The podcast discusses the importance of consecration and fasting in seeking God's presence and guidance. It emphasizes the need to set apart time to focus on God and to remove distractions. The speaker shares personal experiences and explains the concept of first fruit offering in relation to fasting. The purpose of the 21-day fast is to seek God for the new season, intercede for Honduras, the church, and families, and address the influence of principalities and powers in different spheres of society. Each day of the fast will focus on a specific sphere of influence.
Welcome to CCI Fellowship's Podcast, thank you for joining us. At CCI Fellowship, we are reaching God, reaching each other, and reaching our community. We pray that this week's message challenges you in your walk with the Lord, causes you to grow in your faith, and encourages you in your love for the Word of God. So open your Bibles to Joel chapter 1. The title for tonight is Consecration for Manifestation. Consecration for Manifestation. And I actually have two opening scriptures for you.
Joel chapter 1 verse 14, and then Acts 13 verse 2, and then we'll pray. So if you want to open to both of them so that you can flip over, that's fine. Joel chapter 1 verse 14 and Acts 13 verse 2. Joel 1 says, Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. And then Acts chapter 13 verse 2, it says, As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.
That's great. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for your presence. We thank you for your holiness and your faithfulness. We thank you, Lord God, that our lives are in your hands, that our steps are ordered by you. And we thank you, Father, that whenever something comes up, whenever circumstances arise that cause us to wonder if you're in it or are we in the right place, Lord God, Father, may we come back to your faithfulness and come back to the truth that you have ordered our steps.
Give us the strength, Lord God, to walk in them. Give us the confidence and peace, Father, that when we are, that no matter what arises, we are safe in the middle of your will. So, Father, we pray that as we look into your word tonight, as we talk about this fast that you have called us to, that you have asked us to consecrate ourselves for, I pray, Lord God, that over these next weeks, Lord God, Father, that you would open our minds and open our hearts, Lord, to receive from you, that you would give us strength, Lord God, as we bring our bodies into a place of affliction, Lord, by withholding things that we desire, by sacrificing those things to you.
Father, I pray that these days would not seem long, but Lord God, the interaction with you, Father, would be so tangible and so constant, Lord God, that we forget about what we have given up, because our hearts burn so much to be with you. God, we praise you and we thank you, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Now, the word consecration, or yeah, consecration, means to be set apart. It typically refers to things considered holy or sacred.
You have it here in this prophecy that Joel gives, and of course, Joel prophesied during a time when the Israelites, when the people of God had turned their back on him, and a lot of Joel's prophecy is judgment. During this time, he's speaking to the people to turn from what they have been involved in, to turn from the false gods that they have worshipped, to turn from the things that have distracted them from the true and living God.
He says, consecrate a fast. In other words, look at this as a time of being set apart for a holy purpose, a time for afflicting your flesh. A fast is not supposed to be easy. A fast is not supposed to be enjoyable. Wow, fasting is so hard. Fasting is not fun. No, it's not. It's not supposed to be, because it is taking what our flesh wants, depriving our flesh from those desires so that our spirit and our soul can feast on a time of interaction with God.
While our physical body is hungering, while our physical body is suffering, our soul and our spirit are being raised up and being strengthened and encouraged and drawn closer to God. Fasting is not, as I've said before, a hunger strike to get God's attention. It's not designed for us to get God's attention. It's designed for Him to get our attention. If we don't consecrate a fast, if we don't consecrate the time, if we don't take the time and set ourselves apart to pay attention, then He will still be fighting for our attention.
The Holy Spirit will be speaking, Oh, you know, I have a hard time hearing the voice of the Spirit. Okay, what other distractions are there? What are the other things that you're listening to? What are the other voices you're listening to? What are the other things that you're putting into your mind? And so this time of fasting is a time to say, I'm going to set all of that aside, all of the distractions aside, and I'm just going to wait on the Lord and focus on listening to His voice.
Well, what if He doesn't speak right away? You keep waiting and you keep waiting. He will speak. It was before that we've done a fast, we've done a couple 40-day fasts, we've done a couple three-week fasts like we're doing, and we all know that I love food. We all know that I love sweets, and going into this one fast, it was, I don't know, five or six days before I actually felt hungry, which showed how much sugar and other things had been built up in my system that it didn't miss it for those days.
Like six days in, I got really cranky. But those first five days, I was fine, because there was so much built up in me. And as we move into this fast, just keep on. One of these days, it might hit you harder, but don't give up. The reward of fasting is that intimacy and closeness with God. Now, in Acts, it says that as they ministered to the Lord and fasted. I love this phrase, because what stood out to me as I was going over my notes before coming upstairs, as they ministered to the Lord.
Yes, they were fasting. Yes, they had consecrated themselves apart, but they ministered to the Lord. It wasn't just, I'm coming to you, God, for what you can do to me, what you can do in me, what you can do for me. It was their sacrifice to Him, their worship to Him, their ministering to Him that set them in the right place, along with fasting, so that they were able to hear what God had to say to them.
Thus, the title, Consecration for Manifestation. They had consecrated themselves to God, and God answered. And this is where he said, now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. We are, in this time, setting ourselves aside so that God can manifest His presence in us and through us. I'm not one that enjoys the idea of fasting. It only comes when God says. And so a couple months ago, I had already been feeling and beginning to sense that God was calling us to a time of fasting, but I didn't have a context for it, and I didn't understand what the purpose was for it yet.
But then when we were in a leadership meeting with Pastor Saul, he said that he had been feeling that it was time to take the church into this practice of fasting. And so he's decided to start with the leadership and start with the new intercessors team before having the whole congregation do it, because they've not done that before. However, we have. And so when he said that, I was like, ah, there's the confirmation. There's the word from the Lord that says, yes, let's do this as a congregation and to seek God for His voice.
And there's three purposes that we're going to have for this 21 days of fasting. The first purpose is to seek God at the beginning of this new season. And the word that came to me was sowing into what is to come. That as we give ourselves in this time of fasting, as we consecrate this time to Him, it is an offering to God. It is, as you could say, a tithe to God of what is to come.
You're all stuck in here. It's a time of sowing. So in the Old Testament, they were told to give not just their tithes and offerings, but a first fruit offering. So what's the difference between a tithe and a first fruit offering? Well, a tithe is 10% of what has come in. But a first fruit offering is described as a tenth of what the first part was that came in. So a tithe is like after it has all been gathered.
And if we take the example of the harvest, it would be a 10% of everything gleaned during the whole period of harvest. But a first fruit was taken out of the very first day of harvest. And it was still a tenth of what was collected that day. And it was, give this tenth, give this offering in anticipation of what was to come. You see, when we tithe, we already know what's there. But the first fruit is, we don't know what else is coming.
Taking a tenth of that first part, believing for what is to come. And I believe that this fast that God has called us to is our first fruit offering to him in regards to this time that he has brought us here into this sanctuary. The second thing, and this goes along with the purpose for which Pastor Saul called the fast for the leadership and the intercessors, is to intercede for Honduras, for the church, for our families, and to do so in unity with them.
This fast is centered around what can be called the seven mountains of influence. These are seven spheres or mountains on which pretty much every society is built. These influences are present, and it's not that the sphere or the mountain is good or bad, it just is. The good or bad is, which is the God who is seated on top of that mountain? Ephesians says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age.
And over these different sectors of society, over these different areas, are principalities and powers. And I think that it's not too far of a stretch to just say, look at what's going on in life. And you can understand that there are principalities and powers. We're not wrestling against people. We're not fighting against individuals who have this in their mind or that in their mind. We're fighting against the kingdom of darkness. And so over these 21 days, we'll be focusing each day, as you have seen Adriana's messages the past couple of days, we'll be focusing each day on different spheres of influence.
So in Deuteronomy 7, we find a basis for this. Deuteronomy 7, verse 1 and 2. It says, When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you. Now we can look at principalities and powers and we can think, well, this is Satan and his kingdom.
They're pretty powerful. Yes, they are. But Jesus said, I have given you authority over all of the power of darkness. Authority trumps power all the time. Verse 2 says, And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them. God goes on to tell them that they're not to intermarry with them, they're not to learn any of their customs, they're not to adopt any of their practices, they are to utterly destroy them.
But sadly, this is exactly what happened to the Israelites. Even though God had said this in Deuteronomy, we find in our opening scripture in Joel that they had just done that. That is exactly what they allowed to happen. They intermarried with these people, they learned their customs, thus they were drawn away to worship their false gods, and they had turned their back on the one true God. But he warns them here, these are the seven nations that are greater and mightier than you, but you will defeat them.
And I don't have time to go into every detail of it. What we will send out each evening for the next day has more information about the relationship of each of these tribes to the sphere of influence that they're over, but we need to, as the people of God, pray for this nation. In Revelation, I've said this before, I've referenced this verse before, it talks about how the angels carry with them bowls of incense, and these bowls are full of the prayers of the saints.
Well, the prayers of the saints don't become incense if the saints don't pray, right? It seems pretty logical. So if we are not praying, then the bowl for Honduras isn't getting filled. But when it is, it burns as an incense before the Father, and that incense moves him to respond on behalf of the nation. So the first day, the topic we prayed over was communications and media, the messages that go out through the different wavelengths, the different ways that people receive information.
It is a very powerful, powerful thing that can be used to get out the Word of God, or it can be used to get out the Word that brings people into enmity, to be enemies of God. When COVID hit, there was more being done through media for the Kingdom of God. All of a sudden, all these churches that couldn't figure out how to livestream and how to do different things are all of a sudden, all over the world, the Word of God is being preached in social media in ways that people can access.
It can be done. They can be defeated, and these can be used for Christ. Day two is the sphere of the government. Day three is the sphere of education. Day four is the sphere of economy. If you were to pick three that are the most influential out of these seven, those would be the three, government, education, and economy. Government makes the laws, education indoctrinates the people, and the economy keeps things moving. Whatever is winning, whatever is in control, that's where the money is going to go to.
That's what the money is going to be used for. Thus, we pray so often against corruption. Money follows power. Day five is the sphere of religion. So many false religions, so many false gods that are being worshipped. I remember a Carmen song, I don't remember what it was called, but anyway, there's a line in it, it's this picture of Satan talking with a demon, and the demon has given Satan a report, and he says, we're finally catching up, and he starts giving a list of how many people are in what religion, and how many people are in Christianity, how many people are in God's family, and just with the different false religions that he mentioned, it outnumbered God's people.
It doesn't have to be that way. We can outnumber them, and God will advance his kingdom in this nation. Remember that God said that Honduras will be a nation that fears the Lord, and it will be known internationally as a nation that fears the Lord. Not just something internally, not just something symbolic, but that it would be known publicly as a nation that fears the Lord, and so we need to pray that these principalities and powers that rule over the religious beliefs of people are cast down.
Day six is the sphere of entertainment, day seven, the sphere of the family. This is day three of the fast, and so our focus today is on education. The third purpose for this fast is personal connection and direction, so the first purpose was to seek God at the beginning of this new season, sowing into what is to come. The second is to intercede for Honduras, the church, and our families in unity with the other leadership and intercessors of the church.
The third is personal connection and direction. We've talked before about differences between a personal fast and a corporate fast, especially given the scriptures where Jesus says, if you fast, do it in secret, don't tell anybody. It really has to do with the heart of the matter, Jesus always dealt with the heart, because there were those who would fast, but then they would make a show of it. Jesus said, go wash your face, don't look like you have afflicted yourself.
And so there's a tendency to take that verse and be like, well, I don't want to talk about what I'm fasting, but that's in the case of a personal fast. We are corporately fasting, and so we should look for encouragement from each other to stay faithful to this fast. So it is okay to talk about what you are fasting and to share with each other, as long as you're like, well, I'm fasting more than you are.
I'm afflicting my soul more than you are. Your soul might need more affliction than somebody else's. Let's just be honest. To each his own. God makes the decision. That's why I encourage you to allow the Holy Spirit to tell you what to fast and what he would ask you to give up during this time. We do encourage you that it includes some form of food, because that affliction of the soul and of the desires is greater when it comes to just our health.
It's amazing how God sustains us through times of fasting when we are depriving our bodies of what it actually needs, not just what it wants, but what it needs. I can tell you from personal experience, it's amazing how he can help go through the day or go through multiple days. Jesus said at the well, when he had met the woman there and she had gone into the city, his disciples came to him and brought him food.
He said, I have food that you don't need, that you don't know of. Of course, they said among themselves, where did he get food, because we were supposed to bring him food. Did somebody else give him food to eat? Finally, he said, my sustenance is to do the will of the one who sent me. That is a powerful verse. If we just grab a hold of that verse and allow the Holy Spirit to make it real to us, to bring revelation to us, these times of when we get so overwhelmed and we just want to quit and we just say, well, I can't, I can't do it, I just can't anymore, no.
You can't in you of yourself, but your sustenance is to do the will of the one who sent you. He will give you the strength. Even during a time of corporate fasting, there's going to be that personal interaction with God, because what we want God to do in the corporate setting is very much individually. If he works in us individually, the fruit of that will come out in how he works through us corporately. Does that make sense? So ask God, what do you want me to put my faith out there for? What have I given up on believing that you want to revive in me during this time? What do you want to start in me? What work do you want to start in me through this fast? Or what do you want to move forward in me? Is there something that God has been doing in you that he wants to take this time of fasting and accelerate it and produce in you something that you have been waiting for? It's a time of asking.
It's a time of listening. It's not a time of demanding, unless it's in point two and we're commanding the devil to leave. We can demand that. We have the authority to demand that. But all in all, God's sovereignty reigns supreme. We have to allow him to answer in the way that he knows is best. So we make our petitions, we pray our strong prayers of faith, we move mountains from here to there, cast them into the sea, but ultimately we say, Lord, let your will be done in the way that you want it to be done and in the timing that you want it to be done.
This is a time of sowing, no matter what it looks like. We are sowing into the Spirit, into God, for ourselves personally, for our nation, and for this congregation. Amen? When God was talking to them in Deuteronomy, he said, you're going to ask, is this even possible that these seven nations, that we can defeat them? Are you going to, is it really possible? And God goes on to answer that question for himself. He says in verse 17, if you should say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt.
The great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out, so shall the Lord your God do to all the people of whom you are afraid. Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left to hide themselves from you are destroyed. You shall not be terrified of them, for the Lord your God, the great awesome God, is among you.
And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you, but the Lord your God will deliver them over to you and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. And he will deliver their kings into your hands and you will destroy their name from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them all.
That's a pretty good promise. That's a pretty definitive result. When you say in your heart, I don't know, know that the Lord is with you and that he will bring it to pass. We can look at the difficulties in our own lives. We can look at the trials and the blatant corruption that happens in society. And we can really get discouraged and think, I don't know that this will ever change. It only looks like it's going to get worse.
Hey, in fact, the Bible says in the end times, it's going to be a lot worse than it is right now. So why should we pray these things? Because Jesus told us to continue to ask, continue to seek, continue to knock. In 1 John 5, verse 4 says, For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. Are you born of God? Amen. Is anyone here that's not born of God yet? If we're born of God, we overcome the world.
And it says, And this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. This is the victory, our faith. Our faith in the God who is the God above all others. Let's stand together. Lindsay, if you can bring your team. So those are our purposes. As a seed towards what is to come in the context of this new season. To intercede for our nation that we love. And to ask God to do in us personally what he needs to do.
And bring us into a place of deeper faith and deeper devotion to him. An opportunity in hearing his voice. An opportunity to get everything else out of the way so that it is muted. So that we can hear him clearly. So I encourage you, if you have not started yet, or if you have not made a decision yet on what it is you're going to pass, ask the Holy Spirit. Pray tonight. And allow him to lead you so that we can join in this together as one united body.
Amen? Amen. Thank you for listening to this week's podcast. If you are ever in the Tegucigalpa area and looking for an English-speaking congregation, please join us on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the main auditorium of Iglesia CCI in Colonial Trapichi just off Boulevard Cuyapa near Una. If you would like prayer or more information about our church, contact us at fellowships.cci at gmail.com. That's fellowships.cci at gmail.com. Or follow us on social media. We hope to see you or hear from you soon.
Blessings. Amen.
