Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer & Fasting

What a great way to start a new year - in such a great time of worship.

I want to take a few moments to talke about Prayer & fasting as we begin this week of Prayer & Fasting.

Now I know I lost a few of you the moment I mentioned fasting, Your mind immediately wondered to your stomach - thnking of what you week has in it & how fasting might fit in - what would it look like.

I want you to put a pin in that thought and just come on this journey with me tonight and by the end of the message we will chat about what is could look like for you.

So let’s start by looking at prayer.

I grew up in a Christian home where prayer wasn’t just at meal time or bed time.

It was when we had a problem to solve, a decision to make, heard sirens or saw emergency vehicles.

2 stories that pop into my mind when I think of prayer in my family.

Dad & Moving

KIller Raccon

Our Church often had prayer focuses, nights of prayer, weekend prayer services, perservice prayer, praying in the new year (that was a tough one as a teen & one of my favourite as a teen was an all night prayer meeting with our youth group - 12 hours - we prayed at our church, we drove to your highschools and prayed, we prayed alone and in groups.

I had a pretty brave Youth Pastor.

There are tons of acronyns out there to help us with prayer.

PUSH, Pray until Something Happens, FROG Fully Rely on God,

When I didn’t know how to pray - one my pastors taught us to use the letters to the word pray Start with Praise, then repend, the ask & finally yeild

- SCREEN

Matthew 6:5-15

Simple Put Prayer is having a conversaion with God - Notice I said COnversation - that means 2 way communicaiton.

We talk - God Listens, God Talks we Listen.

SISTER CONVERSATIONS

What does God Sound like 1 King 19:11-18

I have never heard GOd audible - his voice aloud, I usually have a strong impression, a knowing that is outside of myself - accompanied by peace.

That is how God speaks to me.

Of course he uses his word, other Believers, even literaler & media.

I had a Drama Teacher -

Onto Fasting

I struggled with Fasting when I was younger - somehow I got the misconception that Fasting Somehow was used to Maniplute God.

If I fast then God has to....fill in the blank.

and since I knew His plans for me were better than any I could have had for myself - i didn’t want to do that.

Results are not the point

15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me.

Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.

I and my maids will fast as you do.

When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law.

And if I perish, I perish.”

17 So Mordecai went away and carried out all of Esther’s instructions.

FASTING Refraining from eating food.

The Bible describes three main forms of fasting.

The normal fast involves the total abstinence of food.

Luke 4:2 reveals that Jesus “ate nothing”; afterwards “He was hungry.”

Jesus abstained from food but not from water.

In Acts 9:9 we read of an absolute fast where for three days Paul “did not eat or drink” (HCSB).

The abstinence from both food and water seems to have lasted no more than three days (Ezra 10:6; Esther 4:16).

The partial fast in Dan.

10:3 emphasizes the restriction of diet rather than complete abstinence.

The context implies that there were physical benefits resulting from this partial fast.

However, this verse indicates that there was a revelation given to Daniel as a result of this time of fasting.

4:15–16 Esther felt identified with her people.

She now looked to them for spiritual support.

“And fast for me” implies prayer and fasting.

This suggests that Esther had a genuine faith in God.

By her request for fasting (and certainly prayer is assumed), Esther showed that she needed the support of others and recognized the need for God’s intervention.

Even she and her maids would fast as well.

This meant she would share her faith with these maids.

Esther believed God answers prayer.

Such prayer changes situations; in fact, it is one of the chief instruments God uses to change history.

So what is the meaning of fasting:

WHAT MOTIVATES FASTERS?

For some, fasting has become a countercultural expression of their faith, a backlash to crass consumerism, or an act of solidarity with people in poverty.

Experienced fasters say food withdrawal brings personal problems into sharp focus, forcing the faster to cling to God instead of a bag of potato chips.

A danger of fasting is to view food as evil, which can lead to legalism and health problems.

The Bible supports fasting, but it also affirms the goodness of food.

Paul warns against extreme asceticism (1 Tim.

4:1–5) and false humility (Col.

2:20–23) and affirms that food is a gift from God.

Results are not the point

The meaning of fasting is simply our hunger for God and for God’s righteousness expressed with abandon, specifically with the abandonment of normal good things as we pursue the one who pursues us.

But like all symbols, its meaning can only be grasped as we live through it

Although some Christians endorse the use of fasting as a way to turbocharge their prayer lives, others are suspicious of motivations to bend God’s will to their own.

“Fasting must forever center on God.

It must be God-initiated and God-ordained.”

Fasting advocates point to Old Testament passages where people fasted to receive an answer to prayer during times of crisis.

Elmer Towns, in Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough (Regal Books, 1996), identifies nine biblical fasts, including the Daniel fast for physical healing, the Esther fast for protection from evil, and the Samuel fast to convert people to God.

In A Hunger for God, Piper likewise decries “the horrible horizontalizing of holy things” and says that in his teaching on fasting, “Jesus is calling for a radical orientation on God himself.

He is pushing us to have a real, utterly authentic, personal relationship with God

From the beginning of their marriage in 1991, Troy and Karla Temple prayed to have a baby.

After two miscarriages, the Lynchburg, Virginia, couple was diagnosed with infertility.

In February 1997, while driving home from a friend’s ordination, Troy had a sense that God asked him what he was willing to give up for his family.

The next day, Troy started a 40-day fast, drinking only water and fruit and vegetable juices.

He admits that during meals, prayer was often farthest from his mind, but he says the discipline was physically and spiritually renewing.

In September, the Temples received a call from a local adoption agency.

A birth mother had selected the Temples to adopt her biracial baby, born four weeks later.

God answered the Temples’ prayers with Madeleine Paige, who Troy tearfully points out was conceived during his 40-day fast.

That story is recounted in Fasting Can Change Your Life (Regal Books, 1998), a collection of first-person accounts of fasting edited by Falwell and Towns.

Although Troy Temple writes, “I didn’t trade food for God to give us a child,” the chapter title, “A Baby Girl for a Childless Couple” may suggest otherwise.

Fasting is a symbolic act, not a logical act.

Like the mysteries of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the symbolism of fasting can be destroyed by too-rigid analysis or elevated into idolatry.

The meaning of fasting is simply our hunger for God and for God’s righteousness expressed with abandon, specifically with the abandonment of normal good things as we pursue the one who pursues us.

But like all symbols, its meaning can only be grasped as we live through it

Other chapter titles also indicate a results-oriented view of fasting: “Receiving 24 Acres for a New Church,” “Freeing a Son from Drugs,” “Healing Cancer,” “Breaking Stuttering,” and “Getting 50 Million Dollars,” which is Falwell’s account of his two 40-day fasts.

But many believe fasting is meant to change the faster, not the will of God.

“The process of self-control is spiritually helpful, but it is certainly not meritorious,” says Gordon-Conwell’s Lovelace.

“I don’t think of it as getting God’s attention.”

Willard agrees that it is easy to confuse fasting with cornering God.

“Its role in prayer is not to earn the right to an answer,” he says.

Instead, fasting increases our hunger for God, conforming our will to God’s will.

There are many biblical reference to fasing.

HOW BIBLICAL IS FASTING?

All the world’s major religions endorse fasting for spiritual, therapeutic, or political purposes, and fasting for Christians has an ancient and credible history.