In fasting the idea is to replace food with God. When your stomach growls, take it as a reminder to worship.

I’m doing the Daniel Fast which is only fruits vegetables and water. I occasionally have cravings for all the other stuff. That’s my “growl.” Some of us have given up other non food things … But the urge to do whatever can still be your “growl.” We must embrace the growl and let it remind us what we are doing.

But why don’t we?

Maybe its just me, but I’m tending to find other ways to occupy my time besides spend it with God. I even went as far as unplugging my TV for these 40 days to ensure I have more time set apart for God. But somehow I find other ways to fill that time. How silly. This is just a diet without embracing more time with God.

I’m gonna embrace the growl more.

Bill Johnson had to give her directions to the church (his church prays for people to get healed A LOT… they literally are the healthiest county in the nation – nobody is sick – for real). lol.

another group came to Bill Johnson and said, “We want to be a part of your mall outreach ministry.” Bill replied, “Mall outreach? What are you talking about?” They said, “You know … all those stories you’ve told about people getting healed at the mall…”

Bill Johnson replied, “oh, our church doesn’t have a mall ministry. We just have people who shop.”

Welcome to NORMAL Christianity!

I dream of the day when someone asks if they can be a part of New Hope’s Evangelism team and I’d just have to say, “Sorry, we don’t have an evangelism team, we just have Christians.”

I dream of the day when someone asks about our student ministry healing program or our school outreach program that initiates evangelism activities in schools … and I can only say, “Sorry, we don’t have those. We just have Christian teenagers. They just do all of that on their own.”

I dream of the day when a Christian can pray for someone to be healed, or pray for them to receive Christ, and when the other person asks “Are you a Pastor,” they Christian can just respond, “Nope. I’m just the run-of-the-mill Christian.”

I’m not just dreaming. I’m praying. And I believe that day is coming very soon.

Just now I caught myself saying, “When God sends a great spiritual awakening . . .” and I had absolute confidence, NO DOUBT IN MY MIND, that it would happen very soon.

It’s later than its ever been. We’re closer than we’ve ever been before.

This past week I spent on vacation in Kansas City where I spent time at the International House of Prayer. This is a prayer meeting that started in September 1999 and has never stopped – 24/7. We’re talking over a hundred people praying all the time – even in the middle of the night. It was an incredible experience. The first day I arrived in the evening so I just spent a short hour and a half with God at the IHOP before I was tired and needed to sleep. The second day I was there for 3 – 4 hours. By the end of my trip I was so hungry to just be with God that I would stay at the IHOP prayer room for 14 hours straight. There was nothing that I wanted to do besides be with God. The more I was with God, the more I had a hunger for Him. I learned that you never really “finish” at the IHOP, you just “leave.”

Before my vacation, I would often spend my evenings doing more work (or at the very least planning for the upcoming days). Now that my vacation is over, my brain is trying to get back into my typical work patterns – I keep trying to think of another project I can work on, but I’m constantly distracted by God.

That’s right – I’m distracted by God. I guess you could say that God is bugging me right now. My brain wants to “get stuff done,” but my Spirit is so excited to spend more time with God. I need my brain to understand that spending time with God is the most important thing in the world.

Often we consider prayer the boring thing every Christian must endure. That’s not at all the paradigm of prayer (and worship) that David shared in Psalm 16, “You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” (Emphasis mine).

Eternal PLEASURES? Yea… pleasure.

I like pleasure. I’m going to go get me some.

If my pastor gave an altar call for people who are struggling with something and need God’s help, every Christian would fit into one of three categories:
1) Christians who are struggling, awknowledge their struggle, and respond to the altar call.
2) Christians who stopped struggling and have started to live complacently with their lousy lives rejecting the power of Christ. These people don’t even realize they stopped struggling and are stuck in a rut.
3) Christians who are struggling, but they lie to themselves and do not respond to the altar call.

Sometimes I feel that if I admit that I am struggling with a sin than that makes me less of a Christian — like people will think I’m a horrible person if I admit a struggle. If someone admits a struggle, Christians should say, “Yahoo! They’re FIGHTING and not giving in!” Struggles are universal and guaranteed, but how you respond to your sinful struggle is another story.

Too many of us are lying, arrogant pigs on the inside (of course it doesn’t look this way from the outside!). C.S. Lewis wrote much on this subject of pride. Our religious pride causes us to become outright liars to ourselves, justifying our own sins, actions, and motives so that we don’t admit we have a problem. We all have a battle of our two natures; struggling with sin is a GIVEN – so why do we hide it?

A great man once wrote, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you can be healed” (James 5:16).

They Respected and Feared the Name of Jesus Christ. Here’s Scripture.

In the book of Acts we can see respect for Jesus formed after a great work. Amazing things were happening and it resulted in a Holy Fear for God. That didn’t surprise me, that just makes sense. But compare that to today’s world.

Today the respect for God has been diminished into the ever popular, “Jesus is my Homeboy” campaign. Thousands of T-Shirts with these designs have swept the country. The “Jesus is my Homeboy” design does a great job demonstrating the caring relationship we can have with Him, but it tosses respect and Godly fear right out the window. Jesus is NOT my Homeboy – HE IS GOD!

The natural result of Godly fear is genuine holiness. Revival starts with holiness.

Church, if we’re expecting God to come and do amazing things among us — if we’re hoping for God’s presence to show up powerfully — if we’re hoping for a revival, we must be holy. We must respect and fear Jesus and his commands. We must be obediant. God will come with great power when we’ve prepared a Church that’s worth it.