Fast and Pray.
My home church is doing a Daniel’s fast for twenty one days to really set ourselves up for an incredible year with God. I’ve participated for about five years now. Every year I’ve kind of just been open to allowing God to direct me to whatever is going to happen that year. This year He has already revealed that I’m going on The World Race. A year that will definitely be a milestone in my life and will need all the prayer and fasting leading up to departure. At the first service of the year for our college ministry we focused in on a specific prayer that we want to fast for during this time. I would like to share that with you all reading.
My prayer is that when I leave for the World Race I am leaving with no regrets going into it.
I don’t want to quit my job and leave my last day wishing that I had spent a lot more time being a light to my coworkers who are not saved. I may be the only Jesus that they ever see. When I come back it’s one of things I won’t have when I get back. I decided to share with my coworkers that I’m fasting just to keep myself more accountable. I was wildly shocked to find out that my boss wanted to fast with me for 21 days. She’s going to fast sweets and sodas. She told me it’s because she said she could really use God to answer a couple of prayers in her life. This blew me away because that was the last thing I was expecting. It’s awesome to see God to semi answer this prayer already. Also a security guard is doing the Daniel’s fast for the first time and asked me about food choices. As we were talking my coworker who is Jehovah Witness asked us about the fast and we shared scripture with him about where it comes from. He seemed very open to it which is unusual because he usually shuts himself out from conversations like that. My workplace has over 600 employees and a lot of them are so claimed atheists but I’m believing for Christians I didn’t know about to rise in the workplace and bring a shift of God with prayer and fasting. It’s not too late for me to make difference there before I leave there in four months.
I don’t want to wish I spent more time with my family or invited them to church more. Being the only saved one in my family has been such a battle in my prayer life. All I want to see is all my family members in heaven with me. My grandmother was the only one that I felt had a deep connection with God. Every morning and every night she would do devotions and have prayer in Spanish. I didn’t really correlate that till now that every night I would go in her room during that time she was probably praying a prayer over me. I was the closest to her of all my cousins and her passing took a great toll on me. If she was here I know she would smile to see her prayers come into fruition with where I’m at now. Every time I get rejected when I invite my family to church I hits harder than anything and I feel my fire beginning to diminish. So I plan on reigniting that fire to burn brighter to have a passion to see my family saved. To share the Gospel with them, spend more quality time them, and love on them more. I know that my prayers can and will be answered. Maybe not right now or even before I leave but I didn’t get saved until after my grandmother left. If you think about it the only reason you’re saved is because someone once prayed for you.
I don’t want to leave wishing I had made a bigger impact on my friend’s lives. My friends are some of the people that know more of me than anyone else. Some of the greatest memories I have been with some of them and a lot of time I do life with on a daily basis. They the ones I turn to in a moment’s notice, who I look to get a good laugh, and choose to share the most intimate moments of my life knowing they’ll still love me the same way. It’s an amazing group and support system that I utilize to get me through my most troubling days. Some of them I had the pleasure to disciple and be there for when they took new leaps of faith with God. I also want to be able to challenge them to take even bigger leaps and keep them accountable to the call of God over their life with the time I have left. One of my greatest joys in life is to support my friends with their callings and to miss out on a year of that already kills me. I also don’t want to stop myself from forming new relationships in fear of not being there for them because I’m leaving. I know that God will take care of them and open the door to more amazing accountable friendships with other brothers and sisters in Christ. I just have a mentality that I need to break that I can’t be there for everyone all the time. Going on this race is seriously going to do that. Even the people I’ll be going on the race with and doing life with every day, at some point my team will separated after months and I’ll be a part of entirely new group of people. Making friends has never been an issue once I found God. He’s developed me in areas that have made me bolder to befriend others. I’m realizing that leaving friend’s is a lot harder than making friend’s.
Overall I need to remain present for the remaining months I’m here at home. I can’t be two places at once. As much as the idea of traveling and encountering new cultures and ways of living seems so exhilarating it will be here sooner than I know it. The minute I have that day where thing’s won’t be exactly how I envisioned it I’ll miss my family, I’ll miss my friends, and I’ll miss home. Once the thought of home leaks in I know everything I did before I left will start reminiscing into my mind. I don’t want those thoughts to be regrets.
18-20 After looking at the way things are on this earth, here’s what I’ve decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that’s about it. That’s the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work. It’s God’s gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It’s useless to brood over how long we might live.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 MSG
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