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| Monroe |
2 Months of PRAYER, FASTING, AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION
Summer 2012
DESCRIPTION: This course comes out of my desire to bring the followers of Jesus into deeper relationship with him. At the center of a life that dwells in Christ is the activity of prayer. A person who abides in Christ actually prays, prays a lot, and prays in a certain way. “Prayer” is: talking with God about what we (you and God) are doing together. For this class we will add biblical “fasting” to the activity of praying. “Fasting” is: a God-led response to a grievous sacred moment. A main result of a life that lives in and out of a prayer-relationship with God is inner, spiritual transformation into the form of Christ (Galatians 4:19).
METHOD:
1. There will be three large-group teaching and sharing times. They will be held in Redeemer’s sanctuary on:
a. Tuesday, June 19, 7-9 PM
b. Tuesday, July 17, 7-9 PM (Josh Bentley teaches)
c. Tuesday, August 14, 7-9 PM
2. Participants will be assigned to pray 1 hour/day, 5 days/week, from June 20-August 14.
a. “Prayer” is: talking with God about what you and he are doing together.”
3. Use Matthew chapters 5-7 as your spiritual reading during these two months. Immerse yourself in, be immersed by, Jesus’ beautiful, challenging “Sermon on the Mount.”
a. Meditate on these verses. To meditate on Scripture is: taking a portion of Scripture and slow-cooking in it; pondering it; allowing it to ponder you and seek you out. A way to begin meditating on Scripture is to simply repeat it, over and over. Write down some verses from these chapters and carry them with you, pulling them out occasionally to read them and to be read by them.
4. Keep a spiritual journal. A spiritual journal is a record of the voice and activity of God in your life. When God speaks to you, write it down.
5. During your prayer time or elsewhere God may call you to enter into a time of accompanying your praying with fasting.
a. “Fasting” is: the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.
b. Fasting in the Bible describes not eating or not drinking.” “Fasting is a choice not to eat for a designated period because some moment is so sacred that partaking in food would deface or profane the seriousness of the moment.
c. NOTE: If this is not medically possible for you, then you may choose to fast from something else; e.g., fasting from the media.
d. During your times of fasting write down anything God reveals to you or speaks to you, or does for you.
RESOURCES
Bill Bright
Richard Foster
· Celebration of Discipline: The Path toSpiritual Growth (see chapter 4, “The Discipline of Fasting”)
Scot McKnight
John Piper
· A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer (you can download this online for free)
Elmer Towns
Dallas Willard
· Google ‘Dallas Willard Fasting’
And...
- I'll be writing and posting things on prayer, fasting, and spiritual transformation and e-mailing them to students.
