Practicing the Way: Fasting
Practicing the Way • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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What do I believe God wants us to know? Fasting connects us to God and seeks to get a response from God
Why? We want to be connected to God and have our responses answered
What do I believe God wants us to do? Fast
Why? We want a response
ME/WE
One of the things I absolutely need and love in this life is food. I know I've said it before, but it's true—I love food, and I need it. Without it, I would quite literally perish.
I LOVE A GOOD BIGGER
GOOD BRISKET
GOOD JUICY FRESH FRUIT OR VEGATBLE
LET ME BE HONSE I LOVE GOOD CHOCOLATE AND ICE CREAM
WE NEED FOOD
It is God’s a blessing from God
Give us this day our daily bread,
Maybe some of you are thinking I know we are in the series of Practicing the Way of Jesus…is this one of the ways??? BREAKING OF BREAD??? If so I am all in….SIGN ME UP
This is one of the SPIRITUAL PRACTICES OF OUR FAITH…and notice it is breaking of bread togehter.
THIS SUCH A PART OF THE EARLY CHURCH THAT DO YOU KNOW WHAT ONE OF THE EARLY CHURCH SYMBOLS WAS?
IT WASN’T A CROSS…THAT WOULD BE LIKE HAVE A NECKLESS OF AN ELECTRIC CHAIR
IT WAS THE BREAD AND THE CUP
NO TODAY WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF THE WAYS OF JESUS THAT IS ON THE OPPISITE OF FOOD…IN FACT IT ABSOLUTELY HAS NOTHING DO WITH FOOD?
WHAT IS THIS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE THAT WE ALL LOVE?
FASTING? WHAT IS THAT? INTERMITMENT FASTING? THAT
I am talking about Spiritual Fasting where we fast from FOOD for our SPIRITUAL HEALTH not necessarly our physcial health
Not social media or TV or video games (don’t just look to the kids)…that is not fasting…it is good to ABSTANIE FROM THOSE THINGS BUT IT IS NOT FASTING
FOR SPIRITUAL REASONS
Fasting was a regular practice of the early church
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, 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 is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Do you know the RHYTHM THAT THE EARLY CHURCH PRACTICES WITH FASTING?
HOW OFTEN
ANOTHER $1000 MONOPOLY DOLLARS
WEDNESAYS AND FRIDAYS
Why Wed and Fri?
Day betrayed and day crucified
SUNDAY LOVE FEAST OF BREAKING BREAD
WHY???????????
WHY???
Why would someone fast from FOOD???
5 Reasons
TO DECERN THE WILL OF GOD For your life
You are seeking to get clarity about a decision, situation, or opportunity
Many people why they fast they want clarity, to hear from God, about a decision, opportunity, or sitiatuion
JOB opportunity has come up
Going to forsake food to pray to ask God what I or we should do…Should we take this job or that job?
Decision
Should we go through that door or this door or this door or this another door.
FASTING FOCUSES and GETS US TO SEEK CLARITY FROM GOD TO DISCERN GOD’S WILL
2. Repentance
We see this all over scriptures it is not as common today, but it was very much apart of the church I grew up both on a coroporate and indvidaul level and we see it in the scriptures.
A MORE SINCERE WAY TO REPENT
Turing to God
1 Samuel 7:3–6 (ESV)
And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”
So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only.
Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.”
So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.
if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Humble themselves: fasted and repented
God did
Hear
Forgive
Heal
Individual level
I did a lot as a young man seeking to defeat the lustful powers of the flesh
Do this to help me defeat sin and grow in my holiness
This story blows my mind….Ahab is wicked king and
Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.
Behold, I will bring disaster upon you. I will utterly burn you up, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel.
And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin.
And of Jezebel the Lord also said, ‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the walls of Jezreel.’
And when Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went about dejectedly.
And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
“Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days; but in his son’s days I will bring the disaster upon his house.”
3. Grief
And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.
that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem.
And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”
As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
Then he calls the nation of Israel to repent
Scot McKnight says this
“Body grief is perhaps one of the purest examples of what fasting is all about. A human being, overwhelmed by the sacredness of a moment, chooses not to eat in order to sanctify his or her communion with god, and participates fully in one of life's grievous moments. fasting is a way of processing our grief with god.”
4. Change God’s mind
We see this with Ahab..
We see this with Nineveh
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying,
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
WICKED PEOPLE
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
When they relented and repented God RELENTED
5. Breakthrough: we need you to move
We are desperate!
GOD WE NEED YOU TO SHOW
Corporate
After this the Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle.
Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, “A great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea; and, behold, they are in Hazazon-tamar” (that is, Engedi).
Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.
Moabities and Ammonites are coming to wipe them out, genocide
PICTURES
THE MIRACLE OF DUNKIRK
When Britain was close to defeat during the 2nd World War, and the entire British Army was trapped at Dunkirk, in desperation George 6th called for a National Day of Prayer to be held on 26th May 1940. In a national broadcast he instructed the people of the UK to turn back to God in a spirit of repentance and plead for Divine help. Millions of people across the British Isles flocked into churches praying for deliverance and this photograph shows the extraordinary scene outside Westminster Abbey as people queued for prayer. Three events immediately followed. Firstly, Germany invoked a halt order. Nobody knows why. Second, a violent storm arose over the Dunkirk region grounding the Luftwaffe which had been killing thousands on the beach. And then third, a great calm descended on the Channel, the like of which hadn’t been seen for a generation, which allowed hundreds of tiny boats to sail across and rescue 335,000 soldiers, rather than the estimated 20-30,000. From then on people referred to what happened as “the miracle of Dunkirk”.
PERSONAL BREAKTHROUGH
And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.
And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.
And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”
But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
The reason we fast are:
Discern/know the will of God for our life
Repentance
Grief
Change God’s mind
Breakthrough
What we are going to do is Fast this week on Wednesday, a meal, the whole day, stop eating on Tuesday night and the Wednesday
You can fast for whatever you want, but specifically for
The Healing Summit