Fasting Day 2 Marriages

Ephesians 5:33

Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband

Let me start by stating the obvious, I am fully aware that I am not the most qualified person to talk about marriage, in fact I am pretty sure that inexperienced in the marriage department is a fair statement in regards to my qualification on the subject, but marriages are the prayer focus for today so my thoughts on paper or screen rather go as follows.

With the statement that each one of you must love his wife from this verse from Ephesians, it gets me thinking about love, and the all of the massively different ways that people in the world choose to define that word, I know there I go again on the whole definition bunny trail, but that’s not really the point this time, my point is with such a large verity of ways that we choose to define this one word, one of the most frequently overlooked definitions is the one that reminds us that love is a choice. A choice that is most easily made when accompanied with affection, the appreciation of beauty and a similar direction of life as the person to whom it is applied to, but it is a choice.

This choice in regards to marriage is a command from God, you see I believe wholeheartedly that God knows the man I will marry, not because I think that there is one perfect guy out there in world for me but because I believe that God knows which out of the numerous men out in the world that I could be happy with, the one I will choose to love and commit to loving, commit to choosing regardless of if he makes me angry, frustrated, annoyed, impatient, worried and stressed or happy, appreciated, respected, beautiful and understood at the end of the day it’s still a choice.

And so as I fast and pray for marriages in the church today, of course I think about my future and the work that I will face one day when, but more than that I hope and believe that as the church we will be able to more readily and frequently make the choice to love in spite of the world saying otherwise, that as a church we will possess a greater reverence for the commitments that we make to love, that as a church we will find more grace to stay together, more joy with one another and more peace in our households, today I’m believing for the marriages of the church to be more centered around God.    

Fasting Day 1 Revival

2 chronicles 7:14

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their lands

So my honestly first thought after reading this verse was, what does that have to do with revival? It’s not talking about anything that I automatically associate with revival, no massive move of God, forgiveness of sins yeah but no powerful awaking of My people type deal, nothing overly spiritual in any way, and what does healing of their lands even mean? My second thought was how about I just ignore the verse and talk about what revival means on my terms because the two are not connecting for me right now and I don’t want to try and make this all work out today… so I looked it up, figured let’s start off “my” discussion on revival with a nice solid definition and work out from there, and what do you know, light bulb moment, and I humbly admit my first impressions are not always correct and I now understand the connection.   

Revival is defined as

Restoration to life, consciousness, vigor, strength, etc.

The key that I am pulling out of this definition is restoration, and of course that is exactly what this verse from 2 chronicles is talking about. If My people will humble themselves, pray seek and turn… then I will forgive and heal. The point, the connection is in the turning of us back to God, once we do He restores, He forgives sins and heals lands, when we turn to Him He revives, restores the life that once was.

So my question now that I understand the connection is what does revival mean slash look like in regards to my life, what does it look like in the church, what am I really supposed to be praying about, fasting for today in regards to revival? What does restoration to life mean when we are talking about the church, and my thought is that it probably looks something like the call in the 2^nd and 3^rd chapters of Revelation, the church as a whole in the world does a lot right but also has much that needs improving on, revival to the church means repentance, anointing, zealousness, life, truth, perseverance and love, when we are talking about a restoration to life and consciousness then believing for revival in the church means believing something along the lines of the church being restored to what was once the best version of itself.

And then there is me and what does revival, restoration to life and consciousness mean in my personal life? It could mean healing, it could mean joy, it could mean peace, it could mean provision, it could mean any number of different things but when it comes right down to it, I think it’s much the same as what it means for the church it means believing that my relationship with God will be restored to what it once was, be restored to the best version of itself. Revival is about turning back to God, we have all been called to seek Him, to humble ourselves knowing that His forgiveness brings restoration and healing to our lives, brings what once was dead in the world to what is alive in Christ, brings revival.