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Transcript
Hey, do this with me. Stand with me to your feet. I wanna read a scripture for us today. So we kick off a new series, this new year. First Corinthians chapter six, verse . It says, "Do you not know that your bodies "are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, "whom you have received from God?
"You are not your own.
"You were bought at a price.
"Therefore, honor God with your bodies."
Let's pray this morning. Father, we just thank you so much for today.
Lord, we thank you for your presence. That is so clearly here this morning.
And Lord, whether it be through worship or word or fellowship,
Lord, we pray that today we can honor you in your presence
and that we can learn how to honor you with our bodies, Father.
We're just so thankful for everything you're doing here in this church. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen, you may be seated, you may be seated. All right.
All right, well, hey, listen, we are kicking off a new series.
And really, it's kind of a continuation for those of you who heard with us last year, you know that we've been walking through this process of every so often going through some spiritual formation practices and learning a little bit about some of these ancient practices and how we can apply them into our lives and make them part of our either daily or weekly or monthly kind of routines with the end goal, with the purpose of drawing closer to God and giving more of ourselves to God and creating space for Him to do what only He can do in our lives. And so right now for the month of January, we'll probably go into February a little bit, we are gonna be picking up the next practice that we are gonna go through as a church. And we are gonna look at the spiritual practice of fasting, of fasting. Now, some of you may remember in October of , when we were in our "Summer of the Mount" series, we did a little part, because there's a section on the "Summer of the Mount," we're gonna read it here in a little bit, where Jesus talks a little bit about fasting. And we're gonna talk through fasting and what that means for us. And some of you, I know, because I've talked with you, there are people here in this room that fasting is a really important and regular part of your life. And that I know for probably more of you, fasting is not something that you participated in, especially not something regular. And so I just wanna have this conversation and have some teaching and a lot of the Bible to explain fasting for us and kind of look at what this looks like, because I believe that fasting is a beautiful opportunity for us to be able to walk through and to learn and to open a part of ourselves to God for us to be able to have him do something in our lives that only he can do. And so I wanna start off by reading this. In Matthew , this is in the middle of Jesus' sermon in the Mount, and I'm gonna read verse one, and then we're gonna jump down, because in verse one, he says, "Beware of practicing your righteousness "before other people in order to be seen by them. "For then you will have no reward "from your Father who is in heaven." Now in this process, Jesus is teaching, this is the main body of his teaching, and he's gonna go through and talk about being weary or being leery of practicing certain spiritual practices, that though themselves are very good, that when you do them with the wrong intention or with the wrong heart posture, even the very good things can be a problem. And he actually highlights three. He highlights giving to the poor or being generous to the poor. He highlights prayer, and then here he's gonna highlight fasting. And all three of them are good things, things that Jesus says that we should do, but he talks about that if you do them with the wrong heart posture or the wrong manner, then you're already receiving your reward. You're missing out on what God actually has for you. And so jumping down to verse , he says, "And when you do fast, "do not look gloomy like the hypocrites." Remember, if you recall, hypocrites here is not like someone who says one thing and does the other, and Jesus is vernacular. Hypocrite is doing the right thing with the wrong intention or the wrong heart posture. It says, "For they disfigure their faces "that their fasting may be seen by others. "Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. "But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, "that your fasting may not be seen by others, "but by your father who's in secret. "And your father who sees in secret will reward you." Now, if we went through and we were to talk about people's experience with fasting, we would probably get a lot of different stories. For some people, you maybe have never fasted ever, or at least you don't think you have, not on purpose in your whole life. Maybe some of you have fasted, maybe you were part of a church and they did a threeday fast or a sevenday fast or a day fast. All right, and you walked through that. Maybe you've been at a church that's gone through different seasons, maybe at the beginning of the year, they do like a day prayer and fasting of some kind. We have a lot of different things that we can come back to fasting. And I just wanna take some time to put ourselves in the same place so that we can have the same verbiage and understanding. So fasting is something that's in the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it exists in many, many different ways. We'll take a look at a few characters here. But one of the things that we need to know, when Jesus was walking on the earth and he was physically here as a Jewish man, during that season, Jews fasted, at least devout Jews, fasted two times a week regularly, every week, they fasted two times a week. And traditionally it was Mondays and Thursdays that they fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. And the way that they fasted is that basically they would eat dinner on Sunday night and they would fast, they would wake up, they wouldn't eat breakfast, they wouldn't eat lunch, and then when the sun went down, they would eat. So it was basically like a hour fast that they would do. And that's what they did two days a week. It was very common. Jesus more than likely did this his entire life as someone who was a study in the law that he would fast two days a week. And in early church history,
we see that these fasts come as well. In fact, we see in early church history, they did a couple things. One, they changed the days. So instead of Mondays and Thursdays, they would actually usually do Wednesdays and Fridays. And they had a couple reasons they wanted to do that. One, they did not wanna be confused with the Jewish practitioners. They wanted to distinguish themselves and separate themselves. It's like, hey, we're different. But also they specifically picked Wednesdays and Fridays with a kind of a spiritual intention because Wednesday was the day that Jesus was betrayed and Friday was the day that Jesus was hung on the cross. And they want to experience that kind of physical suffering or betrayal that sometimes fasting can bring in their lives. And so early Christians fasted on the second, or on two days a week, Wednesday and Friday. And here's what's interesting. Fasting is not a very popular thing, at least not for spiritual practices in the West. And it hasn't been. It was very, very popular for over a thousand years in church history. And then it became not as popular. Generally around the time of the Enlightenment, that was when we changed very much from this idea of like this physical expression to a much more mental or heart or emotional ideas when it comes down to religion and our practices. But it's an idea that has been around both in Christianity and Judaism all the way back. In fact, I was doing some research and pretty much every major religion that exists today has some element of fasting and even ancient religions that don't exist today have some element of fasting. But the first historical reference that was actually written down about fasting was actually in the Bible, in the book of Exodus. And it was when Moses fasted. And Moses actually did two big fasts. We're gonna talk about that a little later, of days, both of them. And so here's the thing about fasting. Like it is not something that is really popular within the church. I think it's making a little bit of a, we'll call it a comeback or don't call it a comeback. I don't know, of popularity within Christians today, but it's not something that's super, super prevalent. And I think there's a couple of reasons why fasting is not prevalent. And the first is this, not eating food is the worst.
And I guess I should go ahead and make sure we clarify that. There has to be a distinguishment because sometimes some of the church has tried to change what the definition of fasting is, to include something that's also very important, which is the idea of abstaining or abstinence. When the Bible talks about fasting, in the New and the Old Testament, it is specifically talking about not eating food. When we talk about fasting here, we are talking about not eating food. Now abstinence would mean abstaining from something. So for example, you may say, "Hey, I'm gonna go on a day fast where I'm gonna abstain from social media." That's great. Like that's a wonderful thing. But that is not fasting because fasting has to do with food. And we sometimes, like it was a weird little deal because people say, "Hey, sometimes when you deny yourself, that's the way that you can do it." And listen, selfdenial is great. Being able to abstain from certain things, there's plenty of things that you can abstain from that are great, but we can't change what things happen. I gave the example last time we talked about this. When you have a medical procedure and they tell you, "Hey, you need to fast and not eat, and I'll show up tomorrow," right? If you show up and they're like, "Okay, did you fast?" And you say, "Yeah, I was off social media the whole day." And they're like, "No, no, no, no. But did you, oh, I ate. But don't worry, I haven't checked Facebook, doc." Like they're not gonna be happy with you. Everyone knows that fasting means food, except for sometimes we try to convince. And I think there's lots of reasons, but it's because going without food is hard. And so there's a difference between abstaining and fasting. And I think there's times that God may ask you to abstain from something, and that's a really good practice in your life. But fasting is specifically what we're talking about, which is the practice of not going through food. Now, there are a couple of different versions, and we'll talk about these as we go on. So there's like what we would call like the normal fast, which is like where you just don't eat food for a period of time, but you usually still drink water, right? Like you still drink fluids, not food fluids, but you drink water. I had someone be like, "Is it cool if I just drink a bunch of protein shakes?" And it's like, "No, that's called liquid diet." That's not it. If it's got calories, it counts, okay? So there's no food, like there's just no food more. That's normal. Now, sometimes there's like a partial, right? There are some biblical examples of like a partial fast, which is where you eat certain foods, but not certain other foods. Although most people would say that's just, again, abstaining from certain ideas. A good example of that would be like the Daniel fast, which is where it's like, they didn't eat any meat or of the King's Danties, which is like, I guess desserts, I don't know. Not royal, but you get to eat the certain things. And so we've got these normal fasts, and then you have what we would consider an absolute fast, which there are biblical examples of, which is where you go without food and drink. So no water, no food, and we'll look at some of those over the next couple weeks. But fasting is this thing that we go without it. And what we hear, what's really sad is, you may know more about fasting, especially in today's age, from hearing from some kind of fitness guru than you have from church. Because if you've been online, there's a lot of people who tell you all the benefits of fasting. And maybe you watched Thor teach us on Netflix why fasting's so good for you and how you can like clean out all the cancer cells if you just go five days without fasting, or without eating, right? And by the way, it should not shock you that something that God says, hey, this is a good practice for you, happens to be a good practice for you. We should never be blown away when science says, oh yeah, that thing that Jesus did, it's actually really good for you physically, mentally, and spiritually. It's like, oh, cool, that's neat. But the problem is we don't talk about it in church and we don't talk about it because, several things. I think there was a, you can look in church history where fasting was abused. We can look at church history when people fasted for the wrong reasons. We look in church history where fasting became this like, it became a real kind of, something that was associated with it kind of like asceticism and something that many people want to remove themselves from. And the problem is we're taking something that, it shouldn't be a shock that a good gift that God has for his people, the enemy will try to pervert to make it where you cannot enjoy that gift anymore.
That is what the enemy always does. He takes the good thing that God has, he tries to create a counterfeit or to pervert that very good thing and then make it where you say, ooh, I don't want to make that mistake, so I'm gonna shy away from it.
But fasting is a practice that is so rich and so beautiful for you. And in fact, early Christians, they loved the fast so much, like they had to actually make rules against fasting.
Now, I'm gonna be at some point asking you to participate in a fast, and we'll talk about what that looks like for you individually and everyone that'll look a little differently. But early church, they're like, hey, they would basically say like this, and you can't fast on the Sabbath or on the Lord's day, so Saturday, Sunday, don't fast. There's one exception, which is Holy Saturday, that you could fast on that day when you celebrate Jesus's body being the tomb, but like you can't fast. In fact, Lent, the original Lent, some of you guys know that. The reason that it's days is Lent wasn't just about giving something up for Lent. Lent originally was a fast, and it was a day fast, but with six Sundays in between that you were supposed to eat because you were always supposed to eat on the day that Jesus was resurrected. So that you'd have six days where you didn't eat, and one day where you celebrated. And so early on, there was rules, not about fasting, but about not fasting too much, because it was like, hey, we want you to make sure that you are alive. That's important. And so here's the thing. Fasting has this really powerful and rich tradition, but there's so much more to it than just the idea of just not eating food. Because when we understand something about what fasting happens and why this is important, I think it can help us have a better grasp of why we would potentially go into this. And just so that we're clear, and so we know, fasting, although I think it's for the majority of people, it's not for everyone, or at least maybe in the season. You may have a medical condition that fasting is not the right thing for you. Maybe a particular medication you're on or a particular issue that you're currently in, and fasting is not the thing for you. If that's the case, then guess what? God will meet you and will give you another opportunity to find the exact same expression when you invite him into that place. Another thing is there may be some people who are here or listening that you maybe have an unhealthy relationship when it comes down to food and eating and selfimage and some of those things. And although I think a lot of people actually, if you really begin to press into it, have a unhealthy relationship with food and how we use food to cope with different things, there will be some people who it's actually an extreme thing. And if you were to allow yourself to press into this practice before you find some healing and invite God to find some healing in the way that you relate to food and the way that you relate to your selfimage and the image of God, that it may be more damaging than good. And so you wanna make sure to do that. And if that's you, either category, and you have some questions, come talk to me. I'd love to just share with you. There's some resources, there's some opportunity. But for the majority of people, fasting is this beautiful thing that we get to experience and we get to walk by. And the reason is, and this is what's so important, that sometimes we forget, sometimes people forget that although we are spirit, that we have spirit, we are also body.
We are also body, right? As an ORU guy, I always go with the whole person, right? Like body, mind, and spirit. Like all three of these are incorporated. And here's the thing that's important. You have a body and your body is an expression of your spirit. And it's clearly important to God that you have this body because Jesus, who was God and was spirit, came down and became, was made flesh, so the incarnation, and became a body so that he could lose that body in death so that his body could be resurrected so that your and I's body could be resurrected in new life. If the body was of no value, which is sometimes how we treat it, then why did Jesus go to so much intention to say you will have a new body one day and it will be resurrected in the same power that I have?
Now, if you're like me, the body you got right now is maybe not the body that you want.
And I don't just mean physically how you look, although maybe that has to do with it. You know, I've been joking around, like, you know, you turn and things start to betray you real quick.
Those of you younger, you laugh, but it happens. You do something, you're fine, everything's good, and then all of a sudden, like, you can't see anymore, your hair starts to fall out, things hurt, you pull things getting out of bed, like, the body all of a sudden starts to, it's like, it rejects the host.
And you're like, I don't know what happens.
This is not what I want. And you're just like, man, I'm working, I'm trying.
It's like a nowin situation. If you work too hard, you hurt yourself. If you don't work at all, you hurt yourself. It's just a loselose sometimes.
But this body that you have is the thing that God wants to work with you in.
And here's what's wild.
Sin did not enter through the Spirit. Sin entered through the act of eating.
And guess what? Jesus said, remember me and my resurrection power by eating and drinking.
There is something powerful about our bodies. And if we think that our bodies are just these flesh sacks that I can't wait to get rid of, then you're missing the very purpose
that Jesus became flesh for you. And that what He longs for you to experience here on this earth and for all of eternity, that there's something powerful for us to be able to experience His goodness. And so when we walk through fasting, we're walking through a process in which we are denying ourselves something that your body actually needs to exist. Now, can you go more than a day without food? Yes. Can you go more than a week without food? Yes. Can you go more than days without food? Yes, those are things are possible. But your body will get very angry very quickly.
The reason that we all love those Snickers commercials is because we know exactly how that feels when you or someone you know, it's hangry. And you're just like, you need to eat something. It's gone bad.
Everyone in my family gets hangry. I know you can't believe it, but my sweet precious wife, if she misses a, oh my goodness.
We can't, we can't do it. We all have that thing. Your body will scream at you. It's like this internal mechanism of when you miss something, it will make sure to let you know. And it will make you think that you're dying.
All you did was skip breakfast. And by o'clock, your body's like, you will die if you do not need me in the next five minutes. And if that requires killing someone else, go ahead.
Worth it. (Audience Laughing) And here's the thing that fasting sometimes does.
It makes us realize that sometimes our body tells us things that are not true.
Sometimes our body will tell us something that is not even close to true.
And if we believe too much in what our body tells us
and not in what God says about us, then we will trust something that is very flawed because if it will lie to you about food, what else will your body lie to you about?
What else will it tell you, good or bad?
Positive or negative?
Your body will say things that are not true.
And because you feel it, and because you're very connected to it, you will think, oh my gosh,
this is something I can't overcome.
Because the thing about fasting, and the reason that I think that the church doesn't like to talk about food fasting is because it's hard.
Fasting is not easy.
Here's what I've heard, because I've talked to some friends, not about spirituality, but I've heard several different friends because it's become a little more trendy to fast for health reasons. And people think that like, I know, I'm gonna do a threeday fast, or I'm gonna do a fiveday fast, or I'm gonna do the same, which by the way, these are great, and we're gonna talk about, and they're like, it's good. I think it'll be fun. (Audience Laughing)
And the problem is, if you think fasting will be fun,
or easy, you will stop.
Right away, it is not fun. It is not easy.
Going without food, your body will rebel against you.
You will find it in fullon rebellion.
You will find it longing for foods that you haven't thought of since early childhood.
When you're like, "Oh, a packet of bagel bites right now would hit."
You know, you're in a battle.
And you see, whenever I say, "Hey, I'm gonna put down food.
"I'm not gonna eat."
You start to realize that your body craves things that are not necessarily evil, but your body will crave other things more than you crave God.
Because you may ask yourself, "When was the last time I craved time in God's presence "the way that I'm craving "those Tostino pizza rolls right now?"
And if you're honest, you may say, "Never.
"I don't know if I've ever craved God the way that I craved. "I don't know if I've ever missed my daily time with God "the way that I'm missing my daily bagel and cream cheese."
And when we lay down food,
we join with this long period of people who say, "I'm gonna lay down this thing "so that I can give access to God and say, "'God, here I am. "'This body is yours.'"
And we experience something through this physical act
of abstaining from food. We experience something that you will not experience in prayer, you will not experience in time in the Word, you will not experience in church. It will create a new experience because you will be very aware of lack
and the invitation to invite God to it.
Since I taught this last, I've gone through different seasons where weekly, I've been fasting, I've done different things, and I'm still in this journey, and I've got things that have come here that I'm very much looking forward to. But here's what I can tell you. There are days when I go and I fast, and everything is perfect, and everything is great, and I feel the presence of God, and it's just so wonderful, and there's days that at o'clock, I give up,
and I eat, and I say, "God, thank you that Jesus died "on the cross to forgive me for my sins," and then I eat.
Because sometimes it's just, listen, there's sometimes it's like, "Oh, is it dinner time already? "I can't even believe it. "I guess we can eat now." I've been just so sustained by the Word of God.
And there's sometimes I look at my clock, and it's ., and I think, "I'm not gonna make it," and neither will any of my family.
Because if I'm not making it, none of them are.
But we get to walk through this process, and here's the thing. There are lists, and we'll keep talking about, here's just a few characters, and we're gonna actually look at some of their stories of people who participated in biblical fasting.
Moses, we mentioned he was the first one.
Hannah, do you remember when Hannah couldn't get pregnant?
She wouldn't eat, and then she went to pray.
When she asked God for a son, Samuel, she was fasted, and she prayed. And she was in such a state that the guy thought that she was drunk and crazy, right? And all she was was hungry and thirsty for God to show up in a way that only he could to. David fasted. Elijah fasted. Elijah and Moses are gonna talk about them in just a minute. Ezra fasted. Nehemiah fasted. Esther, do you remember when Esther, when everything was falling apart and everyone's gonna die, and she sent message to her uncle, tell the people not to eat or drink.
Because we gotta do something, it's really bad out here. We're all about to die.
Daniel fasted.
Ahab fasted. He was the evil king.
Job fasted. We have stories of Israel and like a whole country fasting for different seasons. We know that Jesus fasted. That's how his whole ministry started. days in the wilderness, right away.
How about Anna fasted? Do you remember Anna who was waiting for her savior to show up at the temple?
And she regularly fasted and prayed so that she could see God, that she could be aware. When the spirit comes, I want to see him.
And she did.
Peter fasted.
Do you remember Peter's story where he went up on the roof and he was hungry and he prayed, and God put him into an open vision and showed him all the things to eat, but they were unkosher.
And he says, "I can't eat that. "I've never broken those rules in my life."
And God spoke to him something very important.
"Don't call unclean what I have made clean."
In a time of prayer and fasting.
Cornelius fasted. Paul fasted. The church at Annie fasted. Acts is full of people who are praying and fasting.
And the list goes on and the stories continue.
And when we fast, we get to participate in opening ourselves up to Jesus.
And here's the beautiful thing, like so many other things, like so many other practices.
You are not commanded anywhere in scripture too fast.
Some of you are like, "Oh man, I don't know if I can do this."
It's an invitation from God.
Just like Sabbath, just like prayer, just like scripture, just like church counseling, just like worship, just like generosity, just like so many things, you are not told, "Do this or else you are sinning." That's not the case. That's not God's emo.
What you are invited to is to experience the life of Jesus and to live the lifestyle of Jesus. And Jesus fasted and prayed regularly.
It was part of his life.
And for today, just, and this is just the opening, the beginning.
There's two things, two reasons why people fast in broad categories. There's fasting and rhythm, meaning you regularly fast a certain time like we talked about, Monday and Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, or sometimes it's just one day. Like you can pick a certain time, like the rhythm of fasting, where it's like, "This is my rhythm and how I'm gonna fast."
But then there's also an opportunity to fast out of a response, meaning there's some really tough stuff going on and I need to fast in response to what's happening in my life. That's why Esther fasted. That's why David fasted. That's why a lot of people fast. It's like, "This is going on. I'm experiencing something really hard and I need God to show up in a way that I cannot explain. And so I am gonna abstain so I can be aware of when he speaks to me, I'm open and fasting."
But here's what's interesting. And I was thinking about this and we'll change this because here's what's wild about fasting and why fasting is different. Listen, this is not a diet. This is not so you can lose weight.
If you fast for days, you don't have any food, you will lose weight. I will tell you that's gonna be a consequence of not eating.
But that's not the meaning because you see dieting changes the way you look, but fasting changes the way you see. If you wanna see differently, if you wanna see the spirit of God differently, if you wanna see the character of God differently,
in these natural eyes you fast and it changes how you see.
And it changes how you see. And I'm not telling you, the more you fast, the better you say… Listen, this is not like a hierarchy, the is not better than the , which is not better than the , which is not better than the three, which is not better than the one, which is not better than, like that's not how it works. You are called to be led by the Spirit. The reason we opened up this verse is that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
And you are a place of worship.
And when we fast, we are worshiping God with our bodies.
We are changing the way we see. And so when the Spirit leads you, however He leads you, that is the thing that's for you today.
And it probably will start small.
It's like working out, I would not suggest that you go from the couch to marathon in one day. Not a good idea.
I would not suggest you leaving here and be like, I'm starting days fast today. It will not go well. I'm not saying it's impossible. And if the Holy Spirit leads you to do it, then do it.
But if you're just like, I know, what's the hardest one? , got it.
Don't do it.
But here's what's interesting.
There's three examples of day fasts. And I just find this interesting.
Moses actually had two periods of day fasting that he experienced with God on the mountain. And his was special because the Bible says that he neither ate nor drank for days because he was being sustained by the very person of God.
You can go without days for food. You can't go days without water. You die.
This was a supernatural intervention. And Moses didn't do it just once. He did it twice.
Both times around the covenant and the law on Mount Sinai, he did it twice. So Moses did it twice. The other person who went days that we see was Elijah.
Elijah went days also without eating or drinking. Do you remember he was after he was running from Jezebel and the angel, because he was like tired and throwing a little fit, hissy fit, which by the way, everyone know what a hissy fit is? Found out my kids have no clue what a hissy fit is. We said it and they're like, what? And they thought we made it up. That's what they told me. They're like, that's made up. And I'm like, that's a word. That's a thing. He's like, what is it? I'm like, a hissy, of course.
But Elijah was having a hissy fit
and the angel showed up and he's like, eat this, drink this, take a nap, woke up, eat this, drink this. And then he said, you're going on a journey. And for days it says he ran under that power, that food and that water for days. Again, God sustained him and he goes up to the mountain, to the same mountain and he experiences the same God and the same God passes before him.
So we got these two guys. And by the way, here's what else they have in common. They both did days. Moses died, but he didn't die. Like God kind of took Moses.
We don't know where Moses went.
And Elijah was raised up to heaven
in a chariot of fire.
God took Elijah.
Jesus went days, but Jesus drank
because Jesus was fully in the power of the body.
But he went days without eating and the moment that he finished days before he broke his fast, Satan tempted him. And some people say, ah, look, he was tempting him at his weak point. But I would actually go ahead and say that he was tempting him in his strongest state.
Because at the end of days, he wasn't like, I can't do it. He was so one with God, the only thing that come out of his mouth was scripture. So when he said, don't you wanna eat? He says, I don't live by that. Don't you want this power? I don't need that. Don't you wanna go without having to suffer? I don't need to worry about suffering because I live by everything that comes from God.
But remember a little later,
on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John, who showed up, the other members of the Club,
Moses showed up, Elijah showed up and Jesus showed up.
What's happening? The two people who were sustained by God for days and then the very presence of God passed before both of them, they stood there in front of the very presence of God, Jesus himself, who came as flesh. And what happened when of course Peter loses his mind and it's like, oh God, we gotta do something. We should build some tabernacles for everybody. I don't know what's happening. Literally he says it, he doesn't even know what he's saying. He's just rambling about stuff.
Elijah and Moses disappear again.
And God again says, this is my son.
Listen to him.
Listen to him.
Fasting allows us to become more aware of God's spirit and his presence in our lives.
It makes you more attuned to things outside of your body.
By denying your body, it makes you more aware of spiritual things around you.
And we're gonna talk about a lot more in the next couple of weeks.
But just so you know where we're going,
I'm gonna encourage everyone here
and hopefully you come back to fast some way,
probably starting in the month of February, although you can start where you are.
And this is for some of you, it's gonna be start small.
Skip one meal, maybe even smaller than that for some of the teenage room. Skip a snack.
You know that afternoon snack that you just can't live without.
Skip it and give that time to God.
Some of you may be one meal. For some of you it may be one day.
For some of you it may be pushing into a different way. It may be saying, God, what do you have for me? Is it two days? Is it three? Listen, there's no standard in the Bible. The Bible talks about everything from missing one meal to all the way to the days. Like all those things and everything in between show up,
but there's an invitation to practice it.
To practice it.
And it won't be easy and it won't be fun.
If anyone tells you I got an easy, fun, fasting thing for you, they're lying to you. Don't believe them.
But it will open your mind.
It will open your spirit.
Because your body is powerful. And here's the thing, your body is good because God created it.
And even though you may have some needs that do some things you don't want them to do, maybe because your eyes feel like you're betraying you,
your body is still good.
And Jesus is still good.
He wants to meet you where you're at.
And for some of you, you've been praying and you've been asking, you've been seeking, and you've done a lot of things and you still just can't seem to experience breakthrough. And maybe there's something that can happen in this time of fasting where he can show up in a way that he's never shown up before.
It's not because it's mystical. It's not because it's magical. It's because you are human.
And when you deny your flesh and you choose God,
often you see Him.
Because your vision has changed.
And I'll tell you one thing that I realized in this process is I didn't realize how often I turned to food
to cope when I was having a hard time.
I wouldn't have categorized myself as something like that. But I noticed fasting on days where things were stressful was a lot harder than fasting on days where I wasn't doing anything.
We sometimes turn to this physical comfort when we can be turning to the comfort from God.
So think about these things.
We're in a new year. Lots of people are trying to do new stuff. I'm gonna get fit. I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna stop this. I'm gonna do that. Like, that's great. And if you're doing those things, awesome. I hope you invited the Holy Spirit into that process.
This is not a day, this is talking about creating a lifestyle.
In which we in some way regularly deny our flesh so we can experience and open ourselves up to the very presence of God.
And to give space and an opportunity for God to do something inside of you
that only His presence and His power can do.
And listen, we don't do it to brag.
We don't do it to be like, "I'm better than you." That's why Jesus said at the very beginning,
"When you've asked, don't go on social media "and complain about it every single day until it's over.
"'Cause then you will have your reward on Facebook."
Doesn't mean you can't do it in the community. Doesn't mean you can't do it in a group. It just means the way that you do it, the heart that you do it, the way in which you experience the presence of God
is important.
And listen, if the time's not right for you, the time's not right for you.
But as we walk through this, I want you to be prayerfully considering, "Lord, what should I do?
"What should I do? "Is this something you have for me in this season? "Is this a practice I should participate in?
"And if so, lead me.
"I've got my own journey that I'm walking on,
"that I'm excited about,
"and that it may go really well, "or I may fail.
"But if I fall, I know that His Spirit just picks me back up, "and there's always another time
"to experience His goodness.
"Go ahead and stand with me to your feet.
"Father, I thank you for your power.
"I thank you for your Spirit.
(Gentle Music)
Lord, I thank you that just like
death entered through what man ate,
the reminder of resurrection life enters through what we partake in.
Lord, help us make the connection between our body and our minds and our spirits.
Let us become more aware of you and our bodies.
Help us use our bodies to be conduits of your mercy and your grace and to worship you. Lord, and as we are praying and seeking you
and thinking about, "Lord, how should I fast? "What should I fast?
"Is this what you have?" Lord, I just pray that your tender loving kindness would lead us and guide us.
And as we step into this new year, and we step into another opportunity for a practice, Lord, that you would show us what you have for us.
We're just so thankful for who you are.
So in Jesus' holy name we pray, amen and amen.
Well, listen, church, if you need prayer, our prayer team's gonna be down here. If we've never gotten the pleasure to meet, my wife and I would love to meet you in the green room through that door to the left. We would love to see you. If not, come back next week. Don't be scared off by the fast. It's gonna be great. We love you. Have a great rest of your Sunday.
