40 Days of Prayer & Fasting
From thursday October 17th 2024
We believe the Lord has called us as a church to pray and fast for 40 days; to press in and seek His
heart and will for us individually, for our church, and for the world around us.
During this season we will be holding a series of weekly prayer gatherings at Vision:
Wednesdays 7.30am - 8.30am
Wednesdays 12.30pm - 1pm
Wednesdays 5pm - 6pm
Whether you can make it to these prayer meetings or not, we encourage you to fast, pray, and seek
the Lord during next 40 days. May His kingdom come and His will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven!
Please see below for an encouragement from our new sermon series, and for a
list of prayer points that emerged from our time together at the recent Prayer & Worship night.
3) An Unusual Hunger
Professor Stuart Piggin is one of Australia’s most prominent Christian historians, having authored seven books and over 100 articles for academic journals. He has commented that one of the key characteristics preceding Christian awakenings throughout history is a heightened expectancy or unusual hunger.
Scripture also recounts many moments involving this kind of hunger. One example is the account of blind Bartimaeus, recorded in the Gospel of Mark (10:46–52). What marked this story was not so much the unusual healing (although the healing of a blind man is in itself noteworthy), but an unusual hunger. As Mark records, many people were lining the streets and a large crowd was gathered. Some to spectate and catch a glimpse of Jesus, others perhaps to criticise. Then in the midst of that scene one man heard that Jesus was nearby and in that moment that he began to cry out.
This was not a polite cry; it was an urgent, passionate plea. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Despite the rebukes of the crowd, over and over again he persisted and would not be denied. It was this cry of unusual hunger that caused Jesus to stop, turn, and call for Bartimaeus, restoring his sight and commending him for his great faith.
There are a number of signs that we are in a season of unusual hunger. Justin Brierley, a social commentator who has spent the past two decades interviewing thinkers and influencers, has explored a recent phenomena involving many once hardened secular atheists and thinkers turning once again to Christianity. His recent book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again explores this development and concludes with the question: 'could what we are witnessing now be a rumbling of revival, a turning of the tide, a generation hungry for a real, authentic encounter, that which only JESUS can give'?
Trevin Wax, a writer with The Gospel Coalition, explored this same phenomena in the younger generation, concluding that: 'Gen Z is spiritually starved….. Gen Z is hungry for the very things the empty, desiccated temples of secularism, consumerism, and global digital media cannot provide, but which Jesus can’.
There are times when it seems that God is on the move. Like Bartimaeus, we too have a choice in how we will respond. Will we be part of the crowd, the indifferent, the spectators, or even the critics, or will we be a people who grab hold of what Jesus is doing, recognising our desperate need and begin to cry out that HE will do what only He can do!!
2) The Call For Awakening
In times of awakening, God is at work speaking, revealing the things that are on His agenda, and desiring to stir the hearts of His people. In these times, the Lord is looking for how we will respond. You see, there is an element of this cry for awakening that must start in our own hearts and lives. What is happening in our hearts - the degree of hunger and thirst for God, the desire to press in to seek Him - is so important.
In Psalm 107:9 we read: ‘For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things’.
Part of our response to the Lord is first of all humility - recognising our great need of Him. Part of our response is also recognising areas where we’ve perhaps been lulled, or are being lulled, into a ‘spiritual retirement’ - a place of spiritual comfort and apathy.
In surrender, may we allow the Lord to stir our hearts afresh, and deliver us from spiritual comfort and apathy, so that we can press in with renewed hunger and thirst for Him and cry out to see Him work mightily in our city, region and nation.
1) The Cry For Awakening
These are times when Believers are yearning increasingly for spiritual awakening—for a renewing work of God, a fresh in-breaking of the Spirit’s love and power, and an abundant ingathering of the reborn into the church.
Arthur Wallis, in his book 'In The Day of Thy Power', defines awakening as:
“Divine intervention in the normal course of spiritual things. It is God revealing Himself to man in awesome holiness and irresistible power. It is such a manifest working of God that human personalities are overshadowed and human programs abandoned. It is man retiring into the background because God has taken the field. It is the Lord working in extraordinary power on saint and sinner”
Although genuine spiritual awakening is properly identified by God's activity amongst men, He graciously invites us to participate in the renewal of our cities, regions, homes and campuses. We cannot manufacture awakening, but we can posture our heart, and we can pray.
Christian history is in many ways the story of successive movements of awakening. Often they occurred in times of moral darkness and national depression; and each began in the heart of a consecrated servant of God.
The great preacher, teacher and revivalist Leonard Ravenhill once famously declared, “The only reason we don’t have revival is because we are willing to live without it!”
Let's join with the cry of Habakkuk as he prayed for awakening in his day:
Lord, I have heard of your fame.
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
in our time make them known.
in wrath remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:1-2)
Amen!
Prayer Focus
To help frame our times of prayer in the coming weeks, we have compiled a list of what the Lord was saying to us and through us as we gathered last week for our Church Worship and Prayer Night. These words have been organised into broad categories, based on the themes that were coming through. Please feel free to pray into these key areas as the Lord leads.
We are looking forward to what the Lord will do in this season as we posture our hearts to pray and seek Him!
GOD’S POWER & HIS NATURE
God is for us, who can be against us
God will renew our strength, they shall run and not grow weary, walk and not faint
God can bring life from what seems like nothing
Do not bind Jesus or put Him in a box
Totality and life
Picture of a toothpick - we don’t go into battle with a toothpick, the Lord strengthening us and reminding us that the weapons He has given us are powerful and destroy strongholds - 2 Cor 10:3-5
God is pursuing us
God with us, God is always there - draw near to Him
God loves us deeply
TURNING TO THE LORD & CONSECRATION
Be set apart, a sense of covering and protection
A sense of holiness
Do not be conformed to the things of this world
A people for His possession
Repentance, refreshing, love and surrender
Walk in pure, divine and perfect love of God
Radical humility
Make my heart Yours
Fuel the fire, fan the flame
Isaiah 28:15 - turning away from false refuges
Don’t create idols
SURRENDER
Surrender, be authentic, live sacrificially
Allow me to move more freely in Your Heart
Be content in all circumstances
Soar higher with God
God wants our hearts - Luke 10:27 (You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your should and with all your mind and with all your strength)
Be still, be authentic, wait on the Lord
Ezekiel 2 - listen; heart of flesh not stone
Wait in confidence
Wait for Him
Trust in the Lord and remember we are forgiven
Jesus is the centre
PERSEVERANCE & PRESSING ON
Pursue - keep on, do not give up, do not put it off
Are we still drinking milk or are we ready for solid food?
God is powerful, press on, understand the power of our worship
Take heart
Joshua 1:7 - be strong and courageous; look into the Word, know God’s Word
Luke 15:13 - let’s not look for earthly things, look at Him. He welcomes us with open arms
Perseverance; fixing our gaze on Him as we press on ahead
Do not lose heart
OUR MISSION
Spread our love
Do not neglect the One
Prepare the way of the Lord - by loving His people and loving others
Feed my sheep, call the lost sheep home
Love flowing from the temple and bringing healing to the nations
Isaiah 58 - fasting, breaking the chains, setting the people free
Be prepared to go
Reunion of Christian family - where is our focus? Bring the unity as Christians
OBEDIENCE
Be obedient
Follow His voice
Love what He loves, listen to Him and obey His commands
the sheep will hear the Shepherd’s voice
His Word is truth