end of day eighteen

End of day eighteen

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. (Matthew 4:1-2)

A friend and her grandson came over for supper tonight. He has just been released from a juvenile facility and is going home for the first time in eight years. His story is a pathetic one of a government institution running roughshod over individuals. I believe he was falsely imprisoned under the guise of being a troubled child and undergone horrendous things in the interim.

I am so glad they are together and are going home. He was excited and upbeat and happy.

When she came in, she was rather startled at the weight loss I have undergone since the fast began. I do not see it, but she surely did. Ella says she sees it too. I know that my stomach is gone and I recognize that it have lost – at least by our bathroom scale – over 50 pounds. I don’t understand how I can lose so much so quickly, but Ella says I look as though I have been sick.

She tells me that my facial fat and puffiness is gone and I just look different. After they told me these things, I realized that my hands were definitely thinner. They swell because of the way I sleep with the face mask at night: in one position all night long.  It puts me so far out that I never move.

But I do wish that my digestive system would shut up and leave me alone. Eighteen days and still. Today I have been feeling fairly faint and tonight I had my first real hunger. After all, I am starving.

But I want to hear God more than I want to eat. I need to hear his voice, to hear him tell me something. It isn't that I want to see him on a mountain or something like that. It is just that I want to hear what he has to say to me. This started out as a fast for the Foursquare Church, but it has kind of morphed into a need to hear what he has to say.

I continue to pray for the things that our president, Glenn Burris, asked us to pray for, but I have found the need to hear things myself. I have felt this pull for a few years and have never given in to it.

Now I have and I will be hanged if I quit now.

And I wait.

Father God, I ask you for power to our missionaries, to missionaries for churches all over the world of all kind and denomination. Give them power and strength. Give them your presence in their livers and bless them. Bless also the people they have brought to you and keep them safe in this many time antagonistic situation in which they live. Hear me, I pray. Bless Marji and David. I praise you. Amen.