Remember the Game!

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. 

Isaiah 58:6–9 

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
      and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
      and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
      and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
      and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
      and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
      and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
      you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

As we come to the close of this short season of reflection on prayer and fasting we come to the profound text of Isaiah 58. Honestly, the best thing we could do today would be to slow down our reading speed to about half time, read every word out loud, and simply feast on the Word of God. 

Here Isaiah takes a massive swing of the axe at the tree of dead religion—more specifically, he decries what I have called fasting (and prayer) as an adventure in missing the point. Take a look at the prior verses:

For day after day they seek me out;
      they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
      and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
      and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
      ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
      and you have not noticed?’ (vv.2–3)

You may remember my analogy early in the series where I talked about the bat and the ball and how we so easily get our eyes off the ball of Jesus and his kingdom and onto the bat of prayer and fasting and all the ways of religious practice. I think Isaiah’s big point to Israel (and by proxy to us) is this: Remember the game! 

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
      and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
      and break every yoke?

Remember the game! 

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
      and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
      and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Fasting and prayer are not the game. God’s in-breaking kingdom is the game! This is fasting and prayer—not as the motions of religious practices but as the movement of the authorized, empowered, agents of Jesus Messiah. This is fasting and prayer as the seamless movement from sanctuary to streets which becomes the transformation of the streets into sanctuaries. Remember the game! Isn’t that exactly what he is saying here?

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
      and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
      Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. (v. 12)

Don’t misinterpret the point though. Isaiah is not saying to do mission work instead of fasting and prayer. No, he is saying if you are all about fasting and prayer and these things of the kingdom of God are not beginning to break forth in your midst then you are doing it wrong. You are missing the point. You have created an alternative game—called dead religion. You are losing the real game. Further, there is a way of being all about the mission work that is disconnected from the presence of God. The game is not us praying and fasting as an act of religious obedience or as a function of delegation to God. Nor is the game God expecting us to go out and do it ourselves as good citizens. Here’s the playbook of God’s kingdom and his righteousness:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Eph. 3:20–21, bold is my emphasis)

Remember the game! It is the great story of the victory of light defeating darkness, of life defeating death, of wholeness defeating brokenness, and on the transformational movement of the kingdom of Jesus goes. And you, my friend, are a player. It’s why every day, at the end of the podcast recording of the Wake-Up Call I say these words:

I’ll see you on the field! 

THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION

Lord Jesus, teach us to fast and pray that we might become real players in the real game, which is not a game but a matter of life and death. As a means 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 see in Isaiah’s celebrated text today? Are you seeing the seamless connection between sanctuary and streets? Are you grasping how fasting and prayer blur the lines between worship and mission? Are you seeing the deep wisdom in Ephesians 3:20–21? 

THE HYMN

Today we will sing the hymn, “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations.” It is hymn 458 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com

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