🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

I've absorbed teachings on fasting this week as we prepare to invite our church into a corporate fast. One pastor calls fasting "whole body hungering for God". Another scholar says it's "a way of praying with your body".

Fasting has become a trending health practice in the modern world because of the undeniable mental and physical health benefits. I practice intermittent fasting daily as a tool to manage my blood glucose levels. The practice of completely denying food for spiritual purposes, however, might seem extreme to some and has hardly been taught to the generations we will pass the Church to.

Life can easily become super-saturated. We are inundated with things to fill us. But a saturated life isn't synonymous with a satisfied life. It is possible to add and add, yet never have enough.

I wonder what would happen if we decided to add restraint? What if we added fasting to our prayers? If we added our own bodies to our worship, like Paul says in Romans 12:2? "In view of God’s mercy … offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship."

I wonder if our hunger pains would awaken these temples of the Living God to a hunger for Him- a kind of hunger that's easily missed in our very full lives?

This week, with our church, we'll add fasting to our prayers... not to become holier or to be martyrs. But to be hungry. To make space to hear and be heard by God. To agree with the God who gave His own body for us. And to pray with our bodies.

Worship with your whole body today. Maybe it's replacing one meal with a prayer walk. Maybe it's an extra breath prayer in this very moment. Your Maker will meet you right where you are.

Listen to Hillsong's "I Surrender".