The Longest Journey

The longest journey begins with the first step. I have prepared, prayed, counseled, studied, read, shopped, talked.....but, finally, today, I got to take that first step in what promises to be an exciting spiritual journey. My Daniel fast began today. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good. I had set aside the better part of the day for prayer, worship, reading, etc. and I thought I would be really worried about the food part. But I really was never hungry all day. I had an abundance of fruits, veggies, hummus, etc handy to grab if I had even the slightest hunger pang, which I did a couple times, but all in all it wasn't bad.

Thanks to womanwithapurpose and her blog during her recent Daniel fast, she had alerted me to the importance of having a right heart and going about the fast with the proper attitude. So, I re-read Isaiah 58 which focuses on fasting, along with Daniel's fasting experiences in the book of Daniel. My targeted readings were in Proverbs, Psalms and John. And then I did the reading for my three bible studies.

It sounds like I have no life and have nothing to do but sit around and read and write - and that is actually part of this whole experience for me. I felt God calling me to do this during my time of unemployment so that I COULD focus PRIMARILY on Him. Of course, since one of my prayer focus items is finding a job, I do still do my networking stuff, online job searches, follow-up phone calls, etc. Because I do believe that during this fast God will honor that.

Tomorrow, I'm having lunch with my friend Kevin, who has been very supportive of this whole fast thing since he's been through it himself, and he specifically picked a lunch place with an incredible salad bar so there would be no issues. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to try and talk him into making Daniel fast bread with me one evening next week. He was telling me how wonderful it is!

I do have a slight headache, but nothing too overwhelming. I noticed some leg cramps today, so I quickly began drinking a ton of water and ate a banana. One of the guidebooks I purchased said it was very important on this first day to confess everything and start the fast with a clean slate, so I have been really focusing on asking God to show me what is standing between us. And of course, I've been praying for the 12 people on my list.

Tomorrow's prayer focus is pastors. The theme is Hungering for Living Bread. I have had the pleasure of late of getting to know some of the pastors at my church better, and it's been really great. We have a new campus pastor, Scott, and he and his wife are really great people and I've enjoyed getting to know them. I also have befriended Shannon and Chris at our main campus through my volunteering. And I always pray for Kevin - our lead pastor. That's the thing in going to a huge church with 12,000 members, it takes awhile to get to know the people running things. You kind of tap into your own little groups and ministries, and that's the way you get to know people.

I'm starting a new singles group tomorrow night, it's a Christian singles book club and we are reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I'm looking forward to that. Nothing much else to say, it's been kind of a quiet day and I'm going to spend the evening reading. I was going to go to the gym, but with this headache I decided bouncing around a bunch didn't sound too appealing, so I opted for yoga and praise music at home. I'll check in tomorrow.