When You Fast

Introduction

This morning we’re going to talk about learning to be content with little. From our reading in Philippians 4, didn’t really plan that, but it sort of worked out. It’s nice how those things happen sometimes. This is the sermon on spiritual disciplines I’ve been dreading for weeks. Someone who loves to eat and enjoys food, this isn’t the most exciting topic for them. So if that’s the way you feel, then I’m right there with you. But it’s good and it’s important to work on these kinds of things, and I would say probably the neglect of this has been pretty profound in our culture. And as I’ve dug into various spiritual disciplines, but particularly the idea of fasting, it’s been a good learning experience for me to understand the significance of this.

Often we will approach this with saying something like, Do we have to fast? You know, it’s kind of really this rule-oriented sort of question. You know, is it a commandment that I have to fast? Is it a law that I must fast? and like all of the spiritual disciplines, for the most part, we’re talking about there are some exceptions. I mean, we’re told to pray, and I think we’re expected to worship, and some of those are going to be part of the spiritual disciplines. But when it comes to the angle we’re approaching this from, it’s not really about rules and laws. It’s about discipleship. It’s about being like Jesus, following him, trying to grow spiritually. And the question itself, do I have to fast?

It kind of betrays part of the problem of modern religious perspective, which on the one hand, I think erroneously focuses on legalism with a misinterpretation of the book of Romans, but on the other, at the same time, is all focused on laws and rules. Do I have to do this? Where does it tell me I have to do this? Right? And so it’s kind of like two sides of the same coin, people saying we shouldn’t be worried about legalism, but then they want rules for everything. So there’s a big problem in perspective when this is the way we come at things, and it’s it’s a big part of our kind of modern, especially Western religion, rather than experiential, it is very doctrinal. It is ideas, it’s concepts, it’s beliefs, and not necessarily practice.

And what we’re getting into in these sermons that we’ve been doing on spiritual disciplines is much more in the area of practice. How are we actually practicing our faith? What are the things that we’re actually doing? Are we really living like Jesus, or do we just believe the things that are right about who Jesus is and what he says? There’s no law about physical health. You know, no one’s making you check boxes about your exercise or how you eat. I mean, maybe your spouse, I don’t know, that may be happening. the doctor or going to a dentist or going to the eye doctor, whatever the things are that we do. Now, they’ll tell you sometimes you have to come every year or that sort of thing, but there’s no really a law about this.

But why is it that we do these things? We do them because we are concerned about our physical health. We want to enjoy the life that we have. We don’t want to be too sick to get out of bed, and we don’t want to be broken down in our body as much as we can help it. We want to avoid those kinds of things, so that we can live in relative comfort and enjoy the life that we have for the period of time that we’re here. Sometimes we are so focused on this, sometimes we have to be, that everything else kind of drops away, and we focus almost solely on physical things. For example, if you’re very sick and you have to go to the hospital.

I mean, everything else is cast aside. Right? Your work schedule doesn’t matter anymore. You know, planning things at the home, going to the grocery store, doing laundry, whatever it is that has to happen, all of that stuff gets thrown to the side because you have to care for your physical health. Sometimes we do this by choice, trying to avoid the latter. We don’t want to have to be rushed to the hospital. We don’t want to have to go through something like a heart attack or a stroke. And so we do things preventatively sometimes. Sometimes we realize, man, I’m so stressed out. I’ve been having so much busyness at work or in life, I just need to get away, right? We realize these things about our physical health at times.

And so what I would tell you about fasting, and this is not the only spiritual discipline, but it certainly is one of them, is that it is kind of a spiritual counterpart to that idea. It’s a method of stopping everything else to focus on spiritual health. What is your plan for your spiritual health? Do you have one? These questions are not easy. In our culture, this is not something that’s really focused on very much at all. It’s why these spiritual disciplines really aren’t pushed as being all that important. In fact, they’re often pushed as being negative because that’s like you’re trying to earn your salvation. You know, if you do something like fasting or you have habits like daily prayer, well, you’re just trying to have some kind of merit, right?

This is the way it’s erroneously presented in our culture. But what I’m wanting us to see, and what I want us to learn and to begin to practice is the reality that as we take some of these things, it’s it’s up to you. I can’t force any of these on you. If that’s what we’re getting from these sermons, we’re completely missing the point. I can’t force you to go have solitude and silence. I shouldn’t be forcing you to fast. Now, all of these are options, they are tools that we can then use in our own personal life voluntarily as we realize I want to grow, I want to be more like Jesus, I am a disciple, I want to follow him, and here are some options of things I can work on and I can use that are beneficial to me.

And as I’ve said before, sometimes the ones that seem the hardest, like fasting might seem pretty hard, that probably means that’s one of the ones you need. Right? It’s hard in our culture to even imagine missing a meal. Now, if we’re to overlay this with ancient culture, we would see quite a difference. That’s very normal to them. It’s why Jesus in his prayer says, give us this day our daily bread. How often do we pray for that? Other than by rote, because we sit at a meal three times a day and we feel the need to pray. We aren’t worried about where our next meal comes from. And for that reason, we are just so used to often soothing our pains and our sorrows and our sadness, the difficulties of life with ice cream and with food and snacks, all those things make us feel better.

They give us a dopamine hit, and it’s all super available. And so rather than actually approaching the real need and the critical issue in my life, I can just eat something that tastes good. And now I feel better for a little while. I don’t mean this to be autobiographical, but maybe a little bit. It’s very easy in the moment to just eat a few chips or eat some ice cream or whatever it is, and then I can kind of get away from whatever my problems are and enjoy that. Now, like any of these other things we’ve talked about, being with people is good. So solitude is not more righteous. God gave us food to enjoy. And there’s times we’re going to talk about celebration as another discipline later on at a different time.

Fasting is not appropriate during celebration. And so these are a matter of setting, of time frame, of considering the situation that we’re in, about choices that we’re making to best grow and to become more like Jesus. But often we are dealing with spiritual unhealthiness. As we’ve talked about in the past, a life filled with hurry and busyness, a life with distractions where prayer and worship feel rather empty. We’re there and we’re doing it, which there’s benefit to that. We’ll talk about that at another time. Even when we’re having difficulty doing it, there’s benefit to doing the things that are hard, even in the moment. But ultimately, we don’t want to feel like those things aren’t accomplishing anything. Or they don’t mean too much to us in the moment.

We want to fix those kinds of things in our life. A heart that’s craving worldly comforts rather than God’s presence. These are signs of unhealthiness. A mind consumed by worry and anxiety rather than trust in God’s provision and faith that He is there for us. These are all things we all go through. There’s times when we feel and we experience all of this, and that is the reason why I’m suggesting to you we need these spiritual disciplines in our life. They’re a foundation, they’re a preparation for us so that when we get to these difficult trials, we are prepared and we are ready to work through them. If we wait until the moment comes, we’re not going to be ready to face them. And so we see these great stories of faith, particularly Jesus himself as he encounters those who are opposed to him, or he has these great sayings he’s come up with.

And of course, Jesus is divine, and he has the power of the Holy Spirit and all that. But Jesus, even with all of that, spent time in contemplation, in preparation, in fasting, in solitude, in silence, in prayer. He was doing this habitually, so then when the time came, his mind and his body were prepared for what he was going to face. And I just think when I look at my own life, I don’t see that sort of thing being where it needs to be. So this is particularly something for me to be working on that I want to share with you, something that’s from Scripture that I think is super important for us as followers of Jesus Christ, that we are laying a good foundation with these disciplines.

1. Jesus Says, When You Fast

Sometimes ones that we haven’t thought much about before in the past. Matthew chapter 6. Maybe you’ve read this before and kind of felt that disconcerted feeling. Well, he talks about some other things here about giving and about prayer. And then this whole thing about fasting, don’t know if that really applies to us. Right? That’s sort of the way we think, I think. Or at least it’s the practice. We don’t practice fasting as a whole, as a society very often. But Jesus says this in verse 16. This is Matthew 6, verse 16. 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 their 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. So obviously the title of the sermon sort of gives away part of what I want us to think about, and there’s a lot of angles to this, but Jesus doesn’t say, if you fast, you know, if maybe at some point you fast, here are some things to think about. He says, when you fast. Right? He’s giving some explanation about how this was supposed to be done the right way. Now, there’s some reasons for that, and again, we can kind of rationalize this and justify why maybe we don’t do it and they did, and some of these things would be sort of accurate.

This is one of them. But also maybe we should learn from the things that they did and understand maybe there’s good reason for some of this. And that’s the direction I want to go this morning. I want us to think about this reality that when Jesus says this, I don’t think he’s giving a command. I don’t think he’s giving a command later in Matthew 9, when he’s responding to them saying, Why aren’t your disciples fasting? And he says, They will. They’re going to fast. Once I leave, then they will fast. Right now is a time of feasting. That’s what Jesus is essentially telling them. I’m with them. Why would they fast now? It’s a time of celebration and rejoicing, but when I leave, then it will be a time of fasting.

Incidentally, he still isn’t back. He has left. So we are in the middle of this period of time where he has left, and now it is the time for fasting, according to Matthew 9. But even in the midst of all of that, Matthew 6 and Matthew 9, they are not commandments. He doesn’t say, Thou shalt fast. So I don’t think I can say you have to do it. It’s a must. However, it is assumed. It’s assumed because everyone in their culture understood the nature of fasting and how it was done. And as we’ll see, I think in a minute, if I point it out, even pagan cultures understood this. It wasn’t just Jewish. This was something that society at large did. Whatever it is in our culture that everybody does, I mean, that’s what fasting was like for them.

2. What Is Fasting?

Just a very normal aspect. So there’s a cultural aspect to this for sure, but part of that is the benefit of what it actually does for you. So, what is fasting? Let’s talk about that really quickly, because I think this is important. Probably the most frequent fast we think about is Jesus’ 40 day fast. And maybe along with that, maybe like Moses or Elijah. Moses and Elijah were supernatural fasts. So I want to point that out because they’re not they’re not eating or drinking. And there’s no way you can do that for 40 days in reality. Right? So this is miraculous. They’re doing this at the hand of God. Jesus is doing a regular 40-day fast, which there are many people who have done 40-day fasts.

You can go Google and find all sorts of people who talk about this and how they’ve gone through it. And it is very possible. And this is one of the things that’s probably, if you haven’t ever researched this or thought about it may be surprising to you that this is something very possible to do. So going 40 days without food, I know we don’t like to miss a meal in our culture, but it’s something that probably thousands and thousands of people have done. And on purpose. So it’s something that can certainly be done. There are also fasts that are maybe restrictions from certain kinds of food. So Daniel does this a couple times. Daniel 1, again in Daniel 10, for three weeks, he goes without certain types of food.

On purpose, he’s mourning. And I might say more about that a little bit later. And then there is just the regular fast, which is just from food where you may drink various things. So it’s not a restriction from any kind of drinking, it’s just mainly the food. That’s the typical fast. There’s things like Nazarite vow where you stay away from certain things like wine for your whole life. So there’s times you could make a vow or whatever, and there would you stay away from certain things, and that’s an element of a fast.

When we use this term, sometimes we refer to things like abstaining from other things that are non food oriented. So some of you maybe have said, I’m gonna do a social media fast, right? Jesus would know nothing about that, or his disciples. Right? But we use the phrase because we understand the concept. Paul talks about this in terms of married couples sometimes having a sexual fast for prayer, right? That’s in 1 Corinthians 7. So it can be other things other than food that we abstain from for a certain period of time. But the idea is kind of giving something up or sacrificing something for a period of time. And this is extremely common throughout the ancient world. So some of this you can’t read.

3. Fasting Is Fairly Frequent Within Scripture

Not that you can see every detail of this chart. And there’s going to be a few of these charts. Katie was talking to me about a mistake I made on a PowerPoint a while back where I put treaching. I’m gonna do a little stretching this morning before I get to the preaching. So we’re gonna go through some information here about fasting. Fasting’s all over the Old Testament. In fact, I cut some of these things out of the chart because I couldn’t fit it all on the screen. So, and I highlighted a few just to kind of give you an idea if you can read it, some of these that you may be more familiar with. Hannah, she refuses to eat when she’s in distress, right? When she’s wanting a child.

Ahab is an interesting one, 1 Kings 21. Ahab, he repents when he is presented with who he really is by Elijah. There’s a period of repenting with fasting. I mean, Ahab is a horrible guy. And yet he recognizes what’s happening in his life and he fasts. Ahab is fasting. Then we have Esther and the Jewish conflict there in Persia. They’re actually fasting before Mordecai comes to Esther. They’ve already been fasting. And then she says, Hey, I want you to do a three-day fast. This is an extreme one. With they’re not eating or drinking for three days. So, quick disclaimer here, since I mentioned it, all of this, there may be particular health needs that you should be very careful. Please don’t jump into a three-day fast because I preached the sermon this morning.

That would be a very bad idea. And especially a really bad idea if you jump right to a three-day fast of food and water. You probably end up in the hospital, like I talked about a little bit earlier. Because the reality is we are fragile. Our bodies are weak, and that’s one of the things we learn through fasting is how desperate and dependent we are on God. That’s one of the lessons. And so when we stay away from something as simple as water for three days, it does a lot of harm to our body. We can’t do that. So please be careful. I’m not a doctor. I’m not telling you, well, I will tell you some ways about how to do this in a minute. But all of that is prefaced by saying, don’t do things that harm your health, right?

This is for spiritual purposes. And then I already mentioned Daniel’s fast, but also notice in Daniel 6, again, this is not a Jew. This is not a follower of Yahweh. But Darius is fasting when they throw Daniel in the lion’s den. So I just I want us to see kind of a comprehensive look of this reality that not it’s not just the Jewish world, it’s the pagan world too that understands there’s something valuable. There’s something that happens that’s important in the process of giving up food. There’s also plenty of references to fasting or allusions to them in the New Testament. Again, all of these charts aren’t going to list them all. They’re just kind of some selected ones that I chose. But we see Paul fasting a few times or mentioning fasting, it’s often him.

But also, notice chapter 14 of Acts, where they’re appointing elders, and the church is doing this with prayer and fasting. That’s how important it is. They see this as significant enough. They’re seeking the guidance of God and selecting their leaders. And then there’s some other references in some of the epistles. Jesus himself talks about it a number of times. We just actually looked at one reference to it in our Bible class last week, last Sunday, on Luke 18, the Pharisee and the tax collector, he mentions how he is fasting twice per week. So notice that’s not in the list, but that’s a parable Jesus is telling. So quite frequently this is talked about, but there are times where Jesus himself is fasting, or he’s teaching about fasting within the gospels.

4. Why Are They Doing This?

So this is something that is fairly frequent within scripture. I think maybe the more important angle we need to come at this from, though, is why? Why are they doing this? Why do we see people all throughout history, until the Middle Ages at least, really focusing on this idea of fasting? The Middle Ages, they kind of get super extreme, and that’s why we don’t do it. We looked at they’re like really showy. They would go in the desert for like days, and they made a big scene about how they didn’t eat and all this. And so, kind of now, as a reaction, we’re like, we don’t want to be like that. And so then it became viewed as this negative thing, not just fasting, but other disciplines as well.

And so it’s kind of like throwing the baby out with a bathwater. Despite some of the goodness of some of these things, like solitude and silence and prayer and study that it’s mixed in with them, and things like fasting, just kind of all got thrown away as well. That’s just trying to earn your salvation, like these middle-aged monks that were out in the desert. And so we don’t want to be like them. But why is it that these people in scripture are doing all this fasting? There’s actually quite a few reasons for it. just sort of a summary here of some of them. One of the main ones was obviously confession and repentance. They realize how they have violated and defiled the will of God.

They’ve gone against him and they have rebelled, and in realizing that, kind of like Ahab, we already mentioned, but also we have like Ezra and Nehemiah, there’s fasting that takes place in these second temple people. When they come back, they realize they’ve done wrong. And so, along with their confession, there’s a lot of times fasting. there is just the basic seeking of guidance. Maybe here’s one that would most relate to us the idea of grief and mourning. Very common in the ancient world, across the ancient Near East. This is very normal. but the whole point here is that we are disconnecting from the things of life in a sense. That’s what happens with silence and solitude, too, so that we can deepen our connection with God.

We are refraining from food, we’re fasting so that we can feast on the things of God. This is the idea that Jesus is getting at in John 6 when he’s talking about he’s the bread of heaven, right? And they’re going to eat my body, right? They’re going to eat my flesh. The sustenance that they were going to find is in him, not in the simple things of the world and even food itself. Food is merely an illustration. The fact that we have to eat regularly should be a reminder of how dependent we are upon God. And part of this process, when you fast, I’ve done very little of it, but there’s been times accidentally and on purpose where I have done this in a very basic level.

I’ll tell you how it goes. I did this the other day.

So it was like the most basic, easiest thing ever. 8 p.m. to like 11 a.m. In fact, I do it pretty frequently. I haven’t eaten today. It’s just normal on a Sunday morning. I think this was on a Tuesday. Katie was gone. They were at school doing stuff, and I was around the house. I’m like, why am I so irritated and frustrated by everything? You know, I was in the middle of all this. This is part of the process. Right? When we take things away that seem important, we work through the difficulty of that. And I want to talk in a minute a little bit more about how that when we do something like fast, it’s revealing things about our heart. And it was kind of amazing about 11:30, after kind of, you know, rampaging around the house, cleaning and doing things because I was mad for whatever reason.

I got an apple and cut it up and ate peanut butter, and like amazingly, the world was so much better. Now, that’s pretty sad that from 8 p.m. to 11.30, my mood changed so much because I hadn’t eaten. But this is why it’s so important to do things like this. It’s a testing process. That’s exactly what Jesus is referencing in the temptation accounts. When he says, man shall not live by bread alone, and he quotes Deuteronomy 8. I mean, this text in Deuteronomy 8 is all about this idea of God testing people. He’s he is trying to test the Israelites to see what’s in their heart. Right? And that’s part of this process. Fasting is a tool to deepen the awareness of ourselves and relationship with God.

It’s not, again, I’m not trying to say you have to do it or you must do it. It may be more important for some than it is for others, just like something like solitude. If you’re single and you live by yourself, you may not be greatly seeking solitude and silence. You may have plenty of that. And your need may be that you need to work more on getting around people and being with others and celebrating. It just depends on your circumstance. But this is a tool and it remains a tool, just like it was for ancient people, to deepen awareness of who they are. Spiritual awareness. The primary goal is worship, honoring God, and openness to God’s will. When we close off the distractions of the world, we now then open ourselves to listen to the things God is telling us.

Fasting can be done for all kinds of reasons. It can be done for health reasons. But I want us to understand that’s not really our primary goal here. Some of you may have done it for health reasons. That’s great. It gives you some experience. But the concept we’re getting at here is a spiritual fast. Something that is geared toward aligning our minds with the will of God, not just getting out toxins or whatever. That’s great. Those are great secondary reasons. We’ll talk something about that in just a minute. But that’s not the main reason. It’s also from even a religious standpoint, it’s not just an attempt to get what we want. You know, something bad has happened. Well, if I fast, then surely God will do what I want him to do.

That’s not the goal here. It’s not to appear holy or spiritual in the eyes of others. Jesus actually condemns this directly, as we’ve already seen. It’s not about proving your spirituality. None of those are the goal. The goal is to honor God and to be open to hearing his voice, doing the things that he wants us to do, being in closer alignment to him. And so the weakness that we feel in those moments without food, especially the first time, it heightens our connection to God, and we realize how dependent we are upon him. We miss a few meals and suddenly we just don’t feel good. For a people who like to think we can control so much. How little it takes to make us feel weak and unable.

5. It Exposes the Things That Control Us

That’s a great lesson for our modern world. Done properly, it is to learn humility. Some of those references I had up there that we quickly looked at, like Psalm 69, talks about this idea. He does this, he’s he’s it’s in submission to the will of God. It is to humble himself before God and recognizing his fragility. But here’s a big one it exposes the things that control us. Testing reveals what is really inside. It reveals our heart. This is Deuteronomy 8, from which Jesus quotes, in the wilderness when he’s been fasting 40 days. God has led you these 40 years that he might humble you. This is Moses telling the Israelites. Testing you to know what is in your heart. He humbled you and let you hunger.

Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord disciplines you. What God is doing to Israel is both training, it’s discipline, but it’s also revealing the nature of their heart, their bitterness, how they grumble, how they get angry. All those sorts of things are revealed in those moments in the wilderness when they are hungry, or they’re missing a lot more than a single meal, like we do. It’s not that they haven’t run to Whataburger in a few hours and gotten something. No, they’re in the middle of the wilderness. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from or how it’s even going to come.

And any of us placed in that sort of circumstance would probably be a little bit worried. God is testing them to see what’s in their heart. Richard Foster makes this statement in Celebration of Discipline, a book I would highly suggest. He says, more than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things. They’re not bad. It’s just how we use them. But in fasting, these things surface. If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, fear, if they are within us, they will surface. At first, we rationalize that our anger is due to hunger. Then we realize that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us.

We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ. So what he’s saying is when you are hangry, that’s revealing things about yourself. That’s telling you who you really are and what you need to work on. If I’m irritable, if I’m frustrated, if I’m lashing out at people because I’m hungry. Well, that tells me areas of weakness in my life and things I need to be working on. Remember this chart for a while back? I preached on the problem of hurry. And we talked about hurry sickness and how the world around us and the way it functions creates all kinds of problems. And we listed some symptoms here. And so just briefly, I want to reintroduce these because I want us to think about this idea.

You know, you’re thinking, do I really need to fast? Is fasting really going to help me? Well, maybe not. But let me ask you this about your spiritual health. Are you irritable? You get angry quickly over small things, and that changes your mood and your mood rules everything. Maybe are you sensitive? The smallest little thing ruins your day and causes anger and anxiety. Or you just you can’t ever grasp onto anything. You’re you’re restless. You’ve tried habits and things like that, but nothing ever works for you. Or you’re just so busy, you realize you’re not emphasizing the right things in your life, or life is so crazy that it’s just really about survival. There’s nothing more. You’re just emotionally numb to the things around you.

Your priorities are all out of whack. And that you know what’s most important, but you can’t ever quite get to it. Maybe it’s just you don’t even sleep enough. You’re not eating good meals regularly. I know that’s strange. We’re talking about fasting. But again, this is about being recentered. It’s about calibrating our life and getting it back in the right order. Or you have this behaviors where you relieve your stress and sadness by overeating or playing video games or looking at pornography. All of these things, they are rot for your soul when it desperately needs spiritual food. And then there’s things like isolation. You just don’t really feel like being around people. Probably all have felt this at some point. We just kind of want to stay in our house or stay in our room.

We don’t want to be around anybody. That’s a sign. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you’ve done something wrong. It just means that there’s something that is bothering you that is unhealthy spiritually and it needs some kind of attention. And it may be that something like fasting or some of other disciplines we’ve talked about would be a really helpful tool to get things back reoriented toward the things of God.

6. How Do We Do This? Start Small

Maybe nothing on that list affects you. If so, great. That’s amazing. I want to be more like you. But probably for most of us, some of these disciplines would be greatly helpful. Whichever one’s most appropriate in the minute, whatever, whether it’s the silence or prayer or prayer and fasting. I mean, these are beneficial tools. These are things we can use to help us grow as God’s people. So, how do we do this? Right? This is where it comes. If you’re interested and you think this is something that’s beneficial, how do you go about doing it? Like all the other ones, I think you have to start small. There’s all kinds of information out there about all this. Fortunately, it’s such a big fad right now in the diet and health world that you can find all kinds of information about fasting.

That then you can use that information to help you with something like a spiritual fast, which probably is more important. And that goes into the first thing. If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it for the right reason. Not for attention, not just for our health. That’s great if it helps us from a health standpoint. I think that’s very valuable. That’s a secondary purpose. But the primary purpose is to honor God and to be more open to the will of God. Be more open to the word of God as He’s speaking to us and convicting ourselves of the things that need to be changed, what’s being revealed about me and what is being taken out of my heart in those moments where I am hungry and I’m working through this process.

That’s the primary goal. So as we work through this, there’s some things you’re gonna have to look some of this up. I can’t go into all of it, but I’ll give you a brief summary of what to expect. As I already said, you’re probably not gonna jump into a three-day fast. Probably like missing a meal would be a good place to start, then maybe two meals, then like a whole day, and then eventually, over the course of time, doing that a number of times, you can then go to something deeper. And there are good reasons to do more and more. and this could help you. Let me actually just I want to read something to you real quickly. This is someone who did some of this for two years.

This is their experience. I want to read it because it shows the progress of how this works. It begins very superficially, okay? and so this person was journaling as they fasted once a week for a two-year period. First entry. I felt it felt to be a great accomplishment to a whole go a whole day without food. Congratulated myself on the fact that I found it so easy. Number two, began to see that above that the above was hardly the goal of fasting. Was helped in this by beginning to feel hunger. Number three, began to relate the food fast to other areas of my life where I was more compulsive. This is where it’s getting more serious. Right? As he removed the food, now he’s realizing it’s not just food, it’s other things that are controlling me.

I did not have to have a seat on the bus to be contented or to be cool in the summer and warm when it was cold. Number four, reflected more on Christ’s suffering, on the suffering of those who are hungry and have hungry babies. Number five, six months after beginning this fast discipline, I began to see why a two-year period has been suggested. The experience changes along the way. Hunger on fast days becomes acute, and the temptation to eat stronger. For the first time, I was using the day to find God’s will for my life. Began to think about what it meant to surrender one’s life. Number six, I now know that prayer and fasting must be intricately bound together. There is no other way, and yet that way is not yet combined in me.

Do you see how the progress happens in this discipline that this person was working through? At the first, it’s like, I’m so proud of myself. Look at what I’ve done. But as he’s working toward the end, there is a feeling of insufficiency, but yet contentment, even in that. He realizes he’s not where he’s supposed to be, but yet at the same time, he sees the progress and the spiritual depth that is growing in his life as he’s working through this single discipline. So in the first three days, it’s the worst. At least that’s what people who have done this say. The hunger is the worst in the first three days. And I’m only telling you this in case you do this at some point. Days four through nine aren’t as bad, but you feel weak at times.

You may stand up and be dizzy, but it’s a short-lived thing. You’re fine. And then at day 10, you start to feel stronger and revived. Your body has kind of gotten rid of all the junk that’s been in there that hasn’t gone out in years and years, probably. And so you’re starting to feel invigorated. And then sometime between day 21 and 40, you will feel hungry again if you go that long. Right? So Jesus begins to feel hungry on day 40. And the devil had been tempting him all along. I think we see that in Luke. But he comes to him in his hunger and now begins to tempt him again. It’s part of this process. Right? Where now he is feeling those hunger pains again.

And at that point, you should end the fast, essentially, if you go through that whole process. But the idea is to start small and realize this is not a rule, it’s not a way to prove your spirituality. It’s not something that someone else should bind on you. And understand that the goal here is to honor God and to grow as a person in Jesus Christ. I think there’s a whole lot more here that we could talk about. As you saw, all of those texts, I mean, we could look at those and learn all kinds of good lessons from them. Essentially, we couldn’t do that this morning. There’s just not time for that sort of thing. But I just want to emphasize again the reality that just like we don’t have to exercise, we don’t have to eat healthy, we don’t have to do all kinds of things that actually help our bodies, yet we do them anyway.

Conclusion

Why is that? And I want us to overlay that same concept onto spiritual things. What am I doing to help my spiritual health? What kind of practices do I have weekly, yearly, that are going to benefit me and help me to grow and become more like Jesus? Could be this morning that you need to begin your life in Jesus Christ. That the first sacrifice to be made is not necessarily a fast from food, but a giving up of yourself in another way. Giving up the life that you now have. Begin this process. You die with Christ in baptism and you’re resurrected to newness of life. And that just begins this process of discipleship. Where one item after another, you are giving over to him. You’re realizing that he’s behind it all, that he is the sustainer of life, and that the material things we can give those up when needed.

Because our dependency is upon him. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Can we help you this morning? Why don’t you come now as we sing together?