Daniel 10

And here's my question for you.

Is there anything in the state of

the Church, the state of your life

that makes you mourn. Anything

that makes you morn?

I would love to see a generation of

young men mourn. Who called it quits

on getting angry at how dumb things were

and how much the kingdom was advanced,

and got on their knees and fasted and

prayed for three weeks, eating no

delacicies, passying by the ice cream

after lunch. Praying to God and

asking God to do amazing kingdom

advancing things.

Some of you are in places in your

marriage where it feels like it

will never get better, it just feels

insurmountable. And you just sorta

fill your life with multiple little

pleasures that sorta it bearable, when

really the lack of intimacy and the

lack of kingdom growth in your marriage

is driving you crazy, but you can kinda

make it bearable. What I think the Lord

would want you to do to be like Daniel,

and not to numb the morning but to

intensify it for a season. With fasting

and with prayer, maybe passing by the

delacacies.

Daniel actually was eating food just not

delacicies. He was going through a time of

severity, to increase the mourning. And he

was Pleading with God, probably for the

advance of his kingdom. If we know Daniel.

Sometimes we have men fighting lust and

we say well, "Get an accountability partner,

and get Covenant Eyes." Chris Shippley was

here, one of our former pasters recently,

and he says now when he counsels men to

fight lust, he says, "Lets fast together

next week." I just want to make myself

available to any man battling with sin,

I will fast with you, any time you want.

We have ignored prayer and fasting, and we

have wondered why we know so little of Christ,

and why the Kingdom does not advance with power.

And I'm here to tell you, the response from

God will come in response to our prayers,

to our mourning, to our fasting.

As a work by which we earn his favor? NO!

Because we have been given access to God

through the spirit, we have been made

children of God by the cross. We have had

our sins paid for, there's no guilt in life,

there's no fear in death. Now we can approach

God.

But when you look at this miserable world,

and you see prostitution in Bangkok,

and you see child trafficking all over the world,

you see a crack house on this corner, you see

a neighborhood full of wickedness, you marriages

that don't grow, you see people that are

always depressed. We would be better off to

let ourselves mourn rather than talk about

what a healthy church we are. And deny the

delacicies for a season, and to seek our God

for a greater display of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I've got news for you, he loves to answer

Prayer!