Follow: Jesus shows us the way

Jesus came to respond to the universal human need to know how to live well. He came to show us how, through reliance on him, we can best live in the universe as it really is. That is why he said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). His supremacy lies in the greatness of the life he gives to us.

Putting Jesus Christ into a worldwide competition with all known alternatives is the only way we can give our faith a chance to prove his power over the whole of life.

Dallas Willard

We sum up the kinds of things you can actually do to follow Jesus with the acronym FOLLOW:

Fast and Pray:
Observe Sabbath
Listen to God.
Learn the Bible.
Offer Tithe and Time
Worship

Fasting is choosing to do without food for a certain period of time in order to focus less on your own needs and more on God.

Fasting is one of the more important ways of practicing that self-denial required of everyone who would follow Christ

- Dallas Willard

Fasting from things (“Abstinence”) is the conscious choice to do without something on which I sense an emotional, psychological or physical dependance for a period of time in order to focus on God.

Prayer is conversation with God

Ann Herbert:

Jesus wants us to check our motives for fasting and praying.

“If a person remains in me and I in him, that person will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing … If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you … As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.”

John 15:1-11

“Oh Lord, my soul rises to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun.”

- Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Proverbs 13:12,19
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life …. is sweet to the soul.”

“You desire to be known in the deepest recesses of your story so that you will be liberated to become an outpost of new creation – of beauty and goodness – even as you create that same beauty and goodness yourself, as you practice for the Kingdom of God that is here and is surely coming …. We are people of desire. We want things, we long for things …. desire begins and ends with God – God’s desire for us to desire unity with him …. It is God’s desire for us, his love for us, that leads him to call to our desire, imperfect as our responses may be.
…. God knows we are people of desire and longs for us to name our longings so we can get on with the business of living together in his kingdom of beauty, goodness and joy.”

Curt Thompson, MD. The Soul of Desire

“Can tears be prayers? Does God receive my little liquid offerings? Why do I so often pray when I cry and cry when I pray?”

Cameron Semmens, The Theologast: Profound wonderings on the sacred, the self, and the seemingly certain

Romans 8:26-28
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purposes.”

“God will carry those who allow him to carry them.”

Margaret Fishback Powers, Footprints: Scripture with Reflections

“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you.”

Isaiah 42:6

“See, O Lord, how distressed I am! I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed …. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night; give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest … cry in the night … pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord.”

Lamentations 1:20a, 2:18-19a

“This is it. I’m finished. God is a lost cause.”
Lamentations 3:18 MSG

“My soul is down cast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It is a good thing when you’re young to stick it out through the hard times.
When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don’t run from trouble. Take it full face. The ‘worst’ is never the worst.
Why? Because the Lord won’t ever walk out and fail to return. If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.”

Lamentations 3:21-33

Prayer Time

Henri Nouwen, Heart Speaks to Heart
I clearly hear your voice saying, “Come to me you who labor and are overburdened . . .
for I am gentle and humble in heart,’’
and yet I run off in other directions as if I did not trust you and feel somehow safer in the company of people whose hearts are divided and often confused ....

Your heart is so full of the desire to love me,
so aflame with a fire to warm me.
You so much want to give me a home, a sense of belonging, a place to dwell, a shelter where I feel protected and a refuge in which I feel safe.
You stand at so many squares and corners of my life and say with so much tenderness,
“Come and see, come and stay with me.
When you are thirsty, come to me . . . you who put your trust in me, come and drink.
Come, you who are tired, exhausted, depressed, discouraged and dispirited.
Come, you who feel pain in your body, fatigue in your anxious mind, and doubt and anguish in the
depth of your heart.
Come and know that I have come to give you a new heart and a new spirit,
yes, even a new body in which the struggles of your life can be seen as signs of beauty and hope.”

Dear Lord Jesus,
I hear your words,
I want to hear them with my whole being so that your words can become flesh in me and form a dwelling place for you.
Help me to close the many doors and windows of my heart through which I flee from you or through which I give entry to words and sounds coming not from you but from a raging, screaming world that wants to pull me away from you ....
Please, Lord, keep calling me back to you, by day and by night, in joy and in sadness, during moments of success and moments of failure.
Never let me leave you. I know you walk with me. Help me walk with you today, tomorrow, and always.
Amen

Small Group Questions:

1) Have someone read the Dallas Willard quote... what do you think about his suggestion that we put our faith in competition with all the other approaches to life?

2) What has been your experience of fasting as an act of your faith (as opposed to fasting for medical or other reasons)?

3) Have there been times when you have had to practise abstinence from things that were becoming too big a part of your life? What did you learn from that?

4) Have you experienced a connection between fasting and prayer? What do you think the connection is?

5) Ann says that "God deeply desires to connect with us, and for us to connect with him. Fasting and prayer are opportunities for this to happen." How do you respond to this? What has been your experience?

6) Have someone read the quote from Cameron Semmens... What is your response to his question?

7) What have you been left with from these messages?