Thinking Long and Fasting

I continue sharing thoughts from The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson.  In this post, we look at the discipline of having a long term perspective and fasting.

Prayer is the inheritance we receive and the legacy we leave. 

One dimension of thinking long is thinking different, and prayer is the key to both. Prayer doesn't just change circumstances; more important, it changes us. It doesn't just alter external realities; it alters internal realities so that we see with spiritual eyes. It gives us peripheral vision. It corrects our nearsightedness. It enables us to see beyond our circumstances, beyond ourselves, beyond time. 

I'm not talking about the kind of prayer that is the first thing on the agenda; I'm talking about the kind of prayer that is the agenda. 

Everything we see and hear is priming us in a positive or negative way. That's one reason I believe in starting the day in God's Word. It doesn't just prime our minds; it also primes our hearts... Prayer is priming. Prayer puts us in a spiritual frame of mind. Prayer helps us see and seize the God-ordained opportunities that are all around us all the time. 

Fasting has a way of fast-tracking our prayers. 

Prayer is the way we escape the gravitational pull of the flesh and enter God's orbit. It's the way we escape our atmosphere and enter His space. It's the way we overcome our human limitations and enter the extra-dimensional realm where all things are possible.