Day4: Adventure Awaits

I began this week at first not really sure about how this week of prayer and fasting was going to play out, but with some excitement just at the thought of doing something different – out of the ordinary. First day and I’m immediately hit with fear. Wait a second – I’m not sure how I feel about ‘out of the ordinary.’ Ordinary happens to be working out just fine for me right now. It could take me places I really wasn’t willing to go. Could be scary, could be painful.
And then the very next time I devoted some time to talk with God about it, I found multiple Bible passages that spoke right to me. Things I already ‘knew,’ but in the moment I felt them. Although nothing had changed, simply taking the time to express my fears and then read the living and active Truth of God was able to elevate my perspective on things – bring it slightly higher than the self-absorbed depression of this worldly view.

Keith and I decided to take our fasting to a place that was a little more unfamiliar and difficult for us. We decided to fast from food for the remainder of the week. Taking another step out of the bounds of ordinary. I honestly wasn’t really sure what this was going to do, other than make me hungry and irritable. But I wanted to give it a shot. Believers kept on doing it all through-out the Bible so I figure there’s a reason even if I’m not quite sure I understand it correctly. Some reasons I thought of included taking out the distraction of eating in the sense that you can use that time to pray, or that the strong and constant hunger pains will remind you that you are dedicating your week to prayer. Perhaps just the act of disciplining yourself, strengthens your discipline muscles which are essential to any believer’s life.

At first I think I focused more on trying to distract myself from hunger, than on praying. I set aside time to pray and I shot little prayer darts to heaven when I felt those hunger pains reminding me to. But I was pretty sure that since I spent the majority of the day doing whatever I could to avoid thinking about food, and didn’t spend the whole day on my knees as I envision the Bible characters did – that there might not be much of a point to it.

Day 2 is looking a little different. I woke up with some trepidation at facing another long hungry day, but I also had a little bit of this strange feeling that felt entirely out of place with the stomach growls. Fun. As Keith and I got out of bed and laughingly grumbled about what a hard day it was going to be, I realized it was fun to be doing this together. I thought about how our whole church community is going through this week together. We are individually fasting in our unique ways and praying often on our own, but we are all taking this same week to pointedly come before God and show our intentionality in seeking His will for ourselves, each-other, our world, our city, our church, our leaders. It’s kind-of fun.

This morning Janice and I got together to discuss a book we’re going through. Captivating , by John and Stasi Eldredge. Yeah, it’s a touchy feely book and I’m kind-of embarrassed to admit it, but ironically that disownment of the seemingly derogatory traits of femininity is partly what the book is about. Did I just make it sound sillier? Well it’s not. We read three chapters and it pretty much has me pegged. One of the things it discusses is the desire for adventure. I thought through my life and didn’t really view anything as movie or book worthy adventure. Then this afternoon I sat down to pray. I was praying for Eric and Dejah who are moving to Tijuana to work with Outside the Bowl. I specifically was thinking of Dejah and how she was dealing with some fears of anything happening to their newborn Malena on account of them moving there. As a mother I can relate to the depths of those feelings. Something happening to my children is my greatest fear. But what Eric and Dejah are doing sounds so exciting. They are following where the Holy Spirit is leading them, regardless of their fears. Then it hit me. They’re on an adventure.
I began to visualize myself in a pathway. A little ways down the pathway opened up, as though in a scene from a Narnia book going through the closet into a beautiful, unknown land. Adventure. We all long for adventure, right? Well adventure entails danger. It entails risk. It entails fear. But in our story where the devil is the enemy – we already know we will conquer. We know God will give us the strength to be the heroes of our story whatever hardships befall us. My family is not mine to risk – they belong to God. They are under His protection and His will for their lives. My responsibility is me. Is God calling me to something bigger? To be a part of an adventure full of risk, danger, excitement, and the promise of eternal victory?
God promises that when we seek him with all our hearts, we will find Him. (Jer. 29:13.) It is amazing to hear God. To feel His comfort, to realize His truth. Why is it I seek Him so rarely?