Keep Our Hearts Burning

“Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast." - Matthew 9:15

“Did not our heart burn within us...while He opened the Scriptures to us?” - Luke 24:32

The IHOPKC community has done a “Global Bridegroom Fast" for the past 20 years, setting apart 3 days at the beginning of each month to seek the Lord. As IHOPU students, we were invited to join the community in these monthly fasts. There are different kinds of fasts, such as the intercessory fast in Isaiah 58. The Bridegroom fast is basically the “missing Jesus” fast based on Matthew 9:15. If the bridegroom is here, we don't fast. But if the bridegroom is gone, there is an appropriate response—fasting. We fast out of a lovesick, yearning heart. This fast is about living with the day of the Lord and day of the gladness of His heart in view. 

As I joined the community in the Global Bridegroom Fast for the first time, I found myself throughout the 3 days tempted to spend my prayer time in intercession, as if to “make the most use” out of my fast (although it is good and very important to pray for things, and there is definitely a time for this). But I find myself fighting against the idea of fasting solely just to love and miss Jesus more. In my mind, I want to get something out of it in the natural – whether it’s salvation for my family, or for God’s mercy in our nation and government – especially in this hour of turmoil, unrest, and the imminent danger of losing our nation to the powers of darkness. 

One reason why we so often lose excitement and passion over the beauty of God, even though He is SO beautiful, is that our hearts naturally get bored of beauty. David Sliker spoke about this in class, and about how he loves to bring other people to places he has already been – because it allows him to experience those places with fresh excitement. It is also why some IHOPU graduates go on to teach interns, because it allows them to “live vicariously” through those students who are experiencing certain truths of God for the first time. But the danger, as Sliker said, is that we can begin to mistake this kind of excitement for active intimacy with Jesus.

Hearing these anecdotes around the truth that our hearts are so prone to growing tired of beauty, I felt a sense of relief. Many times I struggle with whispers of condemnation that I am not the joyful, overflowing Christian that I am “supposed” to be. But the conversation that is so freely spoken in the IHOP culture is that of the dull and cold heart needing to see Jesus rightly. It is a condemnation-free admittance and acknowledgement that we are all sinners with hearts that so easily grow dull and disconnected from the One who is so able to satisfy us. 

"If your heart doesn’t burn for Him, work at it until it does. It’s hard to start a fire, it’s easy to keep it burning." - Bill Johnson

As I have watched over the past few months so many ministries and friendship groups around me and from afar slowly, like dominos, falling to division over political and racial issues — groups with such solid relationship and a culture of love and honor, that I would never think could become divided in such a time as this — I’ve found myself wondering, “What’s going on? How do we respond?” We are approaching a great falling away in the faith, where those who have previously loved Jesus wholeheartedly and followed Him will find their hearts growing cold toward others, and then ultimately towards Him. Where small accusations will, like poison, spread through hearts like cancer. In this I realized that loving Jesus and missing Him is exactly what we need to do in this hour. Because the greatest danger is not that we lose our nation to Marxism, it is that our love grow cold toward God and toward one another. This is actually the greatest danger. It is in the context of this heart tendency toward coldness that the Bridegroom Fast makes complete sense. We are in an hour where loving Jesus is the wisest thing to do. To keep our hearts on that altar of repentance, with a continual turning toward Him, asking Him to make our hearts soft because they are so prone toward coldness, bitterness, rage and rampant sin if not kept in the Lord. 

We as a body are called, no matter how much the nations rage around us, to continue giving our minds, hearts, and attention to loving Jesus. Doing the push-ups in prayer to love those who hurt and betray us. Meditating on the meekness, tenderness, and mercy of the Lord. Burning for Him first and foremost.