What Are You Hungry For?

Well, good morning and welcome to Church of the Grove online.

We're so thrilled that you're joining us this morning.

My name is Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here.

And if I haven't had the chance to meet you, uh welcome.

Um especially if you're a first-time guest or visitor with us.

We are so thrilled that you're spending part of your day with us today.

And we uh would love to get connected with you here at Church of the Grove.

We are more than just putting out content, we actually want to connect with you and help you on your journey of faith and get to know Jesus better.

And so we'd love for you to fill out our encounter card.

You can do that through our Church of the Grove app.

You can click the link below this video and you can fill that out.

And we'd love just to connect with you this week and send you a little gift this week in the mail and to say thank you.

We'd love to give you also some resources to help you grow spiritually as well.

But if I haven't met you, um uh just to tell you a little bit about me, um, I've been married to Caitlin now uh for I guess coming up on 12 years, and we've got three kids now.

We've got a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and we just had a newborn uh that's just four weeks old now.

And uh it's interesting going back to the newborn stage.

After you've had kids for a few years now, uh you kind of forget what life is like with a newborn being in the house.

Uh, you know, there's things about the newborn stage that are just absolutely incredible.

My wife says that if if she had kids and they could just stay in the newborn stage, she would just perpetually have kids because they're sweet, they're kind, they can just curl up on your chest and fall asleep.

You know, they don't talk back, you know, they're they're just they're easy.

That stage, you can kind of control what they do, but it's also an exhausting time.

They're up in the middle of the night, you're having to feed them every three hours.

There's the diaper changes, there's the sleepless nights and all that type of thing.

And one of the big things that you just kind of forget about as your kids grow up is just how often your kids have to eat in the newborn stage.

I mean, Elizabeth has to eat eight to ten times a day.

Um, she has to drink milk in order for her to be happy, in order for her to grow how she needs to grow.

It reminds me of a story.

Uh, we have a family in our church that goes to one of our campuses, and they um, when they first had their first daughter, um, they brought her home from the hospital, and they were young, very naive parents, and they brought her home from the hospital.

And when they brought her home from the hospital, they fed her right before they left the hospital.

They brought her home, and after they had been home for a few minutes, uh, the baby started crying, and she cried and she cried and she cried, and they did everything in their power to try to kind of console their daughter and try to, you know, pacify her.

They gave her a pacifier, they rocked her, they swaddled her, they did everything they could in order to get her to be quiet, but nothing worked at all.

And so finally, after hours of their daughter crying, they finally called the hospital and they said, Hey, like, we don't know what's going on.

There's something wrong with her.

She's dysfunctional in some way, she's defective.

And the nurse started going through all the different questions of what's going on, what happened, did you drop her, all this stuff?

And then finally the nurse said, Well, when was the last time that she ate?

And the husband and the wife, they just kind of look at each other and go, I guess it was around lunchtime, maybe 11:30.

Well, this time it's like six o'clock at night.

And this couple is just thinking, Well, I guess they babies eat when we eat, right?

They just eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And you forget, right, that sometimes or a lot of the newborns have to eat a lot during um the day in order to sustain life, in order to for them to survive and also thrive.

And that's what Elizabeth is like.

Elizabeth, our daughter, Elizabeth Grace, I mean, she's feeding often, and the only time she really gets angry is when she's hungry.

The only time she cries and has that shrill voice is when she's hungry.

And the only thing that's going to satisfy that is when she gets the milk that she needs.

And it made me think that that's so true in our lives as well.

You and I, we all have different appetites, right?

There's all things that we chase after.

There's things that we hunger after, and the things that we are hungry for are the things that we ultimately chase after.

Um, for some of us, maybe we chase after wealth, or maybe we chase after fame or popularity, or maybe we're single and we really desperately want to get married, and so we chase after marriage.

We're hungry for that.

Maybe we want kids someday, or maybe we want a promotion at work, or maybe there's some type of health process that we're trying to go through, and we're trying to get healthy, and we're trying to lose weight, or there's people that are, you know, that are just at the gym all the time, they're taking all the supplements, and that's what they're chasing after in life.

Some people are chasing after just pleasure and comfort or sex or whatever it might be.

We all have appetites that we're chasing after in life, and that's the things that we're hungry for.

And the things that we're hungry for are the things that we chase after.

You could say it this way, this is our big idea for the morning is that what we crave is ultimately what we chase.

What we crave is what we chase.

So if you're desperately wanting to be married, you'll chase after every single guy or girl hoping that they are the one.

If you're chasing after the pro uh wealth, then you might chase after the promotion or become a workaholic or cut corners in order to make more money.

What we crave is what we chase.

But the opposite is true as well.

In order for us to find out what we crave, you can often just kind of discover and ask yourself some questions of what am I chasing in life?

What am I spending my time doing?

What do I spend my money on?

What are my prayers, what are the prayers that I'm praying about?

What do I have conversations that center around?

When you start to ask yourselves those questions, you begin to quickly realize ultimately what you're chasing, and that will lead you to what you're craving.

Now, the goal for today is ultimately is that I want uh to expand our view to not just get us to question and to see what we're craving in life, but to ultimately see and get us to chase after what's best for us in life.

See, there's good things that we can chase after in life.

There's there are good things that we can run after in our lives that help us and that are beneficial for our souls, but I don't want us to just settle for what is good.

I want us to go after what is best.

And I think what is best for our hearts and for our souls and for us to be the people that God's called us to be is for us to be men and women that chase after Jesus.

For us to be people that chase after Jesus and see him and want to see him do an incredible work in his spirit in this community and in our lives.

And let's just be honest.

In this time in the world that we live in, we need Jesus and His Spirit to break through and do a great work in our world and in our community and in our lives right now, right here, today.

We live in a divided world, in a nation that's crumbling.

We live in a community that's rejected the ways of God.

We keep hearing stories about how church attendance is decreasing.

I recently read this quote from an article in Christianity today that said this, talking about people that no longer attend church.

And it said they haven't rejected the idea of going to church.

It simply isn't on their list of options.

They're not lazy, they're apathetic.

Until we understand this, we'll never have a chance of reaching this generation for Christ.

Did you catch that?

They're not apathetic, they're, or they're not lazy, they're apathetic.

That it's not even on their list.

It's not even something they consider that they should do.

And this is so true in not just outside the church, but also inside the church.

That oftentimes we have the church that is just full of people that are honestly apathetic.

We're chasing after all of these other things in the world, but we're missing out on passionately chasing after the one thing that truly matters, the person and the work of Jesus in our lives and in the lives of our community.

We've settled with just going through our spiritual duty, but never really having a deep divine passion and drive to see God move mightily in our behalf.

And I just have this passion and this conviction that something has to change.

We can't just keep going through the motion.

Something has to change.

And that's what I want to talk about today as we continue this series called Teach Us to Pray.

I want us to talk about this morning a specific tool that I believe will help us in this journey to alter our cravings and ultimately get us to chase after what is most important in life, the person of Jesus and his work and his movement in our lives.

And this tool is ultimately known as fasting.

Now, fasting is not something that we oftentimes talk about in church, but biblical fasting is simply this.

Biblical fasting is refraining from food for spiritual purposes.

Spiritual fasting, biblical fasting is refraining from food for spiritual purposes.

Now, in uh our world and our culture today, fasting has become a more normal topic to hear.

With the keto diet, with intermittent fasting, you have a more kind of popular fad type diets that involve fasting.

But spiritual or biblical fasting has to do with spiritual reasons.

It's not about losing weight or getting healthy.

Spiritual fasting, biblical fasting is all about spiritual purposes, has a spiritual nature in mind.

Now, this is different oftentimes than how we've interpreted Lent.

If you've ever given up something for Lent, oftentimes people leading up to Easter, 40 days before Easter, people will give up something.

And they might fast from social media, they might give up caffeine or coffee or something to that extent.

And those things are well and good, and those things have their place.

But ultimately, when it comes to the Bible and it talks about fasting, fasting always comes to food.

When the Bible talks about fasting, it always is related and connected to food.

And that's important for us to understand, I think, this morning as we look at the words of Jesus and as we see how Jesus wants us to utilize fasting in our lives so that he will change what we're craving in our lives and we'll ultimately chase after him in a deeper and more intimate way.

Listen to what Jesus says right after the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verse 16.

Matthew 6:16

It says this And when you fast, don't make it obvious, as the hypocrites do.

For they try to look miserable and disseveled, so people will admire them for their fasting.

I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get.

But when you fast, comb your hair, wash your face, then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your father, who knows what you do in private, and your father who sees everything will reward you.

Now there's a few things that we've got to understand about fasting that Jesus is talking about here.

The first and the most obvious thing that I think jumps off the page at us when Jesus is talking about fasting is this is that it's not about if, but when.

It's not if, but when.

Jesus is saying when you fast, not if you fast.

He's assuming and making the assumption that his followers, the disciples of Jesus, are going to make it a priority in their life to spend time fasting from food for a time in their lives and make that a consistent practice in their lives.

Now, as we've journeyed through the Sermon on the Mount this year, in Matthew chapter 6, we see three different statements that Jesus makes.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

In Matthew 6, verse 2, we see Jesus say, When or when you give.

Matthew 6:2

And he's giving the assumption again that his followers are going to be generous with the resources that they have been given.

In verse 5 of 6 of chapter 6, he tells us, when you pray.

He's assuming that his followers are going to be men and women of prayer.

And we've just spent the last six or eight weeks talking about prayer.

And then today he's saying, when you fast.

So there's three assumptions that Jesus is making about his followers, that they would be generous, that they would be people of prayer, and that they would be men and women that fast.

Now, if you've grown up in church or if you've been around the church for any extended amount of time, you know that the church is really good about talking about giving.

In fact, there's people that don't come to church because they say that all the church wants is my money.

And so the church has talked about giving, and they rightfully should.

And the church has talked about prayer, but for some reason, fasting is oftentimes neglected.

Now, I think there's probably a number of reasons why this might be the case, but I think that fasting is not an active part of modern discipleship.

Richard Foster, or I'm sorry, Donald Whitney says it this way.

He says, Christians in a gluttonous, self-indulgent society may struggle to accept and to begin to practice fasting.

Few disciplines go so radically against the flesh and the mainstream of culture.

Fasting is simply hard work.

See, giving might lower your bank account a little bit, but you can always build it back up.

Prayer might take a little bit of your time, but fasting actually hurts.

It causes physical discomfort at its best, but physical pain at its worst.

And sometimes these things that make us cause us the physical harm and the most pain in life can oftentimes also have the most dramatic benefits, and Jesus knows this.

And so that's why Jesus expects his followers to be people that fast.

Now, I have this kind of love-hate relationship with fasting.

With my time as being a follower of Jesus, I've tried to practice fasting, and there's been seasons where I've done this better than other times and other seasons in life.

Typically, especially in recent history, every year I've tried to begin the year with an extended fast.

Typically 21 days or 40 days where I've just spent time fasting, just to kind of begin a new year seeking direction and asking the Lord to move.

There's uh seasons in my life where I would fast ever one day every week for months and months on end.

There's uh other seasons in life where I would fast, you know, lunch one day a week, but I would make fasting a consistent practice in my life.

And during these seasons, oftentimes, oftentimes the Lord would speak to me in clear ways.

It was like I had antennas that were just kind of tuned in and I could just hear the voice of the Lord loud and clear.

And it was sweet, sweet times of fellowship with the Lord that were intimate and just incredibly uh built uh building our relationship together.

Um, but I still absolutely hate fasting because it's hard, it's difficult, it's painful, it brings incredible fruit in my life and it builds that relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But man, it is hard and it is difficult.

But man, the things that are difficult in life oftentimes bring the most dramatic benefits to our lives.

Jesus says also that fasting is for a heavenly reward.

He tells us that when we fast, that we should wash our face, comb our hair, and then in verse 18 he says, Then no one will notice that you are fasting except your father, who knows what you do in private, and your father who sees everything will reward you.

Now, back in this day, the religious leaders made a practice of fasting.

They were notoriously practicing fasting fasting two days a week.

Um, so two days a week they would fast, but they wanted the entire world and community to know.

They weren't doing it just to build intimacy with God, they were doing it as a public spectacle for the whole world to know.

And they were also using fasting as a way to impress the Lord and somehow earn his acceptance.

They were using fasting for all the wrong reason.

Fasting was not for the Lord, but really for themselves.

Their motives were not pure in any way.

And Jesus says, listen, when you fast, he's not saying throw fasting out altogether, but he's saying change the motives behind fasting and don't make it a public spectacle, but rather come out of private devotion.

And out of your private devotion, when you fast, my Father, we will reward you with heavenly rewards.

So what are the heavenly rewards of fasting?

This is where I really want to spend most of our time today.

What are the rewards of fasting?

Well, first is this is that it reveals our roots of dependence.

It reveals our roots of dependence.

It's amazing every time that I fast that I begin to get a glimpse into the innermost parts of my heart, and I begin to realize where I have put my dependence and my trust and where that has been misplaced.

Richard Foster says it this way He says, more than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us.

This is a wonderful benefit for the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Christ.

We cover up what is inside of us with food and other things.

So what he's saying here ultimately is that we have this way of kind of hiding what's going on on the inside.

And when we cut out food and when we begin to really deprive ourselves of the pleasures and the comfort, and we begin to kind of get hungry and we begin to kind of starve, we begin to kind of see what's really going on in the inside.

We begin to see what's truly where our dependence and where our trust lies.

And this opens up doors for us to understand where we truly put our trust and our allegiance towards.

Do we put it in our comfort?

Do we put it in food?

Do we put it in individuals?

Or are we focusing on Jesus in our lives?

John Piper says this way He says, the greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison, but apple pie.

It's not the banquet of the wicked that doles our appetites for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world.

It is not the X-rated video, but the prime time drivel of triviality we drink in every night.

For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it's a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, a wife.

The greatest adversary of the love is not his enemy, but his gifts.

And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.

For when those replace the appetite for God Himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable and almost incurable.

And so what John Piper is saying is he's saying, Listen, what ultimately we see when we begin to fast is that the idols of our hearts are not necessarily the evil things, the sinful things.

It's the good gifts that God's given us.

It's maybe our spouse that we begin to trust in as our saviors, the idol that we made in our lives, or maybe it's our kids, or maybe it's the pleasures and the comforts and the gifts that God has given us.

The greatest adversary to God's love is not uh the enemies, but the gifts that God has given us.

That those are the things that truly, when we begin to fast, come to the surface and we begin to reveal to us the dependence that we have.

As Jensen Franklin says, when we begin to fast, it dethrones King's stomach.

So fasting reveals the roots of our dependence.

But it also fasting helps us reorder our desires.

Without the Spirit of God working and moving in our lives in a deep way, we will always be driven by the way we feel and the way that and what and by what we want.

We'll always be driven by what we feel and what we want.

Now, isn't this true in the world that we live in today?

Where people make decisions based on how they feel, not based on truth, not based on reality, but based on how they feel or what they want in the moment.

I mean, you can probably think of a time in your life where you have made a decision.

You maybe have made a relational decision, you maybe have dated a girl or dated a guy, and it ended very poorly, and you have a heartbreak and you've got the scars to show, and it's all because you made a decision based on what you wanted in the moment or based on how you felt in the moment.

There's a reek of havoc behind the lives of individuals because they have made decisions based on how they feel or what they wanted in the moment.

And what we need to do as followers of Jesus is we don't make decisions how we feel, or trusting our guts, or trusting our hearts, because our heart is deceptive, the Bible tells us.

So rather than making decisions based on how we feel or what we want in the moment, we need to be people of the Spirit.

We need to listen to what the Spirit of God is speaking to us.

And fasting allows us to build that spiritual muscle.

Fasting allows us to reorder those desires.

Fasting allows us to say, hey, we're not moving in the direction of the flesh.

Right now, I'm hungry, I want to eat, I'm hungry, I need the comfort of food, I want the satisfaction to be on my taste buds, but we're not moving in that direction.

It's not about what I want in this moment, it's not about how I feel in this moment.

I'm walking with the spirit.

Fasting is all about denying the flesh and living in the spirit.

And we see this in the life of Jesus.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 4, just a few pages before we're looking in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention Matthew 7 · chapter mention

In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus is beginning his earthly ministry.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

He's about 30 years old.

He just got baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River.

The Spirit of God comes upon him, and then immediately the Spirit of God sends Jesus out into the wilderness.

To what it says in Matthew 4, verse 1.

Matthew 4:1

It says, Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.

For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.

So the first thing that the Spirit of God does to lead Jesus is into the desert, into the wilderness, into isolation, and there he fasts, he has no food for forty days and forty nights.

And there he's tempted by the enemy.

But it's here also that he's saying, I'm not going to be ruled by my flesh.

I'm going to be ruled by the Spirit.

And I love the commentary that the Bible gives us.

And he became very hungry.

Well, obviously he hasn't eaten for forty days and forty nights.

It continues though in verse three.

It says, During that time the devil came to him and said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.

Now this is well within the wheelhouse and the power of Jesus.

He's very capable of snapping his fingers and immediately turning these stones to bread.

But he refuses to do that.

Verse 4, but Jesus told him, No, the scriptures say people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

What Jesus recognized was that he was not going to live by the flesh.

He was going to walk in the spirit.

He was not going to let what he felt in the moment or what he wanted in the moment to determine his decisions, but rather he was going to walk in the spirit.

And that's one of the great benefits of fasting.

Fasting is a physical, tangible way for us to walk in the spirit by depriving our bodies of food so that we can walk in the spirit and walk in the way that the spirit would have us to go.

We also see that the spiritual, heavenly reward of fasting increases our intimacy and delight with God.

Fasting gets us above the normal fray of prayer.

Prayer is our lifeline to God, but fasting kind of gets us even above that.

Fasting gives us a different kind of prayer.

It's a hungering and it's a thirsting after the Lord.

In Luke 2, verse 36, we have this story of a woman named Anna, and it says this Jesus has just been born.

Luke 2:36

His parents are presenting him at the temple.

And in verse 36, it says, Anna, a prophet, who also was there in the temple.

She was a daughter of Phineel, the from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old.

Her husband died when they had been married only seven years.

Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four.

She never left the temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer.

She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God.

She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.

So here's this woman who, as a young woman, got married, her husband dies, and now she's left to be on her own.

She lives in the temple court and gates, and she's fasting and she's praying day after day after day.

She's got an intimate connection with God.

And as a result of her fasting and prayer, the Lord shows favor to her, and she actually gets to see in her old age the Messiah, the long-awaited one, the one that was promised in the very beginning in the Garden of Eden.

She gets to see this little baby born, and she gets to see the promise that was long awaited right there unfold in front of her.

See, when we fast, it builds the intimacy and the delight that we have with God.

Through her prayer and fasting, she got to see the long-awaited Messiah.

And that's what fasting does in our lives.

It gives us this longing, it gives us this yearning to see Jesus, to be with Jesus, to be in the presence of God.

And so that's one of the heavenly rewards.

And finally, one of the heavenly rewards is that fasting has the tendency to bring revival corporately.

When a community of people come together for a sacred purpose and hunger for the Lord and his hand to be at work, when they humble themselves, repent of their sins, call out to the Lord, He hears from heaven and he heals their land.

I've been in the process, just in my personal time with Jesus, to be reading through 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, and just finished Ezra this morning.

And just in reading through those stories, there's this incredible just cycle that happens where the nation of Israel is disobedient.

There's this wicked king that comes into power, and the wicked king uh worships all of these idols.

The people disobey God.

God brings punishment, he brings judgment on the nation, and then there's there's humility that happens.

The people out of judgment, the people repent, they turn from their sins, and God brings healing, he brings restoration into their lives, restores the people, there's revival that happens, and then typically another evil king arises a generation or two later, and the cycle repeats itself.

But what's striking is that in every situation, when the people humble themselves, when they repent, when they fast, when they pray, when they humbly come before God and they cry out to Him, God always, always comes, answers their prayers, shows mercy to them, and heals their land and gives grace to the people.

And as we said before, that's what we need.

We need God to do a great work in our world today.

We need God to work and to move in our community.

We have a world that is full of angry people.

There's protests that seem to be happening all the time, and there's a protest one day, but let's just be honest, nothing really ever changes from day to day.

But when we pray, when we fast and we humbly come before God, God has a way of changing things.

Did you know that the fall of communism and the fall of apartheid, that that's directly linked to the prayers of people that were praying and fasting as groups of men and women devoted to God?

You don't read that in the history books, but you can trace that back.

Fasting unlocks and allows for spiritual breakthrough to happen in our lives and the lives of those around us.

Fasting is not twisting God's arm in some way, but it does align his will and our wills together.

It humbles us and it gets us to trust him completely.

See, what we chase or what we crave is ultimately what we chase.

And I don't want to chase after some lesser idol or some lesser God.

I want to chase after not just the good things in life.

I want to chase after what is truly best.

I want to chase after Jesus.

I want to crave after him because he's the only one that's going to truly bring satisfaction to my soul.

He's the only one that's going to bring healing in my life.

He's the only one that's going to restore our world and our community.

He's the only one that's able and capable of bringing revival in our midst.

But it happens only when we chase and we crave him.

And one of the tools that he tells us to use is fasting.

Now, fasting is not for the weak.

It's not for the faint of heart.

It's hard, it's difficult, it's not easy.

It's not something that any of us look forward to, but fasting frees us from apathetic lives.

It forces us to remove apathy and laziness from our lives, and it makes us chase after and crave after the things that truly matter.

And so my question for you today as you're watching this is are you up for it?

Are you up for taking the step of making fasting a regular practice in your life?

Again, this might be a little outside the box.

You might be new to the faith.

You might be watching this and not even be a follower of Jesus.

And so this might be a little outside your comfort zone, but there's so many benefits that come when we begin to biblically fast for spiritual purposes, to see God break through in our lives, to recognize the sinful tendencies that we have, to reorder our desires, to see corporate revival take place, to renew intimacy in our hearts and in our lives.

Are you ready for that?

Is that what you want for your life?

A few weeks ago we were meeting as a staff and we were having a conversation, and one of our staff members, she asked the question, do we really believe and expect God to move in a big way?

And as she asked that question, I was kind of taken back because I would have normally said yes, but I think honestly, because of the season that we've been in, I think the answer was just, no, I think I've been going through the motions.

I think I've been kind of doing the really the apathetic thing, just kind of taking the easy road out.

And it was super convicting for me that the last month, the last few months, I've had lost a sense of spiritual intensity and I had not been leading the way that God has called me to lead.

But I don't want to do that.

I want to lead us.

I want to be the man that God has called me to be.

I want us to collectively join together to fast and to pray and to see God break through and do incredible miracles in our midst.

What would happen if we don't let apathy get in the way, but we burned with a spiritual desire and intensity where we want to see God break through in our midst?

Are we expecting God to move?

Are we praying for God to move?

Are we fasting and hungering for a move of God in our midst?

Maybe you're here this morning and are watching sometime throughout the day and you're recognizing that maybe you don't have a hunger for God because you don't have a relationship with God.

And if that is the case, man, we would love to have a conversation with you.

And you can do that by simply texting the word start to follow to 9700, and we can give you information about how you can begin a relationship with Jesus.

But if you have a relationship with Jesus, are you burning with a spiritual intensity?

And if not, man, let's make fasting a regular practice in our lives today.

Let us make a regular practice this week.

Maybe begin by fasting from lunch one day this week.

Or maybe taking a whole day out of your schedule this week and spending time praying and asking God to move mightily in your life and the lives of people you know.

And let's collectively do this as a church and let's wait and see the breakthrough that happens.

What we crave is ultimately what we chase.

Let's chase after the right things.

Let's crave Jesus more than any other things.

And let's hunger after him and let's see him do a miracle.

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are and for what you have done.

Lord, we thank you, Lord, that you are truly worth craving after and chasing after with our lives.

Lord, let us be the men and women you called us to be, and let us be willing to get rid of all the other lesser gods and lesser idols in our lives that we have put our trust in.

And let us chase after you wholeheartedly.

Let us be willing to put the practice of fasting in our lives, not as some spiritual duty or some way to prove our allegiance to you, but really to open up our lives and to tear the flesh down and build the spirit up in our lives, to open up the doors and opportunities for us to depend upon you all the more, to beg and to plead with you for corporate revival, for us to destroy pride and build up humility in our lives, Lord.

I pray that you would do a great work in our lives, Lord, and we would see a miracle take place, that we would see an outpouring of your spirit in our hearts and in our lives, in our families, in Church at the Grove, but even beyond Church at the Grove, in our churches, in our communities, in Social Circle, in Walnut Grove, around Georgia, around this country, even around the world, Lord.

We pray that you would move your spirit out.

And Lord, that we would see a hunger and a thirst for people desiring you.

And it was all for your name and all for your glory.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.