We are living in days that are filled with great tension. There are so many different things happening at the same time that continue to contribute to the hostility that is violently brewing within our society. So many people are all talking at the same time, and if you just don’t know any better, it is incredibly difficult to try and identify who the right voice is that you are supposed to be subscribed to in this hour.

Political narratives are raging. Social media talking points seem to abound. Mainstream media and news outlets are jockeying for leverage on who is actually going to control the narrative in our nation. It has all just gotten way out of hand, and in somewhat of a seemingly short period of time at that.

There are buzzwords and phrases that completely blow up in conversations with folks these days. Joe Biden. Donald Trump. Democrats. Republicans. Police, Blue Lives. Black Lives Matter. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Jacob Blake. COVID. Economic Crisis. Masks. Protests. Riots. Antifa. Anarchy. These are just to name a few. These are topics that are very real for people in the day that we are living in. Depending on your slant in any one of these given conversations you could potentially need to be ready to engage in a heated exchange.

In the midst of it all, what should be our go-to? How should you handle the days that we are living in? How should you allow your heart to process all of the information that is being distributed throughout our nation on a moment to moment basis? These are all wonderful questions to consider if you haven’t already. There is a lot riding on the line with potentially not having a great answer to these, or strategy in place at all for how to posture your life in moments such as this one.

A lot riding on the line? Yes. Things such as rest, peace, joy, stability…sanity!

With that said, I am glad that we have not been left to our devices; not as believers at least. We are not like the rest of the world. The lot that we have been left to should not look like frantically scrambling around all the time over the news media’s latest updates. Do we want to be informed, sure. It can’t be expected that we are going to bury our heads in the sand. But the point is that we are not to rely upon human insights or wisdom alone. People are communicating a lot of information in these days and it is imperative that as believers we know how to sort through all of what is being channeled in our direction.

As believers in Jesus, we have been filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Because we have been filled with God’s Spirit, Paul exhorts us that we have access to the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). This means that we have been granted access to God’s counsel (Jeremiah 23:18). Even through dreams God makes His desires known (Psalm 16:7). We have confidence that God wants to inform us of what He’s doing (Amos 3:7).

These are incredible truths that need to saturate our hearts. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). We cannot allow our lives to simply be formed by all of the information that is coming our way day to day. In fact, that is the goal of the information that is being sent your way every day—it wants to form you, your opinions, your passions, your behaviors. But we have already sought to establish the point that you do not have to simply succumb to the narrative that is being pumped to you on a daily basis.

Fasting and praying has always helped in order to sift through all of what is happening in the heart. Fasting and praying is a beautiful gift from God in order to better help us come to the determination of what is God’s thoughts within us and what is our thoughts. There can be difficulty in actually trying to determine which one is which. And, if you aren’t careful, and you end up on the side of the spectrum where you’ve gotten into the narratives and passions that they employ, you could very easily end up believing that God was in something when in actuality it was your own passions and preferences that had been influenced and shaped by the source of the information that you had been giving yourself to. This becomes problematic over time.

Let’s restate something, because it is really good: You have access to the mind of Christ. You do. Not just all the really awesome Christians that you know. Not just the people in ministry that may immediately come to mind. You do. He has given you access to His mind. He has made his heart accessible to you. Wow, this is a really big deal. We have been left without excuse. God has opened Himself up to us. He has let us in. Or, I guess, better put, He has put Himself inside of us.

Too many are becoming casualties of the warfare that is being wielded right now. You don’t have to be. You don’t have to die on any one of the hostile battlefields in our day. In fact, you don’t have to become a statistic, you don’t have to just conform, and you don’t have to find a safe place to hide. You can choose to look to God. You can choose to run into Him (Psalm 18:10).

I would encourage you to spend time fasting and praying. If you could find no other reason to do so, although I could obviously offer to you many, I would recommend engaging God in fasting and praying so that you can process all of the thoughts of your heart with Him. In that place, with Him, you can find out how much of what you are thinking, lines up with what it is that He is thinking and doing.

Here’s a helpful tidbit before we close: there are times that you can be very passionate about something and be totally wrong. Passion should not always be considered to be truth. And, agreement about something that is not true doesn’t all of a sudden make it true. It just makes more than one person wrong. The truth needs to shape our perspectives. Making sure that we are abiding well will help our minds and hearts to be shaped by the truth, and then our perspectives can be formed.

These are GREAT days to fast and pray.