Also, be prepared to discuss how you keep track of prayer requests. Review the Biblical doctrine of fasting and describe your own practice of it.
Key passages:
Lord's Prayer -- Matt 6:5-15
Fasting -- Matt 6:16-18; Mark 2:18-22; Acts 13:1-3; 14:21-23
Resource link: http://www.billbright.com/howtofast/index.html
In addition to your study this week, your assignment includes setting aside a time to fast. I don't want anyone to lose their reward, but I do want us to discuss our experience of fasting.
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Here is today's summary:
We looked at the Lord's Prayer in Matt 6 line by line. We see Jesus emphasis on fuocussing on the father and acknowledging His glory. We talked about "thy Kingdom come" and how that relates to both the rule of God increasing in us, as well as the growth of the kingdom by new people coming to know Him. We want to see continual growth in God's rule in this world, as we wait for it to come in it's final form when Jesus comes back. We discussed praying for God's provision and Prov. 30:8-9 was mentioned as a good guideline for this. We can easily be led astray on our desire for MORE than our daily provisions. We then spent time talking about hte need for forgiveness to be a mark of our walks with God -- whether people ask for it or not. Finally, we discussed the need to be asking God to intervene to help us kill the sin in our lives. We noted how we are reluctant to ask God to remove temptation because we often enjoy it more than we like to admit.
Our discussion on tracking prayer focussed on the balance between structure and form on one hand, with intimacy and relationship on the other. We generally seemed to agree that lists and journals can be useful tools to help us focus on things we need to pray for consistently and can provide important "spiritual markers" to see how God is working. However, it also seems that we all are praying throughout the day about things as the Spirit or circumstances places them before us.
As for fasting, it seemed that this was somthing that we all can benefit from. Most of us had at least some experience with it, although there is room to make it a bigger part of our lives. We came up with a list of reasons to fast which included being humbled and broken before God, health, mourning over sin or loss in life, crisis response, to petition for mercy, as preparation for service or for a calling, and most importantly, to seek God's face.
One thought I had that did not get brought up this morning is that there is not a clear description of how often to fast or for how long. This is not something that necessarily fits in a form very well. Outside of class, one guy mentioned that fasting seems to be more of a thing we are led to do by the Spirit, rather than something we do on a regular basis. I agree in one sense, but I want to point out that this class is about being or becoming qualified as an overseer or elder. As we move towards church leadership, making fasting a regular part of our spiritual disciplines is a good idea. As we look to what the Bible says about leadership qualifications, we should be continually broken down in realizing how inadequate we really are for the job. As we fast as a part of seeking God's face, we can begin to see how really awful the remaining sin is in our lives and begin to take steps to earnestly seek God's help in keeping us from temptation and delivering us from evil.
I really hope some of you will post on your thoughts on this in the aftermath of class....
I have a devotional reading from Truth for Life that expands on the 'daily bread'.
http://www.truthforlife.org/growth.php?date=02-14&version=morning
Praise Him for meeting our needs daily!
Fasting is something I think ought to be done whether you feel led to or not with the motive of seeking Him and humbling one's self. That being said, I need to set apart time to do so myself.
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