🎯 GBF: The Fight of Fasting

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Primer Description

We’re starting our monthly Global Bridegroom Fast as a spiritual community. We are committed to this three-day fast as a way to join our voice with that of the Spirit of God in saying “Come quickly” to the Son.

In a world that champions the biggest, strongest, and fastest, this seems a little counter-intuitive. After all, who would willingly make themselves the smallest, weakest, and slowest? Here are three reasons why we do this.

Discussion

1. Even in a fasting and praying community, it’s good to intentionally re-center the corporate heart.
   There is beauty and befuddlement in 24/7 prayer. The beauty is mostly on the prayer side. The 24/7 portion of the equation means things can get a little scattered as the 4pm leader makes a decision that carries over to the 4am leader—yet those two are rarely in the same room. These three days are our family time before God. It makes for a certain viscosity that keeps the gears from clashing.
2. Jesus said to.
   OK, even in the Greek, it’s hard to make the case for the words “Global Bridegroom Fast”, but in His teaching, He often made the assumption that His followers would deny themselves as an expression of pursuing Him. It was part and parcel of Jesus’ perspective. We choose to formalize it into 3 days because we don’t naturally do what He expected. The format is to discipline our time, not impress God.
3. The Sermon on the Mount does not come naturally.
   We rarely embrace meekness on the first try. Humility is not our natural state. Fasting seems to put our thought processes on time-delay, allowing for what is within us to be revealed. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but it’s better to have it exposed during a 3 day period of voluntary weakness than in the pressure cooker of events to come at the end of the age. As Mike Bickle often says, “God, shock me now, don’t shock me later….”.

So here we are. The first Monday of the month. We make ourselves weak and wait.

Prayer Exercise 🏋️‍♂️⛹🏾‍♀️🏊🏽‍♂️

Whether fasting is completely new to you or it is something that you have embraced in your walk with the LORD, we encourage everyone to simply start with dialoguing with Jesus about fasting (i.e. prayer). Before you just simply decide "how" or "what" you will fast, take some time and read and pray through the story of fasting in Matt 9:14-17 (see also Luke 5:33-38). More important than fasting itself is first connecting to the heart of Jesus in it, and being drawn by desire for Jesus into an expression of fasting.

For those of you who have a history of eating disorders, we encourage you to seek our medical supervision in such a case and mention this to your coach. We do not want a true and real spiritual hunger for God to inadvertently position you before old feelings and patterns of behavior that could be harmful.

Prayer Report 📈

 📌 Just a reminder to complete your Prayer Report in Schoology before Saturday night.

See you at the altar 🔥

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