dennis martin papp

Day Eight

We are now in the second week of the fast. In multi-day fasts, God takes us through phases that can only be unfolded over days. You will find this to be true in week two. Week two will feel different than the first. Be aware of this dynamic. God has something fresh for you this week, different from the last.

This is a good time to consider adjustments. Reflect on the first week. What worked? What didn't? What went as you expected? What surprised you? The answers unearthed serve as the basis for some adjustments. Maybe your goals were too intense, setting up a cycle of defeat. Reset to something that stretches, but is not a guaranteed failure. Perhaps you aimed too low. We set goals that seemed attainable. Yet, in their attainability there was a lack of stretch. It may be good to ratchet up the intensity of the fast.

You may conclude that all is good. No adjustment is needed. However, if you do need to adjust, the start of week two is a great time to reset.

In this second week we move from introspection to intercession. Are you ready to pray some breakthrough prayers? The time has come to pour out our hearts to God. Some of our prayers will be for something or someone. Other will be against prayers...praying against the forces of darkness. You may want to kneel as you intercede. Bow before God as you make our requests known to Him.

As we intercede, listen. Do you realize that the Spirit is already praying? We get the privilege of joining Him in His intercession to the Father. Look at Romans 8:26-27

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

The Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. So today, with great sensitivity, ask God's Spirit to direct your prayers. Here's how it works:

Today's Prayer Focus
Have you ever promised someone you will pray for them? A friend shares a burden and we verbally commit to pray for them. Unfortunately, we do not always follow through on the offer. Instead of promising to pray, tell the person that you will pray for them as God brings them to mind. This is not a cop out. It is relying on the Spirit to guide our prayers. The Bible tells us that the Spirit knows what to pray even when we do not (Romans 8:26-27). So here is today's prayer. Quiet yourself and pray for whomever God brings to mind. Sit with Him and let Him guide you to the person who needs your prayer. As you do, be fascinated by the fact that this prayer did not originate with you. The Spirit was already praying. He called on you to join Him in His mighty work!

Day Six

The opening movement of a season of fasting and prayer is introspective. Our activistic nature wants to get at bringing our world-shattering requests to God. If we do this too soon, we miss out on essential transformation. Before we get at the work of the fast, we need to let the fast work on us. Much of life is lived on autopilot, racing from event to event and doing what we did yesterday again tomorrow. Seasons of reflection like this one we have engaged jolt the norm. They shake the status quo. As we begin to fast and pray we find we were long overdue for a shake.

That has certainly been the case for me this week. I've needed a jolt, and God has given me one. The night before the fast I was nervous. I wondered if I would have the discipline to see it through. My night-before tension revealed something that only became apparent to me a few days later. This is not my fast to keep; I am being kept in the fast. God is my daily bread, and He is the one who empowers me to fulfill His calling. I wondered how I could do it, only to again hear the words: It is not me, but Christ living in me. The fast is not an act of self-discipline, it is a partnership with Christ.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me...for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." So much of life feels like a heavy burden, and it is mine to shoulder. Jesus teaches us in seasons like this one that He is the one carrying the burden. We partner with Him in His work. 

We have arrived at Saturday. Soon we will move from introspection to intercession. We will not leave it behind entirely, we cannot. Next week we will move to our prayer requests. Today and tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, really focus in on confession. Clean hands, pure heart. We have asked the Sprit to search us, to let us know where we are with God. We have let God know the trust thing we can say to Him. With all the soul-prep we have done, let us now bring our hearts to him in confession. Tell Him your sinful actions. Bring Him your sinful attitudes and motives. Speak truth to God about you. Ask Him to heal and forgive.

Psalm 51 offers a beautiful prayer of confession. Pray it to God. Line by line, pray it to God. Pray it in a variety of versions.

Ask Him for clean hands and a pure heart.

Some confession may require setting things right with another person. Yes, it is hard, but if God is calling you to make things right, do it.

 

Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.

18 May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Day Five

"Where am I with God?" By now you may have a bit more clarity with our question. The answer may even surprise you.

I've done some traveling this year to places I once knew well, but have not visited for decades. In the fall my son Nate took me back home to Buffalo for a Bills game. While there we visited many familiar places from my past--the two houses of my childhood, my elementary school, a favorite park and many sites along the Niagara River. Though I had been to those places many times, it's been decades since I was back home. The landscape has changed. At times I was just plain lost though home.

Just after Thanksgiving, Kim and I headed to a wedding in Clearwater, Florida. Again, we were in places from our past. We moved to St. Petersburg days after our wedding in 1985. I worked at a church in Seminole. While visiting we drove familiar streets. Many of them are numbered, making the whole town an easy grid to navigate. As we drove around we had the hardest time finding familiar places, like the chiropractor's office where Kim worked for over a year. How was it so hard to find? We think we found it, but we are still not entirely sure it was the place. Again we were home, yet lost.

In those familiar, yet foggy places I was so grateful for a GPS. Both trips would have been very difficult to navigate with folded maps and TripTiks. Not sure what that is? Ask someone over 60.

I'm still baffled by how I could be in places that were so much part of my life, yet be lost in a place I knew so well. I found myself looking at my friend's houses I had visited so many times asking, "Is that it?"

God is our home. Moses declares it in one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 90. He writes:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!

He is our home, yet at times we feel so lost. Not lost, as in unsaved, but lost in the sense of wandering and wondering. I wander and wonder a lot. If you believe in prayer, you have probably prayed a few prayers again and again and wondered why the prayers seems to go unanswered. Though God is our home, we feel a sense of confusion. We wonder why God tells us to ask in Matthew 7, yet can leave us with no obvious answer:

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

⁹ “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? ¹⁰ Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! ¹¹ So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

We feel at home and a little lost all at the same time. This fast I am praying prayers that I prayed during our fast in 2021. These are prayers I have prayed for a long time with no answer. Just silence. I talk with God about how we have been here before. Familiar ground, yet lost in the fog of silence.

Lack of answers does not cause me to question the reality of God or His goodness, at least not anymore. I do tend to question me. Am I doing something wrong? Did I do something to deserve the silence? Why not just answer. It can't be God. It must be me. 

Why continue to pray when the mountain doesn't budge, when the waters won't part and there is no manna to collect or burning bush revelation? Because it's not about the answers; it is all about God. It's about believing God's promises even when circumstances seem to call the promises into question. It's about hoping when hope is thread bare. I would love to have the answers, but I truly want Him more. It has taken years to get here, and there are days I still just want the answers. A relationship with God is not about having a genie in a lamp who grants our wishes. It is about finding in Him our true home, and in that home finding great satisfaction.

Let me share a tool that has helped me for many years. A wise friend once told me to answer this question:

What is the truest thing you can say to God right now? 

By truest I do not mean spouting objective facts, but what your heart believe and feel right now? Total honesty. Complete vulnerability. Not putting on a nice, spiritual smile and pretending all is ok. All out gut raw...speak your heart to Him. Consider this question a spiritual GPS. We think we are in a place we know, yet it feels foggy and unfamiliar. Could it be that we are doing such a good job pretending that we cannot hear the truth of our hearts? Lay it out...the good, the bad and the ugly.

Tell God the truth.

Today's Prayer Focus
You will need some time and some quiet for this one. Think of a situation that you find frustrating, disappointing, aggravating, distressing. What is the truest thing you can say to God right now? Don't worry, you are not going to surprise Him. He already knows. He knows us better than we do. In answering honestly you might uncover the answer to the question we have been asking for a couple days: Where am I with God?

Day Four

We spent yesterday surveying our souls, asking the probing question, "Where am I with God?" We wanted to locate ourselves in relation to Him. Our assignment was to condense our answer to a word or a very short phrase. We are going to stay here for another day. As we do, we will attempt to approach the question from another direction, or maybe more accurately, from another source. 

By this point in the fast you may be sensing some internal movement. One way that movement reveals itself is through our emotions. You may be noticing a greater emotional intensity. Things feel more. For me, I'd say I am feeling something of an emotional rawness. My sadness is sadder, almost to the point of grief. At the same time, little points of joy and hope feel so joyful and hopeful! 

What's that all about? I believe God speaks to us through our emotions. Unfortunately, most of us have so much emotional wreckage that we have not learned how to probe our emotions productively. Some of us stuff emotions. Others deny them. Still others explode. We tend to see an emotion as an end in itself rather than a pathway of discovery. We say things like, "I'm so mad" but have no real idea why. We may have a sense of emotional lightness, but do not give the reason much thought.

A wise teacher from years past taught those he was discipling to pay especially close attention to emotions. He saw them as a way to answer the question, "Where am I with God?" He suggested we do a short review of the day, focusing on what he called consolation and desolation, lighter moments and darker moments. What brought joy? What did the opposite?

As you continue your inventory, think about what you are feeling. Anger? Sadness? Joy? Delight? Flat? Ecstatic? Down?  What are your dominant feelings this day? Sit in that emotion's space. As you work through them, ask yourself what your emotions tell tell you about your relationship with God. I suspect yesterday we answered that question with our heads. Now let's take it to the heart.

Today's Prayer Focus
Identify an emotion or two that you are feeling and pray from that space. That's what David did in the Psalms. When he was sad or felt defeated, he lamented. He shouted with joy. He smiled in satisfaction. Use that emotion as a starting point for your conversation with God. Talk to Him about what you feel (or maybe don't feel). As an example of raw emotional honesty, read Psalm 88. The psalmist is so transparent and vulnerable. He gives us an example of how to speak our deep pain to God.

Day Three

Yesterday we talked about noticing. Two other words come to mind: awareness and sensitivity. When fasting and praying, our spiritual sensitivities are intensified. We gain a heightened awareness God's presence. 

Awareness of God's presence increases self-awareness. Where are we in relation to Him? Who am I really when no one is looking? When Isaiah experienced a vision of heavenly worship in God's presence, his response was one of gut-wrenching self-awareness: 

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Awareness of God's presence wakes us up! We can no longer live just going though the motions. We realize that every moment matters. Every one. And so, a heart-check is in order. God is with me all the time. Jesus could appear at any moment. The Spirit has taken up residence in me. I am His house, His temple. How does this awareness impact my intentions and actions, my motives and motions?

Would you engage one simple question today? It is not a question that we will be able to answer in three minutes or less. In fact, we may find it lingering for the rest of the fast. Let it fill the thoughts of this day. Here it is: Where am I with God? Another way to ask it: How is my relationship with God? If possible, boil it down to a word or short phrase by tomorrow morning.

How are we going to get at the answer? By asking the Spirit to reveal it. Just like David did, ask:

Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, oh God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Let the Spirit reveal the answer to you. Let Him direct you. By tomorrow have a word or short phrase answering the question, "Where am I with God?"

 

Today's Prayer Focus
Pray Psalm 139 today. Slowly, thoughtfully, and sincerely, pray these inspired words from the pen of David. Use your paper Bible, or follow this link to the passage in three different versions.