ARME 14: Wimberely, TX - Feb 2013

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ARME Bible Camp

Martin Kim

A Deeper More Intimate Experience With God

My message this morning is titled, A Deeper, More Intimate, More Powerful Experience with God.

And if you take this message to heart and you apply it, I believe God is gonna take you higher and higher.

He's gonna bless you in ways that you cannot imagine.

Dear God, we thank you for being such an amazing God.

We thank you, Lord, for the things you have in store for each 1 of us.

Thank you for also giving us a desire for a deeper, more intimate, more powerful experience with you.

I pray, oh God, that you would speak to us, help us to understand, but help us do more than understand, help us to apply the message that we hear this morning.

About a year ago, a little more than a year ago, in October, I got this email from a friend.

Hi, Martin and Leanna, I've been thinking about you 2 for the past few weeks now.

I've been meaning to write you, but I've been so busy.

I know you go around and preach about praying, and it's so wonderful, but I wanted to ask if you also preach about fasting and praying.

Few weeks ago, I walked into my church, and on the bookshelf, I read a book out of curiosity, and afterwards, I was so very inspired.

The book is titled Fasting by Jentison Franklin.

Jentison Franklin is a Sunday church pastor of a church out in Georgia.

This book is not only inspiring but just amazing.

Pastor Franklin and his brother, since they were 18 years old, would fast constantly before they would preach.

And God opened up doors all over the world.

He fasts each year beginning January 1st through the 21st for 21 days.

He said when you dedicate the new year to God, then God blesses throughout the whole entire year.

God was blessing him so much that he started asking his church to fast with him for 21 days from January 1st through the 21st.

How popular do you think this kind of a pastor would be?

Well, God has blessed him with over 10, 000 members.

Each year, this is what his church does, and God blesses the church and the members left and right.

There were many testimonies from the book how God has blessed them with physical healing, emotional and mental healing, spiritual healing, and even stories about how God has gotten people out of serious debt.

There's a story about a single mom with a child who has leukemia.

She fasts for 21 days and wrestles with God, and after 21 days, the leukemia is gone.

Anyways, after I read the book I was so inspired that I started fasting for 21 days.

Today is my 18th day of my Daniel's fast where you just eat fruits and vegetables.

My parents were amazed at how God was answering my prayers, and they also started fasting for 21 days.

They are a week behind me right now, but God has been pouring His blessings upon our family, and we're not just talking about spiritual and physical blessings, but financial ones too.

And we've been praying for relatives who left God, who would never have come back to Him, but just 2 days ago, 1 relative called out of the blue about this very reason.

I shared this with a few of my other friends who are all my age.

We're talking about young people in their late 20s, they have started fasting and God has been answering their requests, which they had been praying for years.

I wanted to share this because I really think in the last days the only way for God's Holy Spirit to be poured is if our people fast and pray.

The 2 goes hand in hand in order for the blessings to be poured out into our lives.

He goes over verse after verse from the Bible why we must fast and pray and give for us to be able to know God's will for our lives.

I just wanted to share this because I thought you may be interested in looking into it.

Thank you and so sorry if you already knew about the book.

So 2 days later, My wife and I get on the phone with our friend Esther, and we just wanted to ask her all these questions.

I mean, if she's having this incredible experience, guess what?

If God is pouring out his spirit, pouring out his blessings, I don't want to be left behind, amen?

Now, when I got on the phone, I told her about a year earlier, almost 10 months earlier in December of 2011, God, 2010 that is, God already led me to this book that she was talking about.

My wife and I were in Indiana at the South Bend Regional Airport.

In December, we needed to catch a flight, 2 flights to go to Seattle for the holidays where my parents were living at that time.

My wife goes to the little bookstore, and she's reading this book on fasting by Jentison Franklin.

So I picked it up and started reading it.

But then we had to board our flight, and so I ended up buying that small little book, and on the 2 flights and the layover in between, I ended up finishing that whole book.

And I was just like so amazed by the stories I was reading in that book, and I said, God, I want you fast.

But I said, God, you know the struggle that I have.

My struggle is that if I lose weight, it takes me forever to gain weight.

I know you all wish you had that struggle.

The next morning, I'm having my morning devotions.

I'm going through the Amazing Facts Bible reading plan, and the 1 story that I read out of the Gospels is the 1 story where Jesus highlights the importance of prayer and fasting, where he says, this kind cannot come out but by prayer and fasting.

And I believe God has spoken to me, saying, I want you to begin fasting.

So on occasion, I'd fast 1 day a week, do a water fast.

But after getting this email, I just felt like God wanted me to take this to a whole different level.

Anyways, When I told Esther that I had already read this book, you know what she said to me?

By the way, in the last days, we're going to have people coming up to us saying that to us, right?

What, you knew these things were going to come upon the surface?

And so anyways, since that experience, you know, wherever I go, if I have only 1 opportunity to preach, it will be this message.

Because in as little as 3 weeks, I've seen God just turn people's lives upside down if they will take the challenge of doing the Daniel fast.

Open with me to Matthew chapter 6 verse 1.

In the greatest sermon ever preached, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus actually mentions fasting.

Let's begin in verse 1 of Matthew chapter 6.

Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them, otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Therefore, if you do a charitable deed, is that what it says?

No, it says when you do a charitable deed, Do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may have glory from men.

Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.

As followers of Christ, We are expected to do charitable deeds, amen?

It's not an option, it's not if you do charitable deeds.

Jesus talks about doing charitable deeds, and then he goes on to talk about prayer.

And in verse 5, once again, it's not an if you pray, but it's when you pray.

You shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men.

Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward." Jesus talks about charitable giving, he talks about the importance of praying, and then What does Jesus go on to talk about?

Moreover, if you fast, wouldn't it be great if Jesus just made this 1 optional?

If you fast, Jesus says, Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to be fasting.

But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." Now when is the last time you've heard a message about the importance of fasting?

You know, here in America, we don't really talk much about fasting.

I mean, you're not very, you won't be very popular if you talk about that because, guess what?

A Deeper More Intimate Experience With God

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Related

The Health Message

The Power of Fasting

23m

It Happened Because of Prayer

Give Him Not Silence

42m

Alms, Prayers and Fasting

40m

Going the Distance

8. Finishing Strong

50m

Creation- Genesis as the Foundation

53m

Morning Devotions: In HIS Presence

Healing and Joy in HIS Presence

37m

Righteousness By Faith

5. The Woman of Romans 7

1h

The How and Why of God's Sanctioned Fasts

03 Zeal, But Not According To Knowledge

52m

Crisis At the Close: The Mob

47m

Back to Basics

Back to Basics: Morning Manna

30m

Meeting the Master Gardener

The Sower & the Seed

55m

Flight Plan

3. Destination

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine