40 Days of Prayer and Fasting
May 31, 2009
Tomorrow, June 1, 2009, will mark the beginning of 40 days of prayer and fasting for us as we seek together to discern God’s hope for our church’s future. This is not to be an exercise of self-righteousness, nor is it to provide anyone with either pride or shame. It is simply to be an intentional 40 days of directed prayer and meditation that will serve as a unifying spiritual foundation for us as we begin to prepare a new strategic plan for our congregation later this summer and fall.
I have issued this call to prayer and fasting for us because I believe that we need to employ the added discipline of fasting to our prayer lives for this period so that we can achieve greater spiritual focus, and higher spiritual ends. This call to prayer and fasting is simple and straight forward. It is a call for each of us to fast (that is not eat) for one meal per-day for 40 days, and to use the time that we would have used in preparing, eating and cleaning-up from the meal for prayer and meditation. Use this time to pray for your own spiritual needs, but also focus on what is God’s hope for our church’s future each day.
Don’t make this into some legalistic mine-field. Fasting is most significant when you set the parameters of your fast for yourself. Some of you have to eat regular meals because of health issues. You can fast in some other way such as giving up watching the news or some favorite show each day. The fast will not only afford you the time to devote to prayer and meditation, but it will also provide internal calls to prayer as you feel hunger pangs. Remember Christ’s teachings on fasting from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:16-18), and your fasting will produce spiritual fruit in your life and in our community.
I am providing for you 40 passages of scripture which can be found under “Upcoming Events”, one for each day, as well as a space to record a one sentence blog (personal reflection) for each. These passages cover the entire span of the biblical record of Judeo-Christianity from the call of Abram to the seven churches of the apocalypse. Each one has something to say about either following divine leading or living in spiritual community. It is my hope that each of us will read and meditate on one scripture a day for these 40 days and that as we sojourn through the history of God’s leading humanity to live out divine hope, that we will discern together what is God’s hope for us.
I do ask that you pray for me during these days as I seek to be the best pastoral leader that I can be. Know that I am praying for each of you individually, and for our church family during these days.
We will have a community Break-fast celebration on Saturday July 11th at the church. This will be a very special morning of singing, praying, and sharing together from our individual experiences in prayer and fasting, and will be the beginning of our formulating a spiritually driven strategic plan for our church. On Sunday July 12th, we will have an altar call for everyone to come to the altar and rededicate themselves to the Lord, and to the church.
It is indeed an exciting spiritual journey that we are undertaking, may the Spirit of the Lord direct our every step.
God’s servant,
Robert H. Walker, Jr., Senior Pastor
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