PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
2 Peter 1:3–4
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
CONSIDER THIS
Let’s remember yet again our working definition of prayer and fasting:
Prayer and fasting is the lifelong process of becoming a peculiar kind of person (i.e., a righteous person) who learns to exercise a particular kind of power (i.e., the supernatural love of God) for the good of the world and the glory of God.
I like how Peter describes such a life as “participating in the divine nature.” The English Standard Version of the Bible translates it as being “partakers of the divine nature.” The Greek term behind the translation is koinonos. You may recognize the connection to koinonia. It means fellowship. It is a word the New Testament uses to describe the presence and effect of the Holy Spirit in a human community. Fasting is one of the primary means of living and moving and having our being in this fellowship. Remember again Jesus’s word about how his way of fasting differed from the Pharisees and the disciples of John.
Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.” (Luke 5:34–35)
Fasting is about feasting on friendship with Jesus through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and all this leads to as his agent in the world. Remember again Jesus’s word about his food.
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” . . .
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. (John 4:32, 34)
A few years back I found myself at Jacob’s Well with Jesus and his disciples. Upon hearing these words again I said to him, “Jesus, I don’t know about this food either. I want to know about this food.” I want to go to the place where my food is to do the will of God. I want to come to this place of appetite displacement; where my experience of doing the will of God displaces my hunger for food. I want to learn to do the will of God in the way of God such that it actually nourishes my physical body.
Sure, I enjoy food, but I don’t revolve my life around food like I did before. I used to think fasting was about changing my relationship with food. I am learning that fasting—in what I believe is the way of Jesus and the friends of the bridegroom—is about changing my relationship with hunger. I am finding hunger is changing my relationship with God. Fasting in this way means carrying hunger in love for Jesus and those he loves. It means befriending hunger. I have primarily understood hunger as a problem to be solved; as a craving to be satiated. I am coming to understand hunger as the gifted path to the deeper presence of Jesus; as the activation of the new wineskin, the awakening of the temple of the human body, the primary sanctuary of the Holy Spirit—the new wine of the kingdom.
Here’s what else I’m learning. Our human bodies were not made to be sated with food. They were meant to be sustained by food. Because of my anemic practice of fasting, I had a wrong understanding of feasting. Feasting is a biblical dimension of Sabbath keeping. It is one day a week in which we can live to eat. Fasting is the way of life for the other six days when we eat to live. Because my prior practice of fasting was underdeveloped, my practice of feasting was an expression of overindulgence. An almost constant focus during the six days was what or where am I going to eat next. Any notion of a feast became about eating more than usual.
The human body and particularly what the Bible calls our “inmost being” is a finely tuned instrument designed to commune with and carry the very presence of God, to bear witness to the holy love of God which becomes manifest through demonstrations of his power in the manifold expressions of his inbreaking kingdom. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This prayer, when uttered in the context of a fasted lifestyle, ever increasingly opens the way to the supernatural life of a human being who is fully participating in the divine nature.
THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION
Lord Jesus, teach us to pray and fast and so fellowship with you as participants and partakers of your very nature—which is righteousness itself. To that end, . . .
I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness.
I receive your love and release my selfishness.
Come, Holy Spirit, transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.
THE QUESTION
What do you make of this notion of being a participant or partaker in the very nature of God? Are you seeing the fasting connection here? Are you grasping how hunger can increase attunement to the presence of God?
THE HYMN
Today we will sing the hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus.” It is hymn 113 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com
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3 Responses
Without ongoing awareness of and attunement to the presence of “Christ in you,” Christians live as if Jesus is located some other place. That’s why we feel like we need another authority figure to instruct us and a religious structure to organize us. We become dependent on a weekly meeting and mostly ignore that Jesus is alive and available to lead, empower, and comfort us day and night.
Awake o sleeper.
Jesus is a Keeper.
Keep Him active
In your heart.
Let Him keep you
Enthralled by
His presence.
That’s the essence
Of walking by faith.
Christians love
To organize,
Systematize,
Institutionalize,
And formalize
The faith.
If we would realize
That Jesus is alive,
We could internalize
His presence
And revitalize
Our heart.
“Christ in you,
The hope of glory.”
Be Spirit-led.
Let Jesus be
Your living Head
And direct you
In all you do.
Fasting can help you
Hunger and thirst
For more of
The glorious presence
Of Christ in you.
I understand that we “earthlings “, literally made from the dust of the earth, are clay vessels. As such, we can either be filled with the ways of this broken creation or the ways of God, the very image of the Creator. For any container to be refilled, it must first be emptied. A life of consistent prayer and fasting facilitates this process. Then, as Paul once wrote, “ I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives within me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
“On earth as it is in heaven.”
All of Jesus’ commandments, parables, teachings, and disciples’ writings are for reproof, for corrections, and for instruction in righteousness so that we may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work. (See 2 Timothy 3:16).
The process of competition.
That would be Christ in us.
Fully.
Like Jesus, we shouldn’t be of the world (John 17:15-16).
We should be and display “heaven on earth.”
Staying 💪’n Christ
Ephesians 6:10
Finally, stay strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.