Daniel Fast

I encourage you to start 2013 with a Daniel Fast - take a day or two or 21 days to fast and pray to seek God's blessing in your life and family.

Daniel 1:11-17

¹¹ Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,¹² “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. ¹³ Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” ¹⁴ So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

¹⁵ At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. ¹⁶ So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

¹⁷ To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

Things to eat on a Daniel Fast: fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, vegetable oils, water, herbs and spices. 

Foods to avoid: meat, dairy, sweeteners, leaven breads & yeast, refined and processed foods, deep fried foods, solid fats, carbonated and caffeine beverages.

Develop a hunger for Spiritual food by changing your eating habits and through prayer. 

Hungry

Jesus said during the sermon on the mount: (Matthew 5:6) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

I often wonder why I have days when I can't wait to spend time with God and then there are days when it seems like it is work to spend time with God?  Why is my hunger level for God sometime really high and sometimes not so high?  I use to worry about it and want to always be on that mountain top!  Trying to do more and more to get the feeling I was wanting from God.  But I think I am learning that God is always there even when I don't feel like spending time with Him.  He is always communicating with me, even when I am not listening.  He is always consistent even when it feels like He is a million miles away.  I believe sometimes when God feels distant He is trying to help me develop more of a hunger for Him and His presence in my life!  

I want to encourage you to spend some time this month fasting and praying that God would help you to STAY HUNGRY for God's Holy Presence in your life.  Fasting is such a great way to stay HUNGRY spiritually.  

The Daniel Fast is a great way to get started fasting.  It is healthy both physically and spiritually.  The basic idea is to eat fruits, vegetables and drink water for a period of time.  This change of habit will make you keenly aware of God's presence and voice in your life.  

Stay Hungry, 
Pastor Dale 

Look at the Heart

This Christmas season it is hard not to think of how families of recent violence will be able to celebrate Christ coming to the world, when their lives have been so impacted by violence.  Talk about God must bring very mixed emotions in these days.  

It seems like the talk has turned toward gun control very quickly.  Honestly, I don't have a lot of use for guns personally.  I believe this is not where Christians should be focusing our attention.  It is political and you will definitely find people's opinions when you talk about it, but it misses the point. The problem is not gun control, but rather the hearts of people.  Paul described people with heart issues this way:  Romans 1:28-31 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.  Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. ³⁰ They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents.  They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 

Similarly, I believe the talk about our nation leaving God out of our culture is not the issue we need to talk about.  God tried to develop a Godly nation out of Israel and we can read about that in the Old Testament.  Now God is developing a spiritual Kingdom called the Body of Christ.  We don't need the United State of America to be a Christian Nation, we need the Body of Christ to rise up and be the influence on the world that makes a difference.  Want to change the world?  Change your heart by following Christ completely!  

Dreams and Visions

God is trying to restore in me and belief in His ability to communicate to me and others through dreams and visions.  I think I have thought that vision and dreams where so illogical, I just didn't have a place to put them in my well designed and organized theology.  There was just too much room for false information and false interpretation.
But the reality is that the Christmas story is so reliant on Joseph's dream and realization that he must keep going with his relationship with Mary.  God communicated with Joseph something that was so illogical and so  against the normal way of thinking.  And the Matthew records that Joseph got up and was obedient to what he was told in his dream.
The reality is that Christmas and God are full of mystery!  You can't just logically explain the incarnation. No matter what words you use and how detailed the explanation that Jesus was fully God and fully man; it is still a mystery!
I wonder sometimes how much of God's communication I miss because I fail to take into account my dreams and the reality that God may be trying to communicate with me through them.

No Tolerance for Gossip

Proverbs 26:20 Fire goes out without wood,
    and quarrels disappear when gossip stops.

I heard Dave Ramsey talk about leadership last week and he said that one "Unity Killer" in every organization was gossip.  So he works hard to develop a no tolerance for gossip mentality at his organization.  He is willing and often has to fire people because of gossip.  

Proverbs reminds us of the wisdom of this reality in that when we can take away gossip from an organization we will reduce quarrels.  Argument and disagreements are so many times caused by gossip.  

What does gossip look like in the church?  Telling someone that they really need to pray about someone and sharing a request that you didn't have the right to share.  We all believe in the power of prayer, but hopefully we can learn to do a better job of not sharing private information in the name of prayer. 

Complaining to the wrong person:  how often when we have an issue with something at church we start complaining, but we start complaining to the wrong person.  Can you believe what the teacher said today in our small group?  One of the most frustrating things about being a pastor today is that so few people are actually willing to come and sit down and talk to me if there is an issue with me.  I always seem to hear it from someone else.  Sometimes our desire to be in the "KNOW" causes us to cultivate gossip instead of fight against it.  

We need to all work diligently at making the church a place of no tolerance for gossip.  Practice saying things like, "I'm glad you trust in me enough to share this, but you really need to talk to ______________."  "You know, we just don't talk like that here!"  

Reason #15

I left the church because one day, they put signs out in the church lawn that said “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman: Vote Yes on Prop 1,” and I knew the moment I saw them that I never wanted to come back. 

Jesus had an incredible way of dealing with people so that he communicated that he loved and cared for people - then he dealt with the sin issues of their lives.  Jesus was only harsh with the religious leaders of the day who claimed to know God.  Everyone else Jesus healed, fed, loved and cared for before he confronted their sin.  He was not afraid to say, "Now go and sin no more!"  Jesus loved people too much to not let them know God had a better plan for their lives then to continue to live in their sinful ways.  

I believe the churches problem with trying to change our culture  by political action is that we put the confrontation in front of the love and compassion.  It is difficult to propose a law that promotes Biblical principles on marriage without it communicating to a group of people that we don't value you or care about you.  I believe this is just a short cut mentality.  God calls us to invest in people in need that live and work around us.  When we do this we will find people in need of friendship and love.  As we meet the needs of people around us, God will open opportunities for us to speak truth in a loving way to people - when they are ready to hear!  Now that is hard work. It may take us years to develop a trusting relationship and then it may take a few more years before that person is ready to hear.  We have to not only invest in people on a consistent basis, but then we must be willing to wait until the Holy Spirit tells us to speak.  No wonder we would just rather try and pass a law that communicates God's truth.  

Follow Jesus' example!  Don't get caught up in the political shortcuts!  Do the hard things!  God will help us and reward our efforts!  It is God's Kingdom that should be our priority and therefore we need to do things God's way! 

Reason #9

I left the church because I felt like I was the only one troubled by stories of violence and misogyny and genocide found in the Bible, and I was tired of people telling me not to worry about it because “God’s ways are higher than our ways.”

The Bible is such an important faith issue in our journey with Jesus.  It is full of wonder, mystery, conflict and troubling stories.  It is no wonder that for some it is easier to just be selective about what parts of the Bible they want to accept and which parts they can just ignore.  

We have to avoid simple answers to complicated questions.  There are no simple answers to why God would ask the Jewish people to destroy and kill the women, children, and animals of a city they were fighting against. There are some complicated explanations that in the end may not satisfy the heart, but at least they show that we care enough to think through our faith instead of just accepting without processing the deeper questions.  Life is complicated and messy.  The Bible is complicated and messy.  Our spiritual journey with God is complicated and messy!  The good thing about this coming generation of young people - they can handle things being unresolved much better than being simplified.  

We have to quit ignoring the questions and hoping they will go away.  People are hungry for God or at least hungry for something beyond themselves. The church must step up to the conversation with people in a loving and compassionate way.  Figure out how to be people of conversation instead of lecture.  Figure out how to listen to the questions that are being asked so we can join in the dialogue that will point people to the love of Jesus.  

We must still hold on to the truth of the Good News of Jesus!  In the same breath, we must be able to come down from our holy mountain and make the Good News flesh.  Just like Jesus did.