The Breaking Free From Financial Bondage Fast Wednesday, February 13 - Sunday, March 31, 2013 Pastor Ronnie D. Joyner, D.Min The Philadelphia Fellowship (Baptist) Chesapeake, VA February 19, 2013 is Ash Wednesday. It is the beginning of an Anointed 40 Day Journey for each of us who embrace the Life and Legacy of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives. Ash Wednesday begins the 40 Day journey toward the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This 40 Day Journey is the descriptive period of temperance of our temples through alignment with His Standard. Whether after baptism and the 40 day, 40 night wilderness experience found in Matthew 4:1-11 or Calvary and counting back 39 days to Luke 9:51, the challenge of our 2013 40 Day Lent Period shall be life changing. While we shall Partner with Our Lord to realize the blessings for the wholistic pursuit of our Lord's transformation in our lives, Philadelphia Fellowship let's understand the 13 Year Goal of acquiring our debt free Church and Ministry Center. A debt free church must be secured from our debt free Lord who has blessed us to become His debt free People. Our emphasis in this 2013 Lenten Season is A Breaking Free From Financial Bondage Fast.
In that the 40 Day Period of Lent is associated with prayer, fasting, moderation and self denial, all acquired by our Lord, Many ask during Lent, What Are You Giving Up? Collectively, join me in answering, I'm Giving Up Debt~Sinful Debt, Financial Debt, Immoral Debt, Psychological Debt, Physical Debt and yielding myself to this Debt Free Declaration which is fully covered in Luke 4:16-19: "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord' " KJV.
The Poor in the Luke text is pto-khos’ and emphasizes distressed and straitened circumstances. The US Census Bureau recently reported that the poverty rate — the percentage of people living in poverty is about 39.8 million Americans. With the U.S. population being approximately 309,162,581 and with 39.8 million Americans living in poverty, this computes to 1 out of every 8