When You Fast
Notes
Transcript
Why did the phone wear glasses? IT lost its contacts
I was bored the other day so I read 6 pages of the dictionary, I learned next to nothing
Over the last few weeks Jesus has had this counter world thing, and saying we all are born into this world naturally, and he is starting to cast a different vision for being human. He is telling us a person that lives in the Kingdom is a different kind of person; we have to be in the minority. He is telling us in this section of scripture if we ant to have real joy, if you want to live the ultimate good, this is the way we need to function in the world.
Today, he is really going to mess with us, he is going to talk about something most of us would rather not talk about and he is going to get into our food how we deal with it. For many of us it is going to feel so upside down and backwards it will turn our heads, but remember, Kingdom living isn’t living like the world, its living like a Kingdom citizen and this is the picture he has been painting.
16 “Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
Here is what I know, most of us get uncomfortable when we start talking in this manner, but Jesus is telling us he wants us to make it a natural rhythm of our lives; not a one time thing, but a habitual thing in our lives.
McDONALDS LIZ
When it comes to fasting I think there are two reasons we don’t, the first we don’t know what fasting is, or what it is for and secondly, it’s HARD.
The first thing we need to know is biblical fasting is always food. There is never an instance in the Bible when fasting is talked about where it does not deal with food. Does that mean giving up social media, or cussing, or whatever for the Lord and in honor of him so you can draw closer is wrong, of course not, its just not a Biblical fast. So, why do we push back when it comes to food? Because or stomachs are a strogn ruler; it controls and decides moments in our lives more than almost anything else. Listen, some of the hardest part of about fasting isn’t just the not eating, its the what do you do with all the extra time in the day you have?
The answer is pretty simple, you can pray and seek the Lord, but have you ever thought about how much time you spend not just cooking and eating each day, but all the time and energy that goes into trying to think of what we should eat that day - its miserable. When I did my forty day fast, that was the hardest part. There was so much extra time and the enemy will turn your mind to what you normally do during those moments.
The hard part of fasting is you actually feel it, your stomach hurts, if you give up caffeine and you drink a lot of coffee, those first few days are miserable. I don’t drink as much coffee as I used to but I used to drink a ton of coffee and I remember during the first days of those fasts how bad my head hurt and how miserable I felt. You know, because coffee and caffeine is like the socially acceptable drug for us to be addicted to. But when we fast we feel it, which is good, because Paul tells in 2 Corinthians 8 when we give we should feel it.
Truth of the matter is for most of us if we were told Jesus gave us two options to tithe to the church, we could give our money, or we could give up food, most of us would be a lot more comfortable just giving up the money. We will part with money easier than food because when you give up food, you really do feel it.
Jesus says WHEN you fast, he doesn’t say if you fast, he is implying we should do it. What does it do? It changes things inside of us and helps us to see the Lord more clearly. When should we fast?
When you want to see the nation turn back to God, you could spend some time fasting. When you need direction in your life for what is next. When you need God to touch you deeply and you need a healing, whether it be physical, spiritual, or mental. In the book of Daniel, what we see is Daniel fasted when he was tempted to bend a knee to an evil empire and their false Gods.
There are many different reasons we may find ourselves fasting, but this morning I want to hone in on just three of those reasons. First and foremost, when we want God to do work in a particular moment in a particular fashion.
The Bible teaches if we want that specificity that God will see us in our fast and he will turn his face to us, and he will react accordingly. He sees our desperation and honors it, and I know there are some of you who are already getting all worked up as you sit there and you are thinking, “So, are you saying you can manipulate God?” Absolutely not, I would never say that, and I am not sure how this works out theologically, but this is the case over and over again in scripture.
In Mark 9 there is a story about Jesus up on mount of transfiguration and as they are on their way down and a man shows up with his son and the moment it sees Jesus it throws the boy down and he begins foaming at the mouth and grinding his teeth. He tells Jesus he has asked the disciples to cast the demon out but they have been unable. This whole story is amazing and there is so much to glean from it, but Jesus cast the demon out and later the disciples ask him why they were unable to cast the demon out, and Jesus says in
Mark 9:29
29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
This is an amazing intentional thing for Jesus to say to them, and he is telling them, sometimes it takes a little more, it takes a little more intention from you. Sometimes prayer isn’t enough and you have to go a little bit deeper, you have to have less of you and more of God - that dependence on yourself has to already be turned off and you have to be depending on God to move. It’s almost as if when you are fasting, you are crying out saying, “God, I have nothing left; I need you to move; I need you to heal.” And so sometimes you see God moving in the moments when we fast. They say a body with out air can live 8 minutes, a body without water can live about 20 days, but without food, much longer. Truthfully, most of us have not even tested this. Sometimes, you may need to fast 40 days to see what God can do for you. Listen, I hope you never have to do 40 days like Jesus, because it was the hardest and best at the same time, thing I have ever done in my life. I knew the Lord was calling me to this years ago, so I did this liquid fast, I did water and a half a protein shake twice a day, 40 days I needed direction for the church and my life. Tell this story out.
This isn’t to say 40 days will always play out in your life before you get an answer or what you are needing from God, but there is a transformation and healing in all of it, because we are saying, “I have nothin, God I need you.” Sadly, some of us have never been that desperate.
TAPE MINISTRY PASTOR…. started fasting before Sunday preaching… 10 per week… then 200… then 300… and all of a sudden church started to grow
I understan you aren’t a pastor, but your marriages are struggling. You’ve tried it all, you’ve seen all the counselors, you’ve done all the book studies, you’ve even tried being the holy spirit for your husband, but that definitely didn’t work. But sometimes it won’t come through but with prayer AND fasting.
Maybe thats not you, but maybe your kids are off the rails; not just young ones, but maybe you’re adult kids. They may never listen to you and run around like crazy, or they’ve grown up and you can’t figure out how they are living their lives the way they are and you cant imagine how they have gotten themselves in this predicament because you raise them better.
You’ve tried everything you know, for your little kids maybe you’ve tried the discipline and they laugh in your face, or for the older kids you’ve tried talking sensibly, listen you have spent hours on your face praying. Heck, you even put their name on a cross when some pastor asked you to and agreed to pray for them every single day, but its just not changing the needle. But sometimes it won’t come through but with prayer AND fasting.
Or maybe its not your marriage or your kids but your work is off the rails. Like it seems to never take a slow day, its like your coworkers are trying to make your life miserable. And Jesus says you’ve done everything but sometimes it won’t come out but through prayer and fasting.
So when we fast, we can hear him better, I equate it to someone who is deaf or blind, and they say when that happens their other senses are heightened. Fasting heightens our senses to be able to hear him better. We talk about wanting transformation and power but we aren’t willing to do what the scripture lays out. So maybe we don’t really want transformation.
I think there is a reason Paul gives images to Timothy about what a christian looks like; a farmer -when was the last time you met a lazy farmer? What time do farmers get up? At the crack of dawn - not eleven; they are up early. So Paul gives Timothy this image as a farmer. He says you want to picture your life as a disciple of Christ? Get up early.
He then switches and gives the image of an athlete; then a soldier, these are all crazy disciplined people they are up and focused early. When was the last time you met a lazy athlete? They aren’t around, those are just bad athletes, ask me how I know.
So when it comes to fasting and prayer, Jesus says there is a cost here, and the question is, “are you ready to pay it?”
When a farmer gets up early he has things to do, he isn’t loving it, he just needs to do it. The athletes that get up at 4:30 to go to the gym, they don’t love it, they just know it is what they have to do to be better. So Jesus says don’t accept an undisciplined form of christianity.
Daniel was this old testament character, who was sitting in an empire that said we feed you, we give you water, you are dependent upon us. So he fasted to say we are pushing back.
And we live in a world that says if we don’t eat three meals a day we will die; and thats a lie. If the whole lot of us forgot how to cook at home, it would not make our world worse, because we’d have all kinds of ways to go and get food. We could just have other people cook for us and fasting is a way to say I can push back and say we are dependent upon God.
Here is what most of us don’t really want to admit, food can be an idol in our lives. Don’t believe me? Here is what Paul says in Phil 3:19
19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
We worship our bellies? Paul, please, you’re crazy. I bet most of us haven’t heard that, there is something spiritual going on with your belly; something is happening and its a worship issue, so how do we take away the mythology of food?
Well in 1 Cor 7 Paul says in a culture obsessed with sex the way youdemythologize it? You become single. It’s a message you aren’t run by this thing; it doesn’t control you, you can do what is needed.
So how do you demythologize food? Fasting?
The disciples came to Jesus one time and they said Jesus you got to eat. Jesus pulls this thing and says, “I have food you don’t know about.” Its not just the stuff you can see. The reason some of us don’t fast is we worship the god called food. Listen, I get it, food gives us joy and happiness and there are some of us who would go bankrupt before we gave up food.
Here is the third reason we would do it; because ultimately like prayer or anything else, its about getting more of God. The ultimate goal of fasting is to get more of him. We become closer to him in ways we never knew we could and thats the point of life to get more of him.
The story of Jacob wrestling with God and literally that is what his name means, and there is this progression in the story. In the beginning he says, I want your blessing, and it moves to I want your gift and by the end of it, he’s like just want you; I want to see your face.
When it comes to fasting Jesus says here is why it is important - you get more of him. And whats the reason we don't fast? We don’t want him bad enough.
It makes me think of the hymn as the deer pants for water so I long for you. We aren’t that guy; we have been told what we can do to get closer but we don’t do it.
With all that being said, you might start to feel like, “oh my gosh, I messed up,now I can’t go eat after church.” Let me relieve you of that grief for a second. Sometimes zeal, it can get overcooked and go to a dark place it never needed to go, and my fear with desiring you to go deeper is that I put a burden on you that you can’t bear.
I want to tell you about Joseph of Arimathea. His tomb was where they buried Jesus, and if you look at his life you’d say man, he’s not worthy of all that. First off he’s rich and we know from the Bible thats a really bad thing right, and to many of us rich and disciple don’t go together. I n our generation this judgement has become a new sort legalism about what we can and cannot do. In the past, the legalism was clear. You could go to a persons refrigerator and know if they were christian, like if there was beer and wine they clearly aren’t christian.
Or if you Show up and people are dancing, oh my goodness, those people they think they are christians but come on cant be the case. That is legit how some of us were raised, that was the burden we carried.
Most of us have come so far away from that type of thinking we think its silly. But we have created a new list; being rich is on the list. I don’t even have to look in your fridge anymore, now I can tell you are a disciple by what you drive and how expensive your home is.
This where zeal goes, to this weird place. Its like if you aren’t saying gospel at least 3 times an hour and using the right words when you talk about God; you’re out. We have created a new legalism and we have become what one scholar calls accidental pharisees. All we have done is swap it out what is on the list Joseph of Arimathea was rich, powerful, a member of the San Heedran but also a secret disciple. He was so obsessed with the power and money he never told anyone that he loved Jesus; this is the problem right? He was so afraid to lose it all he didn’t tell anyone, and yet, Jesus uses him. This should give you hope!
Before we start labelling and burning people before we tell God who he could use, maybe we should remember this story.
And it ends with the question of judgement look at Matthew 7:1-5
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
2 “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
4 “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?
5 “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Listen, we’ve been thinking about other people, but its about us. We want to be saying, “Look at that speck in her eye, look at how messed up they are!” Jesus is saying, ‘what you talking bout Willis?” He is telling us we are being crazy!
Alright, now we have finished the first half of a single verse, now on to the second half.
16 “Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
Here is what I want you to do, I want you to fast so you depend on the Lord. But don’t do it so everyone knows about it! Listen, that doesn’t mean you can’t tell people, this isn’t what he is saying. He is saying don’t do it for the reason that everyone can know, don’t do it so people will know about it and think you’re something special. Dont do that because the minute you do that you have an addiction to their praise, and the moment you do you lose the praise of God, and thats a bad trade.
17 “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face
18 so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
He said do stuff in secret meaning and what he means is our temptation is to do stuff publicly because we say we are trying to motivate people. So we want to tell people how much we give and pray, you know, to inspire people.
Listen, we live in a generation where there is this fine line of things we do on social media, because people can make a lot of money to help more people by showing what they are doing and what they are giving out. People can then use that money to help more people, but the problem becomes when we do it publically because we think God isnt going to be able to do something if we don’t do it on our own for everyone to see. Are you seeing the difference? IF not, its the same as almost everything he has been talking about, its in your heart. WHere is your heart in it.
This is why Jesus says this…
25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
Look at the birds. God Feeds them, aren’t you more important?
27 “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin,
29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
30 “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!
Your anxiety is sin because you are bearing the weight of tomorrow, because in that moment you are saying you don’t have a father in control so let me wrestle it from him.
31 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’
32 “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Close in prayer.
