A small group of people has been meeting for six weeks through Lent to study, reflect and learn together from the Inspire book, A Practical Guide to the Discipline of Fasting. It has been a powerful place of prayer and accountability for growing closer to Jesus. It has been so good we are thinking about how we might continue together now that Lent is coming to an end!
Here is one of the insights we shared:
I am reflecting on the word ‘cultivate’ that Sam used during the wrapping up of our time. Perhaps fasting and prayer as a community is a means the Lord uses to mix our various substrates together such that the seedbed is prepared for an upper room outpouring of the Spirit. Without the cultivation or disturbance, you can have a nutrient rich compost sitting next to or literally on top of a clay-rich mineral soil. If mixed together this would be a good healthy soil with nutrients and excellent water holding capacity, but the two substrates being close together, but still separated means that the plants can not grow deeply because there is a division a contrast of two different parts rather than a whole soil. We can have a church that looks more like a conglomeration (group of individuals) instead of a community of persons that belong to all the others (Romans 12:5)
