The Week of Santa Ana Winds...

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year.  This is the week that my beloved church partakes of an annual corporate week long fast to bring in the new year.   I love my church...i love the leadership, the people, the worship, the teaching...i love the way my church loves.  And i am so blessed to be a part of a church that while remaining culturally relevant does not deny the importance of biblical teachings that sometimes can be somewhat unpopular...like fasting.  

Truthfully, in the past, I've always avoided fasts if at all possible.  In fact i can remember several times when those around me would find a need to fast...and i would just avoid people for the following set amount of time so that they wouldn't know how spiritually depleted i felt that i was. Because if there is something i hate giving up, it is definitely food :)

But over the past year i've begun to fall in love with this discipline.  About this time last year i really started learning about the importance of it...and why it can be such a power in our lives.  And as i began to exercise it, i discovered that i really and truly loved it!  

It's not necessarily the giving up food part that i loved (obviously) but that i began to actually find out what the bible is talking about when it says that "His power is made perfect in our weakness"  Because it turns out that when we come to the end of ourselves, that it is usually there that we discover God's all-sufficiency.  And guys, i definitely am a better person when i am made weak and He is made strong.  Less of me is always a good thing :)

A friend and I were talking about this fast over a cup of coffee at the Brewery [i obviously did not give up caffeine this week :) ] and we began to discuss the things that we were desperate to see God do this week.  The things that we are having trouble believing Him for, but are SO needing His hand on.  The things within us that we are longing for Him to change in us.  And as we shared with each other the ways in which we were desperate to see God move this week you could almost feel a certain hope rise up at the table.  Because we've both seen the power of fasting.  The power of being made weak so that He can be made strong.  And it's like we both began to sense that huge things could be set in motion this week...and that it was really okay to believe Him for really really big things.

One of my favorite movies is The Holiday.  I'm not sure what it is about this movie that has caused so many to love it so much...i myself saw it in the theater an astounding four times before it was released on dvd...not to mention the countless times i've watched it sense then.  Ridiculous, i know.  But still true.

Part of this movie takes place in L.A. over Christmas.  And during this time Jack Black's character talks about the Santa Ana winds several times.  He mentions once that legend has it that when these winds blow that anything can happen...all bets are off.

And that is how i feel about this week.  I know that God responds to our desperate cries to Him.  And i genuinely feel that not only am i at a pivotal moment in my life where i am needing God to intervene/direct on my behalf, but also that He is wanting to do some incredible things throughout the earth.  And hopefully these two things will be intertwined because i yearn to be used by Him throughout the world...to do big things for His name..to tell people about His glory...to see them set free...to show them the love that He's so graciously lavished upon me.

And why not start that this week?  The week of the Santa Ana Winds...anything can happen.