Leader of Intercessors says God refashioning Christians
Religion Today, January 6, 2000
God is patiently refashioning Christians, like a careful potter reshaping clay, says Gary Bergel, president of Intercessors for America.
The changes may occur slowly, but the potter’s wheel is turning, Bergel says. His Virginia-based group has helped lead prayer movements and evangelistic efforts in the United States for 25 years.
“Having been a potter, I can speak from experience that the process of correctly centering a rough lump of prepared clay, raising the mass, avoiding forming deadly air pockets, removing debris, and then opening and shaping a useful vessel is not accomplished without time and careful extended effort,” Bergel told Religion Today.
Church needs to be ‘centered’
The church needs to be “centered” again on Christ after succumbing to worldly distractions, and its spiritual “debris” must be removed, Bergel says. “Spiritual pride, carnality, arrogance, excess, extravagance, and materialistic, worldly ways” characterize many Christians today, he said.
The church also is divided, Bergel said, but divisions are crumbling in the potter’s hands. This is happening “across the spectrum of the church.”
God is giving Christians in many parts of the body of Christ a desire for holiness and intimacy with Him, Bergel said.
As one indication of this broad interest in prayer, fasting, and spiritual renewal, Bergel notes that the 50,000 free newsletters IFA distributes monthly wind up in the hands of individuals who belong to quite different Christian traditions.
About half the churches receiving the newsletter are part of a denomination, “from monastic orders and convents to Orthodox and Roman Catholic and Protestant,” Bergel said. The rest go to nondenominational groups, including independent, charismatic, and Pentecostal churches, and house churches.
Network of thousands
IFA is part of a network of Christians who fast and pray on the first Friday of each month. No one knows their exact number, but it is thought to be in the tens of thousands. Over the last 25 years, many people have fasted nearly a year of their lives, Bergel said, while, in prayer, they have “cried out to God on behalf of the church, our nation, and their leaders.”
The “recovery” of the discipline of fasting, dormant in the church for centuries, is a wonderful development, Bergel says. He traces the modern revival of interest in fasting to the charismatic renewal of the 1960s, when “the Holy Spirit was drawing the church’s attention back to these areas of truth and biblical lifestyle.”
The late Rus Walton of the Plymouth Rock Foundaiton, Bible teacher Derek Prince and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ played key roles in reviving interest in fasting, he said. Bright has invested his $1.1 million Templeton award into the effort, initiating annual 3-day fasting and prayer observances, and has called for 2 million North American Christians to fast for 40 days by the end of this year.
A convert to fasting
Other leaders routinely encourage fasting. “I can remember discussing fasting with U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson when I moved to Washington almost 20 years ago,” Bergel said. Halverson “did not necessarily feel ‘food fasting’ was part of New Testament church discipline. He would point us toward the truth that ‘Love is the perfect fast.’ But, by the time he died a few years back, pastor Halverson was a very strong advocate for fasting in the life of an authentic believer.”
Fasting is a “biblically appointed way of ‘humbling ourselves,'” Bergel said. It helps in maintaining a vital relationship with Christ, in finding direction and a clear spiritual focus, in discerning what God is calling a person to do, and not being confused by “fleshly motivations.”