As Foothills wraps up our four-week church-wide fast, let me encourage you with these words from Acts 13:1-4:

Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

This fasting changed the course of history.

John Piper notes that it is almost impossible to overstate the historical importance of this moment in Antioch in the history of the world. Before this word from the Holy Spirit there seems to have been no organized mission of the church beyond the eastern seacoast of the Mediterranean. Before this, Paul had made no missionary journeys westward to Asian Minor, Greece, or Rome, or Spain. Before this Paul had not written any of his letters which were all the result of his missionary travels beginning here.

This moment of prayer and fasting resulted in a missions movement that would make Christianity the dominant religion of the Roman Empire within two and a half centuries and would yield 1.3 billion adherents of the Christian religion today with a Christian witness in virtually every country of the world. And 13 out of the 29 books of the New Testament were the result of the ministry that was launched in this moment of prayer and fasting.

So I think is it fair to say that God was pleased to make worship and prayer and fasting the launching pad for a mission that would change the course of world history.

What do the Foothills elders hope that God will “launch” through our prayer and fasting?  We hope and pray that God will launch us into our 36th year together in such a way that He uses us to usher in His Kingdom here on earth (in Albuquerque, Africa, Japan, South Asia, Iraq) as it is in heaven.  Thank you, Foothills, for joining us in this act of discipline, sacrifice, and worship.