Prayer and Fasting Guide
September 1-7, 2025
It is my hope that by now you have read the MOTION Draft of the proposed Constitution. The reason for this requirement of a 30 day delay between the motion to repeal and replace is to allow sufficient time to ask questions. You have access to all members of the committee, including the elders. Call, email, or schedule a time to visit with any of the committee members. They want to help you understand how the committee came to the conclusion on this motion.
Next week, I will explain some details of how the membership meeting will function on Sunday, September 21, at 5:30 PM.
This week, I want us to spend some time reading and meditating on when our Lord prayed for His disciples and for the church in following generations, even including us.
You will read through John 17 multiple times this week. I will ask you to meditate and fast intermittently throughout the week. May God bless your time and may He strengthen what needs strengthening.
Fasting is a Christian discipline. Fasting should not be a discipline you practice for show to impress others. Fasting is a discipline that should drive us to pray with great intention.
Christians should have a daily practice of abstaining from sin. We should also, from time to time, include the discipline of denying oneself from good and permittable pleasures, especially eating. Fasting is both personal and communal.
I’m asking you to practice fasting this week. We will begin small and end with more intensity, a day of intentional discipline. The desire is to intentionally strengthen the soul and deepen our faith related to our relationship with God.
Pray for each other this week.
Be sure to think about the things you have learned and observed from the past two weeks. This will be important that we see these 30 days as a connected practice with the intention to strengthen the spirit and to humble the flesh
What are some important principles you want to put into practice from Romans 12:1-3 and Hebrews 12:1-14?
Monday, September 1, 2025
Fast from using your phone for entertainment for a 24 hour period of time.
Read John 17
1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, 2 even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. 3 This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; 8 for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. 9 I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; 10 and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. 12 While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.
13 But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Fast from sugar and sugar substitutes for a 24-hour period of time.
Re-Read John 17 and list things you see Jesus prayed for.
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Fast for a full 24-hour span of time from drinking anything other than water. Meditate on Living Water every time you drink water
I want to encourage you to read some of the articles at Free Grace Broadcaster on the subject of UNITY.
https://www.chapellibrary.org/book/cunifg/christian-unity
The article by Charles Spurgeon is especially good on this subject. You can read other articles written by others throughout church history at the link above. I have included a copy of Spurgeon’s article for convenience.
Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)
That they all may be one.—John 17:21
HE most tender and touching prayer of the Master contained in this chapter opens His inmost heart to us. He was in Gethsemane, and His passion was just commencing. He stood like a victim at the altar, where the wood was already laid in order and the fire was kindled to consume the sacrifice. Lifting up His eye to heaven, with true filial love gazing upon His Father’s throne, and resting in humble confidence upon heaven’s strength, He looked away for a moment from the strife and resistance unto blood which was going on below. He asked for that upon which His heart was most fully set. He opened His mouth wide that God might fill it. This prayer, I take it, was not only the casual expression of the Savior’s desire at the last, but it is a sort of model of the prayer that is incessantly going up from Him to the eternal throne. There is a difference in the mode of its offering; with sighs and tears, He offered up His humble suit below, but with authority He pleads enthroned in glory now; but the plea is the same. That which is desired while still below is that which His soul pants after now that He is taken up and is glorified above.
It is significant, beloved, that the Savior should in His last moments not only desire the salvation of all His people but should plead for the unity of the saved ones, that being saved they might be united. It was not enough that each sheep should be taken from the jaw of the wolf. He would have all the sheep gathered into one fold under His own care. He was not satisfied that the members of His body should each of them be saved as the result of His death. He must have those members fashioned into a glorious body. Unity lying so very near the Savior’s heart at such a time of overwhelming trial must have been held by Him to be priceless beyond all price.
These words of the Savior have been perverted to the doing of a world of mischief. Ecclesiastics have fallen asleep, which, indeed, is their ordinary condition; and while asleep, they have dreamed a dream—a dream founded upon the letter of the Savior’s words, of which they discern not the spiritual sense. They have proved in their own case, as has been proved in thousands of others, that the letter killeth, and only the spirit giveth life. Falling asleep, I say, these Ecclesiastics have dreamed of a great confederation, presided over by a number of ministers, these again governed by superior officers, and theseagain by others, and these topped at last by a supreme visible head who must be either a person or a council—this great confederacy containing within itself kingdoms and nations and becoming so powerful as to work upon states, to influence politics, to guide councils, and even to gather together and to move armies.
True, the shadow of the Savior’s teaching, “My kingdom is not of this world” (Joh 18:36), must have caused an occasional nightmare in the midst of their dream, but they dreamed on; and what is worse, they turned the dream into a reality, and the time was when the professed followers of Christ were all one, when looking north, south, east, west, from the center at the Vatican, one united body covered all Europe. And what was the result? Did the world believe that God had sent Christ? The world believed the very opposite. The world was persuaded that God had nothing to do with that great crushing, tyrannous, superstitious, ignorant thing that called itself Christianity. Thinking men became infidels, and it was the hardest possible thing to find a genuine intelligent believer north, south, east, or west. All professors were one, but the world believed not; the fact being that this was not the unity which Jesus had so much as thought of—it was never His intention to set up a great united body to be called a “church” that should domineer and lord everywhere over the souls of men and comprehend within it ranks kings, princes, and statesmen who might be worldly, ungodly, hateful, sensual, devilish. It was never Christ’s design to set up a conscience-crushing engine of uniformity. So, when it was brought to perfection and set to work with the greatest possible vigor, the great mandevised machine, instead of working out that the world should believe that the Father had sent Christ, wrought out just this: the world did not believe anything at all but became infidel, licentious, and rotten at the core. The system had to be abated as a common nuisance, and something better [had to be] brought into the world to restore morality.
Yet people dream that dream still: even good people do so. The Puritans, after they had been hunted and haled to prison in this country, fled to New England. [But] no sooner had they seated themselves upon the shore than they began to say, “We must all be one; there must be no schism,” and the big whip was brought out for the Quaker’s6 back, and the manacles7 for the Baptist’s bleeding wrists because these men, somehow or other, would not be one after this kind of fashion, but would think for themselves and obey God rather than man. Now-adays, Dr. Pusey dreams that the Anglican and the Russian Church may be united, and then perhaps the Romish may chime in; and so once more all may be one. A mere dream! A mere chimera of a kindly but whimsied brain! If it should ever come to be a reality it would prove to be a upas tree, at the roots of which every honest man must at once lay his axe.
But what did the Savior mean, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me”? We must begin at the beginning. What were the elements of this unity that Christ so anxiously desired? Answer very distinctly is given to us in this chapter. The unity was to be composed of the people who are here called “they,” “that they all may be one.” Will you let your eye run down the chapter to see who “they” are? Look in the second verse: “That he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” The unity then proposed is of persons specially given to Jesus by the Father. Not then of all men who happen to dwell in any particular province, district, or city, but a unity of persons who have received, not common life as all have, but life eternal. Special persons, then, who have been quickened by God the Holy Ghost and have been brought into vital union with the person of the Lord Jesus are to be one.
Further, they are described in the sixth verse as persons to whom God’s name has been manifested, people who have seen what others never saw and have beheld what others cannot know. They are men given out of the world, so the verse tells us—chosen men, taken out from the ordinary mass—not, then, the mass, not kingdoms, states, empires, but selected persons. They are persons who have been schooled and have learned unusual lessons: “Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee” (Joh 17:7); and they have learned their lesson well, for we find it written, “They have kept thy word…They have believed that thou didst send me” (Joh 17:6, 8). They are described in the ninth verse as being prayed for by Christ in a sense in which He never prays for the world at all. They are people, according to the tenth verse, in whom God is glorified, in whom the name of Jesus shines with resplendent luster. Look the whole chapter through, and you will discover that the unity which the Master intended was that of chosen persons who, by the Holy Spirit conferring life upon them, are led to believe in Jesus Christ—spiritual-minded men who live in the realm of spirit, prize spiritual things, and form a confederacy and a kingdom that is spiritual and not of this world…
Of what, then, is the one church of God composed? Is it composed of the Church of England, the Congregational Union, the Wesleyan Conference, and the Baptist body? No, it is not. Is not, then, the Church of England a part of the church of Christ, and the Baptist denomination a part? No…There are believers united with the Church of England who are a part of the body of Christ, and there are believers in all denominations of Christians, yes, and many in no visible church at all, who are in Christ Jesus, and consequently in the great unity…The spiritual unity is made up of spiritual men, separated, picked out, cleared away from all the mass with which they happen to be united. I have spoken very boldly, perhaps, and may be misunderstood; but I mean this: that you cannot take out any visible church, however pure, and say that, as it stands, it belongs to the spiritual unity for which Jesus prayed. There are in the visible churches a certain number of God’s elect ones, and these are of the body of Jesus Christ; but their fellow professors, if unconverted, are not in the mystical unity. Christ’s body is not made up of denominations, nor of presbyteries, nor of Christian societies. It is made up of saints chosen of God from before the foundation of the world, redeemed by blood, called by His Spirit, and made one with Jesus.
From The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 12
(London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1866), 2-4.
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Re-read John 17
List the ways the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit relate to each other.
How does the discipline of submitting relate to what you observe in John 17?
Friday, September 5, 2025
Prayer and Fasting
Re-read John 17.
As your health allows…
- Fast from Breakfast
- Fast from Lunch
- Fast from Supper
- Fast from all eating from sunrise to sunset
- Fast for a full 24 hours
Saturday, September 6
Re-read John 17
What article(s) in the proposed constitution are you unclear about?
With the aid of John 17, how will you instruct your soul to speak about your concern?
Could you get clarification by speaking to a committee member or an elder?
You should not remain silent to “keep the peace”. But your spirit should discipline your mind to speak carefully. Guard your heart from impuning motive to others if you have not sought clarification.
Sunday, September 7
Prepare to gather with the church family. We have a Sunday morning Bible study every Sunday at 9:15. Be sure to arrive in the auditorium before 10:30, as we begin the worship service with singing and praying.
We should put seriousness upon this meeting as we humble ourselves before God. It is more important to be humbled before God by preparing to participate in the entire worship service. We will conclude our worship service with time at the Lord’s Table together. Don’t miss that beautiful moment of spiritual nourishment.
Pray for you and pray for our church.
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