Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
Certainly this has been the most difficult prayer practice for me to maintain, but I have seen extraordinary answers to my prayers recently, and I can only attribute this to the fact that I am beginning to have success with integrating a fasting discipline into my days.
Christ fasted. The Old Testament is filled with stories when Israel as a nation, when individuals with special concerns were instructed to enter into days or seasons of fasting in order to see God’s hand work in remarkable ways on their behalf. If you want to convince yourself of the power of this practice, I recommend you take the concordance in your Bible, look up the words “fast” and “fasting,” write the references down, then look up each verse or event.
Once I was talking to a Christian leader about witnessing to people of a certain non-Christian faith. He said to me, “Those people can only be won to Christ through prayer and fasting. Most American Christians are too self-indulgent to fast for the souls of those who are lost.” Sadly, I think he is right.
To become successful in keeping this practice, I’ve tried to design an approach that will not set me up to fail—I am extraordinarily human and know my failings. I kept a 30-day prayer pact that included one meal a day with a regular nutritional shake in the morning so that my American food addictions would be less able to overpower my attempts. I’m not in the process of attempting to fast for 24 hours one day a week and to keep less-ambitious prayer pacts that include fasting—a week pact or ten days, for instance.
In the past, I’ve fasted from television, fasted from shopping, fasted from reading anything but Scripture. These were powerful spiritual seasons for me, and God used them to teach me remarkable lessons about myself and about His character.
Food fasting, as hard as it is for me, is becoming more and more a practice, and I am certain, in the deep places of my knowing, that this activity is making a huge difference in the way and extent and in the near-miraculous answers I am seeing to my prayers.
“Thou hast done great things, O God, who is like thee?
I will also praise thee with the harp for thy faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing praises to thee with the lyres, O Holy One of Israel.
My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to thee;
My soul also, which thou hast rescued.” —Psalm 71:18b, 22, 23
I spy God!
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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.
Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.
Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.
For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.
Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
