, 2055, 2095? He who began this good work will be faithful to perfect His good work. He promised He would.

1. Pray for our kids, teens, and twenties. This is SouthField's future. Pray that God would grow in them a love for His church, His Word, and His will. Pray that they would not fall for the world's lies. And pray that if they drift, they come back home.
2. Pray for future pastors. Pray that God would grow up men who love Him, men of compassion and conviction, loving servant leaders. Pray that they would love Channahon, love people, love hard work, love Biblical thinking, and dream dreams that are God's dream, not their own.
3. Pray that God would continue to supply our needs as He already does supernaturally. Pray for the elimination of all debt and an increase in the space He gives us to serve Him.
4. Pray for future partnerships, missionaries and ministries with a like heart and mind with which we can align.
5. Pray specifically for kids and students in our church to sense God's call to serve Him in local churches, parachurch ministries and on foreign fields.

Day Nineteen

Kim and I choose to undertake a sundown-to-sundown food fast one day a week. No eating from Wednesday at sundown to Thursday's sundown. This week that was from 4:58pm Wednesday to 4:59pm on Thursday (yes, days are getting longer!!). Other days I have taken a limited approach. At 9:00am I eat two boiled eggs. At noon, some form of fish. At three, fruit and at six, a normal meal, but smaller portions and no seconds. Then no food in the evening. I'll talk more about the why of those choices tomorrow.

Sometime during the second week I had a moment. I realized I was hungry. Really hungry.

This moment was embarrassing. I tried thinking of a time prior to fasting that I was really hungry. There were plenty of times I wanted to eat, but I rarely allow myself to get truly hungry. More often than it should, something is going into my mouth. It may sound strange, but it has felt good to remember what hungry feels like.

Physical hunger is designed for at least two reasons. One is to remind us that we need to eat. Duh! The other is to remind us that we need to eat. Ahhhh!

God designed hunger to tell us that we need to feed our bodies and we need to feed our soul. Yes, our bodies need food to survive. Our soul need spiritual food to thrive. Far too many of us are starving spiritually and we haven't got a clue. We are so full of junk and fillers that we do not feel the emptiness. It is likely we fill ourselves with the junk of this world to dull any sense of emptiness. We think things and experiences and relationships will fill the void. Yet if we really pay attention, the hunger remains.

Remember the Beatitudes. We just read them a couple weeks ago:

Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.

One version uses the word satisfied in place of filled. Satisfied is really the better word choice. We can be full and yet long for something more or something else. Satisfaction says, "That's it!" 

O that we would taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8)

One Bible teacher says, "Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God." Sin is the filler, the substitute, the spiritual junk food we shove into our souls to satisfy the void.

 My prayer for us as this fast draws into its final days is three-fold:

1. That we feel real hunger in our bodies and souls.
2. That we realize deep satisfaction in Christ as we chose more of Him, the Bread of Life.
3. That the Spirit would reveal false fullness in us and change our craving to long for God.

Today's Prayer Focus
Ready to join in a real break-through prayer? Many people are engaged in a spiritual mismatch. Some spouses are not on the same page spiritually. Some are Christ-followers married to someone who does not know Jesus. The mismatch may be about stage of spiritual growth and desire. While both are believers, one is growing and the other is stalled out. Perhaps the mismatch involves an addiction that one spouse engages and the other endures.

Let's pray for our friends who are married and mismatched.

1. Pray that God would increase the hunger in the person who has no desire for God, or who has drifted from God.
2. Pray for the strength and endurance of the spouse who longs for the one they love to want more of God.
3. Pray for us as a church to know better how to minister to these couples.
4. Pray that addictions would be broken and marriages would be restored.
5. Pray that children in these families would grow a strong love for God and hunger for His Word.