Sorry for ‘clustering my days’ and reflections, but this weekend was BUSY! Great sunday that included our sunday night UNITY service. Nearly 4,000 people crammed into Capital Christian Center for a night of world-class music and worship and a compelling message from Sam Rodriguez! Very moving. Thoroughly inspiring! Over the weekend I hosted a good friend of mine and the Mars Hill family, Roger Bain. We are exploring the possibilities of launching the Mars Hill Leadership College this fall. It would begin as a 20 plus student cohort in partnership with the School of Urban Missions in Oakland, CA.

This weekend was hectic … but not so hectic that I forgot I was a part of a larger fasting and prayer journey with my church family. We are one third of the way though this ‘Awakening Fast”. Daniel chapter 10 talks of Daniel’s ‘emptying’ when confronted by the presence of God. Daniel’s strength and breathe left him. He was face down … almost lifeless… then came the touch that change the world. New strength filled Daniel. He rose slowly, first stablizing himself on his hands and knees trembling. Like a suddenly beaten boxer struggling to rise from the canvass … Daniel finally stood … but not in his old strength, but in new strength. In God-strength. The strength ‘transfusion’ was complete! That is the hope for all of us during this fast. That we would have a ’strength transfusion’... not an infusion … which is nothing more than a mixture of something new with something already there, but an actual ‘transfusion’… a total replacement. You see God is not going to ask you to do something new but ask that you do it with an old measure of past strength… like Daniel, God touches us with new strength!

I know this post is little long, but if you can take a moment to read this portion of Isaiah 53 from the Message Translation it will bless your fasting commitment!

“Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.

He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.

Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him”