Preparation for Fasting - Stand Alone

Good morning.

It's me again.

How are you doing?

Y'all ready?

When you came in, you should have received uh one of our devotional books.

And you're gonna actually need this, and you're gonna need a pen.

I actually have an assignment for you today.

So today is not exactly church as usual.

So you need to be ready, okay?

We say here, participation is better than observation.

And ushers, let's make sure we get the balcony, cover the balcony too.

It's good to see you guys.

11 o'clock seems a little strange, but I guess we'll get used to it.

Praise the Lord.

Uh we are excited.

Uh, as you saw in the video, we are launching in North Midland uh in September.

Uh we are starting services at uh Lone Star Elementary.

Pastor Obed and his team will do a couple of preview services leading up to that time.

Some of y'all may or may or may remember that um we have land on Occidental that we own.

So the vision for that is to start in Lone Star Elementary and then grow into uh the need where we'll eventually build a building and have a space on Occidental right there among all those new homes.

So we're excited what God is doing.

But none of this really would be possible without uh all of us, everybody who says Mid-Cities is our home, giving to my city, my church.

A lot of you all last November, you know, gave into that and had blessed that and taken a little time to work all this out.

But thank you for your gift, or maybe you made a commitment that you're still fulfilling.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for your faithfulness and fulfilling your My City, My Church commitment, because that's the only way uh we're able to expand into North Midland.

And again, like I said, they'll do a service maybe at the end of August, early in September, and then they're launching, I think that date was the September 13th?

Is that what it said?

Y'all weren't paying attention.

All right, so anyway, uh, so I am super excited about that.

And today, like I said, we really just want to set up our week of prayer and fasting.

The most important thing you can do is really make a decision today that I'm gonna engage in some way.

Amen.

I was actually talking to my friend Matthew out in the lobby, uh, and Matthew was like, I was thinking about him, and I was thinking about him because one year ago, uh, Matthew was like that woman at the uh with the issue.

Woman that was sick for 12 years and needed a, was desperate and needed a touch from Jesus.

And he came and he participated uh in this week of prayer and fasting.

And now it's amazing to see their family plugged into church, serving, doing such an amazing job.

And I would just say, maybe you're in here like Matthew.

Matthew actually didn't even know us in the week of prayer and fasting.

He goes, You guys are a little crazy, but I need crazy right now because I'm desperate.

And so maybe you're here and you know you haven't known us that well, you're newer.

I would just encourage you to find a way to engage in this week.

And if you're not new, if you're an OG, then don't give yourself an exception this week.

So we want to dive in and talk about that.

Psalm 34 says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.

And the way I heard these kids tell testimonies, these students, and all of our leaders, uh, we took 26, most of them from here, and about nine from our sister church in Memphis, Tennessee, Kingdom Church.

Uh so we were all there together, and I really felt like we got the chance to taste and see that the Lord is good.

It might have been the suborde mexicana, the flavor of Mexico, but it was amazing.

It was, it was, it was, it was such a blessing.

It was truly was impresionante.

It was amazing.

And so uh uh the idea that the Lord says, taste and see, or the Bible says, taste and see that the Lord is good.

The big idea is that God tastes better than anything else we can taste from the world.

You know, we try to venture out and think, man, if I have business success, that'll be good.

But how many know God tastes better than business success?

If we, you know, sometimes it's approval.

Like if we can just get the approval of the people that matter most, you know, whoever it is mattered the most to us, then that would be good.

But how many know God tastes better than the approval of man?

Amen.

I got one amen.

Thank you for that.

Whoever that was, maybe somebody up in the balcony.

Guys, it is better than a brisket that's been on the smoker.

It is, Garrett, it's better than a brisket that's been on the smoker since 4 a.m.

It is incredible.

God tastes better than anything that the world has to offer.

Maybe you're here today and you said, you know what, I've never really experienced that.

Well, there's two ways, two reasons, maybe.

And the first one is that you just don't know God.

You haven't met him, you haven't encountered him, you haven't had a defining moment with Jesus.

If you haven't done that, you could operate in religious circles, you could go to church, but you never really taste and see that the Lord is good.

You've never felt his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness and his love.

So maybe you just you haven't tasted because you don't know God.

The second one is this, and this is all of us probably, or more of us in this room, and including me.

You don't always realize that God is better.

You don't taste and see that the Lord is good because you're still snacking on what the world has to offer.

I'm sure there's probably not anyone in here who didn't have an auntie, a mama, a grandmama, someone who, when you tried to reach into the refrigerator about an hour before dinner, right?

They said, what?

Get out of that refrigerator.

You're gonna what?

Ruin your appetite.

It may be true that we don't have an appetite for God because we're full of lesser things.

I think about the Thanksgiving dinners and the Christmas dinners.

You know who has it the worst is the cook.

Whoever the cook is or the cooks, you know what they do is they start about 7 a.m.

and then they want to make sure everything tastes good.

So it's turkey is dressing, it's about three different pies, and they snack, snack, snack, snack, snack, snack.

And whenever the big moment is, the big dinner, and they're like, I really can't even eat.

They missed a moment because they were full of all the samples.

Or maybe, you know, you're like Garrett, who likes to smoke uh brisket, I said, on a barbecue, and you just spent too much time standing over that barbecue, and as that aroma started smelling, you're like peeking in and opening, like taking off some burnt ends and tasting.

And then you serve it to your family or your friends, and you're like, it's amazing, isn't it?

But you're not even hungry.

I think you can understand the point is that a lot of times we don't have hunger for God because we've been filled with lesser things.

And the whole idea of prayer and fasting is to reset our appetite.

In fact, we're calling it hunger for more.

Because what we're literally saying is we're hungering for more of God in this moment.

We are hungering for uh less of the things of the world and more of the things of God.

And so um, yeah, let me just scoot down here to my notes.

Lost my place.

There you go.

I was thinking, yeah, exactly like the appetite uh, you know, illustration or the fact that we're full of those things, is that oftentimes, you know, that's the way we are with God.

We fill our lives with lesser things, with work, with activity, with vacation, with social media, with podcasts, with family stuff, snack after snack after snack until we don't have room or time or appetite left to actually sit down at the table with God.

And so we know we should, but we choose Netflix.

We know we should, but we choose doom scrolling.

We know we should, but we're addicted to busy.

And so a moment like this is about resetting our appetite for the things of God.

Appetites can change.

I'm reminded growing up, as you didn't realize, I grew up in a very country home where every night, bless my mama, we had a meat and like two or three vegetables, some kind of homemade bread, and the best sweet tea you ever drank in your life.

And when you think about that, for a long time, I was like, man, I love that sweet tea.

I was addicted to it.

But eventually I like grew up and said, man, I got I gotta stop drinking sweet tea for multiple reasons.

And so my appetite changed, and I began to chase after the best diet drink in the market, Coke Zero.

Yeah, it's tell Will Brown, it is better than Diet Coke.

Now, I know some of y'all are freaking out right now because you're like, sweet tea is probably better than Coke Zero, but don't judge me.

Anyway, Coke Zero.

And then I had to have Coke Zero.

And the more I drank it, the more I wanted it.

That was what my appetite was.

Are you tracking with me?

And then eventually I made a good switch.

Well, they tell me it's a good switch.

I don't know if they know the abundance I drink of it, but good old sparkling water.

How many of y'all drink some sparkling water?

There's nothing like it.

But for me, it's not two, it's not three, it's double digits every day, sparkling water.

I've got a problem.

The only person that drinks more sparkling water than me that I know of is Dustin Hahn.

So therefore, we keep it in the back.

I mean, we stack it up like a lot of people stack up, you know, printer paper.

Like we store it because we don't want to run out of it.

Even though ATB is just one minute down the road, we're like, man, we got to have our sparkling water.

And so I realized even on this mission trip, wow, when it wasn't so accessible, I was an addict.

Wait, I am an addict.

Like, I love me some spark, but I never really stopped to evaluate my appetite.

The cool thing about this is from sweet tea to Coke Zero to uh sparkling water, your appetite can change.

That's good news this morning.

One of the reasons that we at Mid Cities pause two times a year and say, we're going to set apart some time for consecration, for fasting, for prayer, is to change our appetites, to realign them, and to not hunger for anything but God.

And so that's a lot of what this week is all about.

And we thought back to, you know, uh even in the Bible, there's times where that's exactly what happens, you know, when our with our hunger for God and changing our appetite, what we hunger for, we have to adjust what we consume.

And so when we're talking about this week of prayer and fasting, uh, we're going to pause from some meals, we're going to consume different things, and we're going to change what we consume, and we're asking for more of God.

And that would happen in the Old Testament.

They had schedules that helped them.

They feasted to remember the faithfulness of God.

And they fasted, you know, in repentance and prayer to get back, to stay in relationship with God.

This summer we studied kings and we saw king after king and nation after nation start out with God but then drift.

And that happens in our lives sometimes, doesn't it?

That happens in our lives sometimes, doesn't it?

Yes.

And we it's like we get into a place with God where we meet God.

It's like when you go to the ocean.

By the way, there is a place out there called the ocean.

It's like a body of water, and there's like waves that cry.

That's just a midland joke.

You're none of y'all are laughing.

Anyway, y'all have been to the ocean, hopefully.

So, like you get into a place in the ocean, and if you stay in there playing around long enough, you begin to drift, right?

And then the crazy thing about the ocean is because the undercoat is so strong, you can't, by your own strength, well, maybe if you're a real good swimmer, but usually you can't like swim back to the place where you started.

What do you have to do?

You literally have to get out of the water and walk back to the place you started.

And for us, this is sort of one of those moments where we're getting out of the water and coming back to the place we started.

Is that good?

Do you understand that?

And so, schedule-wise, in the Old Testament, we say they had feasts and they had regular fasting times, and it was part of their rhythm, and it's also part of our rhythm here at Mid-Cities.

And then oftentimes it was a point of desperation or crisis where uh maybe a leader or a prophet would call the nation back to God.

And there was this sense of desperation that more than food to eat, they needed God.

And really, that's the place we are at right now.

We're asking, we want more of God.

If, for example, in Joel, like, I got some scriptures on the screen.

You're like, hey, are you ever gonna like put a scripture up there?

Thank you all if you're all newer around here.

This isn't our normal flow.

This is just setting us up for prayer and fasting.

But I wanted you to see this.

So, Joel 1, 14, we see that Joel came and called Israel back uh into consecration.

Look what he says in verse 14.

It's a call to repentance.

He said, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land of the house of the Lord your God and cry out to the Lord your God.

Two times a day this week, we will meet together corporately and cry out to the Lord our God.

And then it says, God through Joel gives the people a warning and an invitation.

He says, Return to the Lord in 12 and 13.

Joel 2, 12 and 13, he says, Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.

Rend your hearts and not your garments.

Return to your Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster.

And then look what happens next when they actually do it.

Joel 2, 18 and 19 says, The Lord had pity.

Look what he says.

He says, Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.

Interesting, then the Lord.

Right?

And it says, the Lord answered and said to his people, Behold, I'm sending to you grain and wine and oil, and you will be satisfied, and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.

But it doesn't just stop released for the famine.

He doesn't just meet their physical need.

If you continue on, you see they had a spiritual revival, a spiritual awakening.

It says in verse 28 and 29, the Lord will pour out his spirit.

Look what it says here.

It says, and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit.

Interesting, it will come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

Old men, praise God, shall dream dreams.

And your young women shall see visions.

Even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

God wanted to and eventually did pour out his Holy Spirit on his people.

And those rhythms and those moments of crisis created an opening for God's people to seek him.

Jesus said it this way.

In Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Just those two words are convicting, isn't it?

When you think about all the things we seek and how distracted we are, Jesus said, seek first.

The kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things, all the things you're concerned about, all the things you have anxiety about, they'll be added to you.

To seek something or someone means you want it.

You go after it, you pursue it.

That's what this week is all about.

It's about pursuing God in a new and fresh and focused way.

Jesus is talking to people who are anxious about clothes and food, and like almost like what we were talking about earlier, and basic stuff.

Everybody worries about.

And he tells them don't chase all of that first.

Seek God's kingdom and his righteousness first.

Basically, he's saying our allegiance, our first allegiance belongs to him.

And when we give everything it is to him, then he has those things back to us.

You know, we seek him.

It's interesting.

We seek him when he's our allegiance, we seek him, his voice, his involvement in our decisions.

Some of you all are in the valley of decision.

You have things going on, you need God to answer.

This is a moment where you can seek him and you can get his perspective on it, and you can ask him for his wisdom and his direction in your life, uh, in your in your decisions.

Uh also uh potentially, you know, in some crisis moment.

You're going through something you've never gone before.

You're like, man, I am desperate.

Like we prayed earlier.

I'm gonna stop doing what I've been doing, and I'm gonna recalibrate my heart through consecration, through prayer and fasting, and I'm gonna seek him in a crisis moment.

Or it could just be on ordinary Tuesdays.

God, I want to hunger for more of you and less of what the world has to offer.

I want to seek first the kingdom of God.

And we wait on him.

We ask him for his perspective before we move.

You know, that's a difficult thing, isn't it?

How many of you all have been in a situation so difficult, and you kind of come to the conclusion, the end, and you're like, well, all we have left to do now is pray.

Maybe we should have started with prayer.

Maybe we should come to this situation with prayer, asking God uh to lead our lives in that moment.

Maybe it's your marriage, maybe it's an investment, maybe it's a business, you know, a business deal or a business call you need to make.

I'm gonna seek God.

I'm gonna wait on the Lord.

I'm gonna seek him first before I just venture out in my own strength and my own ability.

We're not very good at that, are we?

I know I'm not very good at that.

I want to run ahead of God all the time.

It's moments like this that recalibrates our heart and we focus on him and him alone, and he resets our heart and the order in which we tend to do things.

We really can't have another allegiance.

He supersedes allegiance to self, to family, to work, to hobbies.

This is a week where we're just saying we're going to put God first.

Fasting and prayer, here's a few things the Bible says it does for us.

First of all, it lifts our eyes to seek Him.

He's our King, He's our allegiance.

It trains, this is so good.

He trains our spirit to hunger for God more than hunger for other stuff.

It just teaches us every time you feel a hunger pain, you're like, Man, I want to hunger for God as much as I do my next meal.

It creates space to actually.

Listen to his voice.

It quiets the noise around us.

It establishes boundaries.

So it actually helps you just kind of set some boundaries that maybe, you know, just like I didn't know, I had such a strong sparkling water addiction.

Sometimes we've lost that with just the fact that we don't have any boundaries in our not just around obvious stuff like social media and the crazy news cycle that's draining our souls, but around good things too, maybe food, maybe hobbies.

It just helps us to set everything right in our lives and get it back to God being at the center.

And ultimately, just like it started, it allows us to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Fasting keeps our appetite in check.

And when we need it, it shows us we've been hungry for the wrong things.

The wrong people.

The wrong comforts.

It helps us change what we crave.

Psalm 34 said, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.

So here's what I want us to do with uh the rest of our time.

We have a few minutes left here.

I want you to get your book out.

And I realize there might be some people here that this is just way too radical, or you're just checking mid-cities out, and it's like your first time.

Or maybe today you don't even know like where your faith is.

That's all right.

I got a little something for you too.

But we wanted to give uh everyone a chance to leave here with a plan.

How many of you know if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.

If you say, Well, I'll just see if I can make one of those prayer meetings, you're probably not gonna make a prayer meeting.

And you're probably like, well, I'll figure out what I'm gonna do when I wake up in the morning.

Well, you're gonna go to Don Tomas and eat a burrito before you think about God.

Amen.

But if you have a plan, it will help you stay focused.

And there's grace for you.

Wherever you're at in your walk, in your faith journey, in your fasting journey, I would just encourage you, you know, do enough that stretches you, but be wise about it.

And so let's do this here for a second.

If you uh open your book, can everybody do that?

Today is preparation day.

So there's a section for preparation.

I would encourage you to read that, not now, but when you go home.

And tonight there is a little biography that I encourage you to read with one reflection question.

Actually, the way the book is built, let me explain to you.

Each day we'll have a topic.

Each day you'll have a morning devotional.

Each day you'll have a like noontime, quote, lunchtime, like sort of daily office that'll have a psalm that you can meditate on and a couple reflection questions.

And then at night there's a little biography.

So tonight's first biography is from David, is about David Brainerd.

It's on there.

You can just read that.

That's gonna take you all of two minutes, and then it's gonna ask you some questions.

It's gonna help prepare you for the week ahead, okay?

But I'm on page six and seven, and so you'll see in there it's asking you which days you will fast, and then what type of fast you'll do.

I mean, this might not be all-inclusive.

You might choose a social media fast or whatever, that's okay.

But really, when we're talking about fasting, we're talking about meals, food, right?

And so on here, you have I'll do one meal a day, I'll do vegetables only, kind of like a Daniel fast, I'll do liquids only, I'll do water only.

And it's five days there.

And then down below that is the prayer meetings you attend.

Again, here at Neely, we have noon to one and seven to eight every day this week.

Except Friday night, we'll all be together at 191.

But, you know, I would encourage you, I mean, that's 10 corporate prayer moments to come and be part of the family.

I would encourage you, like, surely you can make one or two of those.

If it's noon and it's your lunchtime and you only get a certain amount of time, it's not a service.

It's coming, it's like come and go.

So, like, even if you have 20, 30 minutes, uh pop in and uh re-center your heart, okay?

And then over on the right is your prayer plan.

Obviously, that's self-explanatory.

I'm going to encourage you to take a moment and not just think about it, but to write it in.

Again, if you're new here, I would encourage you just to think about your relationship with God in this moment.

You don't have to write anything.

There's no pressure.

Right?

If you're new, if you're exploring God, if it's your first time at mid-cities, this is a weird Sunday to be here.

I would just encourage you to just journal something.

Maybe ask.

God, I don't even know if you're real.

I remember when I asked that question.

If you're real, show me this week.

Just write that down.

Show me, show me blank and see, just see if God will meet you where you're at.

Amen.

So we're going to take just a minute and we're going to play a little track, and we're going to just complete our homework in class today.

Is that all right?

Take a little time and do that, and then I'll come back up and uh close this out.

At least we got you started.

Well, that was slightly awkward.

That's okay.

You know, coach talk, how you engage a moment, determines what you get out of a moment.

And I would just encourage you that you would engage with us as a spiritual family.

Engage with God, number one, but engage with us and just see what God would do.

I mean, we have, there's been multiple powerful testimonies come out of a week of prayer and fast and consecration.

And so it's a good time because we're getting back to school and all the things.

In fact, next week is our back to school Sunday, and that's always something we look forward to.

But this week, let me just remind you of the schedule at Neely.

Uh so we will have prayer here Monday through Friday, noon to one.

You come and go, it'll be awesome.

Each evening we're going to do prayer here, 7 to 8, and we'll have children's ministry on Monday and Wednesday.

So on Monday and Wednesday, you can bring the whole family, children's ministry.

Uh, it'll be powerful.

And then on Friday night, we all get together at 191 campus for a night of worship.

It's like about, I think it's an hour.

I think it's seven to eight.

We worship God together, we receive communion together, we celebrate all that God has done this week.

So that's our schedule.

I encourage you to make the most of it.

All right?

Will you stand to your feet?

And I will close in prayer.

This starts today, so I would encourage you to take this booklet home.

There's actually extra booklets.

If you know someone you want to take one to, feel free.

Um and then read that little biography tonight and let that be the start of a great week, okay?

Well, Father, I thank you so much for meeting us here.

I thank you that all you've done in our lives.

I thank you, Lord God, that you are real and you desire to commune with us.

God, thank you for even in this moment realigning our appetite.

We want more of you, God.

So help us.

We need more of you in our marriages, in our family.

We need more of you in our homes, in our schools, at our workplace.

God, let us pursue you and seek after you with all our heart.

And God, I pray for every person at whatever level of their faith journey they venture out on this week.

I pray they encounter you in a fresh and powerful way.

God bless every person here.

We thank you for them.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You're dismissed.

If you need prayer for anything, make your way up here.

We'd love to pray for you.

God bless you.

Have a great day.