Return to the Task

Have you ever watched an organization lose its way? Perhaps your favorite sports team went through a period of disarray. Maybe a coach was installed who really didn’t seem to know how to manage or recruit talent. Your favorite program went into a tailspin that lasted far longer than you hoped.

Of course, we all hope for winning seasons, don’t we? But, those can be few and inconsistent at best.

Sometimes a new coach will come in and call for the team to “return to the basics.” In football this would be a focus on blocking, tackling, running, passing, and receiving. In baseball it would be pitching, hitting, fielding, and execution. When these are drilled into player’s minds and become the natural responses of their bodies, the coach might move on to more advanced plays or game plans.

Churches lose their way, too

In the time since Jesus ascended into heaven sending the Holy Spirit to empower His followers, individual churches have lost their way. Petty arguments over the color of the carpet, the position of the piano, or the flower arrangement on the Lord’s Supper table have derailed many a church from the mission of God.

Prayer and fasting can revitalize you and your church

How can a church that has lost its way regain it? How can it realign itself with the purposes of God? Prayer and fasting, often overlooked, can be used of God in such a way. In Bible Studies for Life, I wrote, “Prayer and fasting can be done right where you are, and they can revitalize you and lead you to fix your attention on the parts of life that are truly important. In Acts 13, we see this principle at work in the church at Antioch. They prayed. They fasted. And God did something incredible in their midst.”¹

“In the church that was at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius the Cyrenian, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tertrarch, and Saul. As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them to.’ Then after they had fasted, prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them off.”¹

We gather to eat and fellowship, but will we fast and pray?

Notice the disciples were ministering, fasting, and praying. Fasting is the spiritual discipline of abstaining from food to focus more clearly on seeking God. Today, more often that not, churches don’t gather to fast and pray. They gather to talk and eat. Fasting and praying, while not completely gone, are certainly farther from church life then they should be.

God used prayer and fasting to change my life and ministry. While I had practiced prayer and fasting since college days, grew in it along the way, but it was in the mid 1990’s when God used it to absolutely shift my entire life and ministry. I have never been the same since that time. It was then that I began to see that God can do more in a moment than I can do in a lifetime.

This change in me resulted in changing our church. Our church has gone many times through journeys of prayer and fasting. From that same point in my church, we became more serious than ever in becoming a true Great Commission church. When God does powerful things within us it results in doing powerful things through us.

What about your church?

If churches today are to return to the task of gospel proclamation, personal witnessing, and disciplemaking, we need to return to prayer and fasting. The fields are white to harvest, the workers are few, the lost are dying. Let us seek God on our faces, foregoing as necessary even the food we eat that we can spend more time in prayer before Him.

Now is the Time to Lead,

Ronnie W. Floyd

Senior Pastor, Cross Church
General Editor, Bible Studies for Life
President, Southern Baptist Convention

References
¹– Bible Studies for Life, Awake, Ronnie Floyd
²– Acts 13:1-3 (HCSB)