Forty Days of Fire

We are only ten days away from Pentecost Sunday, which means we are in our final days of Forty Days of Fire. The final objective is to fill the sanctuary for Pentecost Sunday while expecting a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Ghost and Fire. This has been a time of prayer, fasting and Bible reading.  We had a special focus for each week of fasting:

Week 1 - Media fast.
Week 2 - Meal fast.
Week 3 - Meaningful fast.  This was a fast that each person did on their own.  Something that we eat, drink, or do that we would miss the most.
Week 4 - Daniel fast.  We are currently on the Daniel fast as found in Daniel 10:3, "I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth."  This will conclude on Saturday after our church prayer.  (We only get the building every other Saturday, so this will be our final time for a group prayer meeting.)

Pastor McGriffin is currently in the Philippines, so Les taught the Tuesday night Bible study.  He taught on the Feast of Pentecost as found in Leviticus 23.  According to Judaism 101, Pentecost, known as Shavu'ot celebrates the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.  "The period from Passover to Shavu'ot is a time of great anticipation. We count each of the days from the second day of Passover to the day before Shavu'ot, 49 days or 7 full weeks, hence the name of the festival. The counting reminds us of the important connection between Passover and Shavu'ot: Passover freed us physically from bondage, but the giving of the Torah on Shavu'ot redeemed us spiritually from our bondage to idolatry and immorality." 

It is no coincidence that Pentecost is consider the birthday of Judaism and Acts chapter 2 records that the birthday of the New Testament church took place on the day of Pentecost.  We had a great service a few weeks ago to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and now we are looking forward to a great outpouring of His Spirit on Pentecost Sunday!