FINAL ENCOURAGEMENT
How To End Your Fast Well!
Today our 21-day fast comes to an end and I want to help you transition back into your normal rhythms by finishing well. It would be unwise of us to set aside three weeks and certain levels of food and normal life to seek God, only to just snap right back to our previous rhythms and not make time to process our experience with the Lord. So here are a few simple questions you can sit down and reflect on either in a journal or with someone close to you. These aren't just for looking back but for stewarding what God did in you in order to carry on and tend to the flame of your heart.
(1) Reflect on some key takeaways from the last few weeks: What did God speak to you? What Scriptures really convicted or encouraged you? What prayers were answered? What did he reveal and expose in your life? What did you sense God begin to do in you?
(2) What is something you know you need to shift in your natural weekly and daily life that will help you seek God in more intentional ways and cause you to maintain a hunger for Him? Maybe it's fasting from one meal a week and setting aside time to open the Scriptures and pray. Maybe it's joining your campus prayer nights 1-2 times a month. Maybe it's taking social media off of your phone for good. Start small and build on it -- change happens over time with patience and faithfulness.
It's always interesting to see how much God can really do in just a few short weeks in our hearts when we set aside the things of this world and seek Him. And I just want to encourage you that this doesn't have to be a once-a-year experience. Take what you did in this fast and make it real in your embodied daily life -- deny your flesh and loosen your grip on this world, maintain a posture of desperation before God and go to Him in His Word and prayer on a regular basis. It's not magic. It's just following Jesus and abiding in Him, and that is where fruit and joy comes from.
There's too much at stake to go back.
Let's keep seeking, hungering and obeying.
Love you and so proud of you,
Pastor Christopher
PS, I would love to hear any reflections / God-stories that you would want to share with me from these last three weeks. I want to praise God with you, pray for you and share these with our leaders so they can celebrate! Feel free to reply to this email.
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