FASTED LIFE - Introduction

Hello, Go Church family.

I'm Lara.

Happy New Year for our Armenian friends.

I'm here with Pastor Matt Hattawog.

Praise the Lord.

And Gilbert.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas, but I can't say it in Armenian.

Yeah, that was a very long word, by the way.

I think that was two words.

Yes, that's both Happy New Year and Merry Christmas.

Say it again.

I mean, I mean.

That's great.

I love languages.

That's awesome.

Well, Happy New Year, everyone.

We're so glad to be back with you for a new year.

We're so excited about what the year is bringing, about what we as Go Church are going to accomplish

in this year.

Yes.

And I believe that everyone is blessed and empowered to prosper this year.

Yes.

Empowered to go forward, empowered to not stay where you are, but to see change happen

in your life.

That's not, I mean, that's faith, right?

Faith is not, well, I'm going to wait and see what happens.

Faith declares what's going to happen.

This is what we are going to accomplish.

I like that.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

So this month, we're going through a series called The Fasted Life, and it's quite a challenging

series in the sense that it really puts into question the actions that you take, not only

once in a while, but on a regular basis.

I wanted to call it Life in the Fast Lane, but Gilbert wouldn't let me.

Yeah, let's stick to Fasted Life.

Sometimes I'm a bully with these things, you know.

But before we do that, let's talk a little bit about Go Church.

Let's talk a little bit about the vision of Go Church, especially for the year, because

this is a new year, right?

Thank God for Go Church Beirut.

Thank God for Go Church Beirut.

That's right.

So who is Go Church Beirut?

Silent.

Well, I hope it's us.

Well, let me answer that question.

Go Church Beirut is part of a family of churches, and we say that we are a family of churches

that work together to reach the world.

So there are actually three Go Church locations in the UK, and Go Church is the newest location,

but it's not in the UK, it's in Lebanon, and right here in Beirut.

And our values are Love, Grow, Go, because Go Church is your place to experience the

unconditional love of God, to grow in His love, and to go out into your world with that

love.

Go Church is also a Bible based, a spirit filled, and a group centered church.

For the most part, we're an English speaking church, although we have groups happening

in different languages.

Sometimes the same groups happen in multiple languages as well, which is fun.

But you know, we are here in order for everyone, no matter what language you're comfortable

in, to find your place.

My favorite words and the values of Go Church is your place, because it is not the place

of specific people, you know, who are on the podcast or specific people who stand on the

stage on Big Sunday, but it is your place.

You know, if you are connected to Go Church, you are Go Church.

You know, you are an integral part, a necessary part of what the Lord is doing and is trying

to do through Go Church in Lebanon.

And to take that a step further, because we're a groups centered church, if you're part of

Go Church, you're part of a group.

If your experience with Go Church is just this podcast or our Big Sunday, I mean, let

me say, Ahlan, welcome.

But if you want to be part of Go Church, then you need to find your place in a group, because

that's where growth happens.

And I love our groups.

I love that we have groups happening all over Lebanon, and we're going to be opening some

new groups this month.

Yeah, we're so excited about it.

We're happy to say that we have groups of all ages too.

We have a kids group happening.

We have a parents group happening at the same time as the kids group.

You see that planning right there?

That was deliberate.

And we have groups happening with young adults, with families.

And we're so glad that they're happening not only in Beirut, but we also have groups happening

at the North, which is amazing.

And our heart is for groups to start happening everywhere.

Whether it's in homes, whether it's in public settings, or whether it is in prisons, and

so many settings, right?

Or whether it's going to happen eventually at a Go Church hub.

A Go Church hub, the parliament building, the presidential palace, we don't discriminate.

We'll have grow groups everywhere.

And we're not setting up groups just for the sake of saying we have groups, but we want

groups to happen so that wherever you are, wherever you're comfortable, you have a place

to come to.

Yeah, you have a place to grow.

That's right.

Your place to grow.

So you mentioned hubs, and we've experimented a little bit with having a central place.

Although Go Church is very much meant to be decentralized, but we have found from just

practice that having centralized places help groups grow.

And many of you that are listening to this have used what we call the mission house or

the place in Sinilfil.

And then we also have Go Cafe that Rafi and Patricia, Go Church family, have opened up

for us.

So we want to take that idea further and build that out.

We believe we're going to see that in this new year.

And I believe we'll see hubs pop up all over Lebanon, places.

And that's how I would describe it.

It's one hub may look a little different than the other, but hub would be a central place

that helps groups grow.

Yeah, I want to make sure I say that again.

Thank you, Rafi and Patricia.

Absolutely.

For your doors.

Go Cafe is a precious place.

It's a precious place, and it's a dream come true.

Rafi and I were tramping around Borshamood seven, six years ago.

Well, seven years ago now, yes.

Six years ago.

And I said, man, it would be great if we had a cafe where we could host meetings.

Yeah.

So something so special, like, I mean, once in a while I make my way to that grow group,

and it's so nice just being in town.

I mean, it's like a central decentralized location that Go Church Beirut can operate

from.

And it's a place where groups are happening, but also alphas have happened.

And also, there are different kinds of meetings happening there.

So Arabic speaking groups are meeting there, English speaking groups are meeting there.

And I also know that some of our Go Church family actually just come and hang out there

even when there are no groups happening.

Right.

And that's what we want to see with hubs all over Lebanon.

And we believe we will.

And this past year, Pastor Joel Sims was with us in April of 2023.

And he gave a word to Go Church.

And I want to just bring that back up.

It's the word emerge.

And as I've been praying over the new year, there's nothing particularly special.

We make this time of year special, where we change.

We were saying 2023, and now we say 2024.

It's like just putting a new chapter in, right?

As I was praying about that word and where we're going for the new year, I heard that

same word, but I heard it more as a command that this is not just what God is doing.

God is creating this space for Go Church to emerge.

But we as Go Church need to emerge, meaning we need to become prominent, visible, and

help Lebanon recover from a difficult situation.

And we've been doing that families at a time.

And I thank God for that.

But there is more.

And in order for us to see that, we individually, me individually, we as leaders in Go Church

and all of you, we need to move forward in God's plan.

And as we move forward in God's plan, that means that we have to start saying no to things.

There are things in our life that are occupying too much of our time, too much of our attention,

too much of our focus.

And when I say too much, why too much?

Because we need to move from where we are into where God has for us in this new year

as a church.

The only way the church corporately will do that is if we do that individually.

That's so good, which is probably why we're doing fasted life.

Yeah, praise the Lord.

Probably.

Well, I like to say it this way, that there is always a new word for a new work.

And if we want to go further, then we need to take draw from the life of God that's contained

in His words so that we can put that in our lives, apply it in our lives and move forward

and go further.

So we can never disconnect our plan as a church from the word of God.

And that is why we look at all these different subjects.

It's nice that two months ago we looked at prayer and now we're picking up fasting.

If you notice in the Bible, fasting and prayer tend to happen a lot together.

And we're going to study those things out and we're going to look at those things over

the month.

And we're actually going to put that in practice.

And Pastor Matt shared a special New Year's message on podcasts, which is available on

podcast, encouraging us all to pick up an action.

And that action is to start seeing what we can fast.

How would you say like, how we can...

To choose something.

Fasting and this is what we're going to talk about all month long, because I find that

there's a lot of assumptions associated with fasting.

So I want to look at it from a scriptural standpoint, but in short, I just would like

all of us as a church to choose something individually to say no to for us.

I don't mean something that we shouldn't be doing anyway.

I don't want anyone fasting lying during January.

You have to stop doing that.

Sorry.

But I do.

There are some things that are perfectly fine, perfectly okay, but we can...

And this is the great thing about fasting.

It's something that you can do.

You can stir yourself up to it.

And you can just say, I'm just going to tell me no.

And telling me no, me telling me no is very good and it helps me grow.

Yep.

Can we give examples?

Like social media?

Yeah.

I mean, we're going to talk about what is fasting as we get into it.

And I'll just say it, the word fasting in the Bible literally means to close your mouth.

So it is deliberately tied to food.

We do talk about other kinds of fasting, other types of fasting, but ultimately it's about

choosing something that you do that's a part of your life that you just say, I'm going

to deny myself.

That's something that Jesus said, right?

If someone would follow me, let him, let her deny himself and follow me.

So fasting is about telling yourself no, and it's about telling yourself no about something

that maybe is okay for everybody else.

But for you, for now, I'm just choosing to say no.

That's so good.

I have some stories about that that I'll share, but yeah.

It's going to be a fun month.

It is.

We're going to talk about a lot of stuff and we're actually going to put a lot of this

in practice and we're going to see change.

I will tell you that if this doesn't sound like an exciting subject, it really is.

This is one of the few things that Jesus said has a reward attached to it.

That's good.

So this is very exciting and it's very good for us to get into and study from the word

because then we can do it in faith.

So I want to talk about this subject and why we're doing this subject at the beginning

of the year.

You know, last month we talked about joy and we talked about joy during the Christmas season

because we tend to tie the subject of joy to the Christmas story and the birth of hope.

I don't want to go back and talk about it, but I do want to say that in my mind, Christmas

was usually at the end of the year, but I realized that the Christmas story is actually

a birth of a new hope, it's a birth of a new moment, a new period in time.

So going into a new period, a new time, which is what we tend to look at the New Year as.

So a lot of people at the beginning of the year want to put down New Year's resolutions.

Unfortunately, most of those resolutions are well-meaning, but they only last about two

weeks.

And then, you know, for whatever reason, the diet doesn't seem so attractive anymore, the

gym membership seems too expensive, or whatever that looks like.

But the reality is we like new beginnings.

We like to think about something that we can look forward to in terms of change in our

lives.

So I look forward to doing something different so that I can see something different.

And the fact is, fasting is very much along those lines.

It's about change.

It's about expectation of change and, you know, allowing change to happen in me, or

allowing myself to undergo deliberate change, so the things on the outside can then start

to change.

And that is really the reason why we're looking at this subject at the beginning of the year.

It's very deliberate because, like Pastor Matt just said, there is, you know, it's something

that Jesus instructs us to do, He expects us to do, and there is a reward attached to

it, which basically means that it is something that we can commit ourselves to and expect

to see change in our lives.

And that is so important when we go into a new year, something new, and we want to go

further and we want to go forward in the things of God.

And we're going to see how this applies.

We're going to build up faith on this subject when we look at the Word of God so that we

know without a doubt that when we do this, we're going to see change in our lives.

And so with that, I want us to read the purpose of this series because everything we do is

with purpose.

I mean, we want to take this and then apply it to our lives.

So Laura, could you read the purpose of the series?

Sure.

We want the Go-Church family to understand the power and place of fasting in their lives

and to recognize that as a church, we live a fasted life before God.

I like that.

Yeah.

I like the fact that, you know, you talk about we live a fasted life before God because a

lot of the time, you know, fasting seems like a one-time event, a limited time event, a

specific thing related to food and how we eat and when we eat, but there's so much more

to it.

Yeah, absolutely.

The term fasting in religious circles has become largely event-based.

And I think we lose something that's pretty essential to the teachings of Jesus, that

it is not an event, but it should be part of our life.

And that's what we want to talk about.

Yep.

And so over the course of this month, we're going to look at, in the Fasted Life series,

we're going to look at what is fasting, or you could say the meaning.

In week two, we're going to look about when and how should we fast, or we could say the

method.

And in week three, we're going to talk about what is the result of biblical fasting, or

we could call it the reward.

You know, I don't want to call it the result.

I want to call it the reward because that's what Jesus says about it.

He says that there's a reward tied to it.

And it's so amazing that when you see it, you see it and you, you know, going back into

those, I'm not, I don't, I don't believe that I've done enough of this in my life.

And there's something I definitely want to do more of, but of the times that I've done

it, I see a reward tied to it.

I see a change that comes out on the other side, and it's benefited me so much.

Think about it like this.

Paul told Timothy, he said, godliness is profitable.

Having the promise of a reward, you're going to experience profit and increase and a reward

now in the world that you're in now and in the life to come.

So godliness is profitable.

He said, he calls godliness as profitable.

Well, when we dig into that, what is that?

Well, we see it and we'll dig more into this in the coming weeks, but Jesus talks about

prayer and fasting and giving.

Prayer and fasting and giving are godly and they are profitable.

Yep.

That's right.

So this is something that we want to not make, you know, I'm encouraging the Go Church do

it together in January, but I don't want it to be an event as much as I want it to become

part of our life.

And why?

Why do I want it to become part of our life?

Because I want Go Church to experience the profit of godliness.

Yeah.

That's so good.

So actually in the scripture that you were referring to, that's 1 Timothy chapter four,

verse eight.

And Paul says, bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things.

So you see here that bodily exercise profits a little.

I mean, it's not like profits nothing, but profits a little.

And the fact is we should not turn our fasting into a bodily exercise.

Yes.

A lot of people turn.

So I've been doing this diet system, which is called intermittent fasting, right?

And it's a...

Not spiritual.

Yeah, it's not spiritual.

It's purely diet based.

And I still have Roy's voice telling me, I like breakfast too much.

I would never do that.

I don't know how you do that.

That's ridiculous.

The fact is I feel great doing that.

You eat eight hours in an eight hour window and the rest of the time you just simply don't

eat.

And that is purely bodily exercise.

And it profits me a little bit.

Absolutely it does.

I feel better.

My body enjoys it.

I feel like I have more energy.

There are certain physical benefits tied to it, but that is not what we're talking about.

We're talking about the other side of it, which is godliness being profitable to all

things.

So fasting is an exercise in practicing godliness.

This is literally what we are looking to do.

And we want to exercise godliness in our lives because there is, like Pastor Matt said, and

well forget what Pastor Matt said, this is what Paul said.

Paul says having the promise of the life that now isn't of that which is to come.

And so the Bible tells us that practicing godliness will allow promises to flow in your

life.

Yes.

That's so important.

That's so big.

We're looking forward to the fruit of what we're about to do.

And before we close the podcast for the introduction week, I just want to refer to our key scripture

this month, which is Acts chapter 13 verses 2 and 3.

Acts 13:2

Laura, could you read that for us?

Yes, sure.

So Acts 13 verses 2 and 3, this is the New King James version.

Acts 13:2

As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas

and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then having fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

Yeah, I find this such a nice passage of scripture.

We refer to that a lot actually in our believers gatherings, because there was a time when

the leaders of the Church of Antioch got together and ministered to the Lord.

So they specifically looked at the Lord.

They specifically focused their attention on Him.

And when you focus your attention on Him, you focus your attention away from other things.

And because they focus their attention on Him and away from other things, there was

an outcome to that meeting.

And the fact is, the Holy Spirit said, Separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which

I have called them.

And so having fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

So you see that there is a time of fasting and prayer, which led to a result.

And the result was clarity of my purpose, clarity of what God has in store for me.

And not only for me, because when someone in my church goes out, like so the church

at Antioch, this was an answer for all of them, because they had these leaders.

Saul and Barnabas who were separated onto the work to which they were called in God,

which is effectively being apostles, going out into the world and making the gospel known

and laying foundations in places where they were not laid before.

And that is not just a win for Paul and Barnabas, that is a win for the church.

That is a win for the Antioch.

Absolutely.

And the fact is, it started with fasting and prayer and it's finished with the gospel being

spread across the Mediterranean.

So you may not be ready to go out and leave your home and take the gospel to places where

it's not been preached yet.

That may not be the thing that you're ready for today, but you may think, I really need

clarity of what God's got for me next.

Guess what?

Fasting and prayer.

This is for you.

And there are things that I believe the Lord's going to reveal to you as you tell yourself

no and focus on him.

And we'll talk more about this as we get into it, but I'm excited.

I think this is going to be great.

We have a few events coming up.

We didn't mention those.

Thank you.

Thank you, Loris.

Well, we have our Big Sunday Gathering that's on January 14th.

And what is starting in January?

So where is the Big Sunday Gathering happening?

In Sinelville municipality.

And I'm excited for the next event that's happening, which is Alpha.

January 11th.

Is there more to life than this?

It's going to be great.

Under the category of Emerge, we actually have some big posters that are going around

the city.

We're limited about what we could put on those right now, but that's just a taste of what's

to come.

Yeah, praise the Lord.

So Alpha is happening on January 11th.

That's Thursday evening and that's going to take place as well.

Incident field at the Mission House.

And so for more information, reach out to us on WhatsApp or on social media and we would

be happy to invite you there.

You know, if you have anyone who you think would be interested to take part in Alpha

or just even if you want more information about Alpha, please reach out and we'd be

so happy to welcome you to open doors and have a nice meal together and get to know

you.

Every single person is welcome.

No matter whether you're from here, there, anywhere, everywhere, any background, we're

just so happy to welcome you to Alpha.

It's going to be amazing.

So if no one told you yet today, we want to tell you that we love you and we're praying

for you.

God bless you.

Thank you for listening to this message.

We want everyone to experience the unconditional love of God, grow in His love and go with

His love to the rest of their world.

We invite you to connect with us at one of our groups for our next gathering.

And if no one told you yet today, we love you and believe God's very best for you.