Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

CONSECRATION is the voluntary giving of oneself exclusively to something”; an invitation to become an instrument of special purpose, made holy, and useful for the Master (2 Tim 2:20-21).  Consecration is not saying no to good things because they’re bad – its saying no to GOOD things because there are better, things you are hungry for.

It’s being driven by the question – am I really hungry for God to anoint me and use me.

Our secular culture fears a consecrated person. 

A busy, halfhearted, and distracted person is fairly easy to manipulate.  

Satan fears a consecrated person. He will do almost anything in his power to dilute the potency of a leader set on giving himself fully to Christ. 

But it’s hard to be a consecrated person 

It’s hard to give yourself fully to God when so many smaller things ask for parts of your heart. Most Christian men I meet don’t struggle with the idea of discipleship or the reality of Jesus’ call. They struggle with something harder. They struggle to commit to all of it. 

If we were to honestly lay our hearts before the Lord, I believe he would be more interested in the parts we are holding back than the parts we have already given. 

Like all relationships, God wants a full commitment. In the same way your wife appreciates when you buy her flowers but would much rather you stop looking at porn, God wants to get a hold of the things we hold back. We can see this when Jesus deals with the rich young ruler. Jesus wasn’t attuned to what he was giving; he was interested in the thing he held back. Rolheiser notes, 

That, nearly perfectly, describes the rich young man standing before Jesus. In essence, he is telling Jesus: “I have given up almost everything for God. What more must I do?” Jesus’ answer is simple and direct: “Give up the rest! You have given up almost everything, and that is good. But now, to move beyond your present sadness to a deeper joy, you have to give up everything! 

Give up the rest.  That is at the heart of consecration. 

Though it can be a struggle to the death to lay it all down, what we pick up is worth the fight. 

We pick up intimacy, power, confidence, and joy. Jesus is looking for leaders who will cut all other options off.

Oliver Burkeman notes, “The original Latin word for ‘decide,’ decidere, means ‘to cut off,’ as in slicing away alternatives; it’s a close cousin of words like ‘homicide’ and ‘suicide.’ Any finite life—even the best one you could possibly imagine—is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility.”

So, this spring we want to call our church to a season of consecration.

A season of giving Jesus the rest. A joyful renunciation of all things to go deeper with him. It’s a season of suicide for the flesh, homicide for the ego, and the joyful resurrection of our hearts in its place. 

What is “the rest” that Jesus wants from you?  What “decisions” do you need to make in your discipleship right now?

Jesus doesn’t need more leaders; he needs more of the leaders he already has.

Tuesday Fast

FASTING  because hunger must be stronger than apathy

Base: Fast from lunch, taking time to pray during that time. 
Stretch: Fast for 24 hours 1x/month (i.e. break your fast with dinner)