RHYTHMS & PRACTICES | FASTING SERIES | JANUARY 2025

JANUARY 2025 .:. SOLITUDE SERIES

WK 1 – JANUARY 5TH- “The Quiet Place”

WK 2 – AUGUST 12TH – “Encounter With Ourself”

WK 3 – AUGUST 19TH “Encounter With Our Enemy”

WK 4 – AUGUST 26TH “Encounter With Our God”

The modern church is facing a crisis of discipleship.

It’s not that people don’t want to become like Jesus, or that people aren’t trying to become like Jesus.

It’s that we don’t know how to become like Jesus.

We need a pathway to formation for the modern era.

To that end, we are leading a series of messages over the next two years to lead our church in 9 spiritual practices that we can build into the daily rhythms and patterns of our lives. We pray these mini four week series will build your faith in tangible ways to practice the way of life Jesus lived.

Additionally, we are partnering with Practicting the Way to provide you with free resources to help us as a community be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did.

Welcome!

In August we will begin our third Rhythm of Grace series. In this month we will discover the spiritual discipline and practice of Fasting.

Welcome to the Fasting Practice. For over a thousand years, fasting was one of the central practices of the Way of Jesus. It was common practice for apprentices of Jesus to fast twice a session until sundown — on Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as the 40 days of Lent. Similar to essential spiritual disciplines like prayer or the reading of Scripture or church on Sunday, fasting was simply one of the things that practicing Christians did. After all, Jesus began his life’s work with 40 days of fasting, a practice he continued throughout his lifetime. And he said, “Follow me.” It makes sense that we would follow his example and incorporate fasting — in both longer and shorter intervals — into our Rule of Life, or our overall life architecture of discipleship to Jesus.

And yet, very few followers of Jesus in the modern West fast at all. There are all sorts of reasons for this: the influence of the Enlightenment, cultural hedonism, the widespread availability of food because of modern agribusiness, the (false) advertising of the food industry telling us that we need three meals a day, the confusion of appetite with hunger (which are not the same thing), or the struggle with disordered eating and body shame, etc. But the greatest reason is likely the West’s emphasis on the mind over the body. This focus on rational thought has given us all sorts of breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology, but it has left us disembodied; we’ve lost sight of the human as a whole person — mind and body and soul.

Fasting is one of the most essential and powerful of all the practices of Jesus and one of the best ways we have to integrate our entire person, including our body, around God. Over the next four sessions, we will cover the four reasons we fast.

01 To offer ourselves to Jesus

02 To grow in holiness

03 To amplify our prayers

04 To stand with one another in community

But remember: The ultimate aim of fasting is to get in touch with our hunger for God. Hunger is the state of wanting or needing something you do not have. When we fast, we awaken our body and soul to its deep yearning for life with the Father. We become able to say with Jesus, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” (John 4v32) We are aware that some people may have medical issues or concerns that keep them from fasting. If this is you, please check in with your doctor before participating in this Practice.