WHY I FAST

TODAY’S NOTES

How you begin a year

has a lot to do

with how you finish a year!

 

Let’s launch 2019

from the healthiest position possible.

 

We are coming out of the gates with…

  • Our hearts on fire

  • Our emotions being healthy

  • Our vision being clear

  • Our faith being charged

We want to start the year from a position of …

  • Our greatest place of contentment and peace

  • Our greatest attunement to spiritual things

  • Our greatest surge of joy and hope 

Every year we begin the year at LifePointe with a 21-day spiritual fast.

  • For clarity, this fast is about setting ourselves apart to seek God.

  • It is NOT focused on who can go severe food deprivation. Everyone can tailor their food needs to their own desires.

  • We have created an entire system that ANYONE can engage, that will create radical advancement in their hearts experience with God.

In 2019 we want our spiritual lives to be at the priority, the core and center of our existence. We want to be “seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” to set the tone for everything else that is going to happen in our year.

PERSONAL BENEFITS OF FASTING

Every year during the fast I get…

  • Enlightenment

  • Clarity

  • Insight

  • Overwhelming connection with God

  • Confidence

  • Cleansing of toxins (emotionally and physically)

  • Fortitude to do what I need to do the rest of the year

  • Power

  • Attunement to divine intellect

  • In a moment God can fix things you couldn’t manage in a lifetime

 

AUTHENTIC SELF – PROTECTED/PROJECTED SELF

COLOSSIANS 3:9-10 NIV Do not lie (project falsehood) to each other, since you have taken off your OLD SELF with its practices 10 and have put on the NEW SELF, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

 

Our journey is to grow

from the false Self

toward the wholeness of the true Self.

 

1 PETER 1:22 NKJV (Peter said) Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in SINCERE (unfeigned, undisguised, without hypocrisy) love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart…

Throughout history, from Adam to each one of us today, we have used every means to color our projections, to protect ourselves. We use…

  • Money

  • Fame

  • Success

  • Power

  • Attraction

  • Busy-ness

  • Avoidance

  • Confrontation

  • Shutting Down

…to protect ourselves. And the world gets a spun up version of ourselves, a version that we know isn’t even true. So the world gets a reduced, sterilized, filtered and hidden version of the divine greatness of God’s grace inside of us. We rob our generation from the joy that is our AUTHENTIC SELF.

 

SO WHY DO I FAST?

JOEL 2:12-13 AMP Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and KEEP ON COMING to Me with ALL YOUR HEART, with FASTING, with weeping, and with mourning [UNTIL EVERY HINDRANCE IS REMOVED and the broken fellowship is restored].

So why do I fast? Why do I set aside focused intensity with God, with exploring the recesses of my heart, with seeking clarity – which is so much more than just not eating food?

I fast because I find that fasting helps me discover - without striving, without some complex processing – it’s almost as though it surprises me every year – that I am never closer to my TRUE SELF – I’m never a better image bearer of the divine image and likeness of God - THAN WHEN I FAST LIKE THIS. 

  • It is being connected with God everyday

  • It is being in community with a bunch of people doing it with me

  • It is stripping off the emotional toxins

  • It is shutting down all the voices from media in my life – no TV, social media goes dark, no news, youtubes, escaping into entertainment

  • It is replenishing my heart with layers of intimacy

What I notice is that I don’t get snagging goobers anymore. All the clutter and the junk that weights down my mind and heart is cleansed. And I’m not TRYING to be my AUTHENTIC SELF, it is simply the spiritual fast components have stripped all the masks, walls, pretenses off.

It is simply…

  • 21-Days of Worship

  • 21-Days of Prayer

  • 21-Days of Encouragement

  • 21-Days of Devotions

  • 21-Days of Revival Type Meetings

  • 21-Days of washing in the water of God’s Word

  • 21-Days of intentionally opening my heart in genuine humility

  • 21-Days of pressing into places my restless flesh has avoided

  • 21-Days of the Holy Spirit’s anointing drawing and affirming me

  • 21-Days of an Awakening 

…and at the end of 21-Days I find that at the end of it…

  • I am so content

  • I am so peaceful

  • I am so clear

  • I am so renewed

  • I am so connected

  • I am so seen and known

  • I am so happy

  • I am so pleased to be me – I’m not trying to be something else 

There is a contentment that words cannot describe. There is a fulfillment that I am experiencing that doesn’t happen through achievement. It happens in this 21-Days of ever growing momentum with my God, and with my friends – with this Jesus who is REAL and has REDEEMED me with power.

 

CALL TO ACTION - POINTE.INFO/FAST

GUIDES

  • What is fasting?

  • Why fast?

  • What are you fasting?

  • How intense?

  • How do i lead at home?

  • Foods & recipes

  • Special advice

RESOURCES

  • Fasting calendars

  • Daily devotionals

  • Workshop courses

  • And more!

 

EVENTS

  • Man Up Weekend (Jan 4-5)

  • Red Ink Revival (Jan 11-13)

  • Sunday Night Firepit (Jan 6)

  • Wednesdays Awakenings

  • Friday Prayer/Worship (Jan 18)

  • Start Track Renewal Event (Jan 20)

Patrick NorrisComment