A few weeks back when preparing for some teaching thru the book of Acts I sensed God speaking to me and in turn I believe speaking to our church community.

Acts has always inspired me but as I sat and read I felt like I could have been reading the phone book. Maybe its familiarity with the story, or maybe it’s just the state of my own spiritual health that I was left woefully unmoved. I knew I could bash out a decent sermon, because Acts lends itself to that, but who needs more sermons?…

As I was reflecting on this I sensed that part of the problem is that we teach more than we practice and that if we wanted to meet God in this journey thru Acts then maybe it would come by ‘going there’ – by experiencing some of what those early Christians did. It wasn’t a desire to create the ‘first century church’ all over again, but a sense that we have become way too used to gathering information and that we needed to learn less and engage more.

So out of that I felt that maybe we should be taking some time together to pray and fast and ask God for a fresh encounter with him – to seek God out with a bit more focus and intent than we do currently.

To be honest I felt ambiguous about this. I had a very strong sense that it was a Holy Spirit leading, but I had also had a very strong awareness that to follow it would disrupt my comfortable and relatively easy life. It would bite into my current routines and I’d lose some sleep… I was tempted to ignore the promptings and leadings because I like my comfort.

I sensed we should be gathering each day of the week to pray – most likely mornings around 6am and then choosing to fast, either regular ‘food fasting’ or abstaining from something we enjoy for the next month. I suggested sex was a good biblical fast when it comes to devoting ourselves to prayer, but I’m not sure many were up for that one…

I also felt it wasn’t something we ‘invite’ people to or ‘encourage’ people to participate in as another optional church activity, but rather it wa something we lead strongly with and we ‘call people to pray and fast’. This isn’t a ‘nice thing to do’ if you feel like you have the time or inclination. Its something we feel God is leading us to do and we need to make time for it.

Its always a challenge to lead strongly and yet recognise that for some this will simply be an impossibility. But my gut feel is that for many its not impossible – just very difficult – extremely incovenient. And perhaps that’s ok. Perhaps we need to recognise that our lives have become tangled in things that we never expected they would and we need to choose to break free from that. I have no qualms about challenging people to consider that maybe life’s priorities are all screwed up. In fact I think we are saying that this is where its at for many of us and we aren’t happy about that.

An equal challenge is to lead strongly, call people to step up and recognise that some people will simply choose to say ‘no’. Some will feel the same ambivalence I felt about doing something difficult or inconvenient and will choose to follow the path of least resistance. I believe its very possible to be unequivocal in our message and yet respect and love people who say ‘not for me thanks’. We definitely do not want a caste system in church and to marginalise people who don’t conform or join the crew who are saying ‘yes’.

Having said that I believe this process will spur some interesting conversations and challenges as we go thru it. If nothing else it will cause people to reflect on their lives and their priorities. It places people in a position where they need to make a choice and then consider why that was their choice.

What’s most disturbing for me in all of this is that I sense we consider a month of daily communal prayer and fasting to be a huge commitment / imposition on our lives. I know it felt a stretch to me. We may even think we are really putting in the spiritual ‘big ones’ when in reality we are barely scratching the surface of some communal disciplines. As I watch the Biggest Loser (Ellie’s favourite show…) I see overweight people getting excited at their ability to run non stop for 5 minutes on a treadmill and while I’m happy for them, its only because they are in such terrible shape that this becomes an achievement. I sense this is where we are at with discipleship in many of our churches. Perhaps we are a community of ‘biggest losers’ who take the path of least resistance so often that to move in the opposite direction appears to be a monumental effort. Personally I feel shame at that and I think we ought to feel some level of shame if that is an accurate image of our so called discipleship.

On the up side of the ‘biggest loser’ analogy what develops over time as that community forms and those people learn new disciplines can be incredibly inspiring – so maybe we will see some massive transformations in our own community as we struggle together and get in shape.

So I am looking forward to seeing what develops of this time. We don’t know exactly what God is wanting to do in us, but I believe others have sensed the same need and gathering by the faces present and the energy in the room there is a desire for more and that is encouraging.

Personally I find myself torn – torn between wanting God to turn my life upside down and then wanting him to leave me to be fat and lazy…

In my better moments I dream of a life where I am not driven by my ‘lower self’ and where the stuff that matters to God really matters to me and I long to be with a bunch of people who want to live there.

The lure of comfort and convenience is strong and let’s face it – no one is ever in a position to call someone else on this stuff. But if we are to lead churches then maybe it is our job to reshape our own lives, to intentionally practice something different and then call people to do the same.

But let’s be honest.

Its not really a ‘maybe’ is it?…