SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Church of the Lookout is in the hold of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.
SPEAKER_00: Visit us online at thelookout.church.
SPEAKER_01: So a lot going on.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles this morning, let's open up to Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles, Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: We will have this on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to get jumping into the word today.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: For they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_01: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_01: But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, and your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret.
SPEAKER_01: And your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So this next week, some of you have heard, um, October 14th through the 20th, we're uh we're we're holding a week of unbroken prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about that in a second, but today specifically, I want to spend time talking about the practice of fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Um it's interesting when you open up the scriptures, one of the things that you notice from start to finish is how food-centric the Bible is.
SPEAKER_01: So much of the Bible from start to finish is either about feasting or fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: All throughout the Old Testament, God commands feasts in the annual calendar to commemorate the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: He actually bakes it into the calendar.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to stop and you're going to party to remember how good I am.
SPEAKER_01: And when we feast, we know that we celebrate the goodness of God and provision of God.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus feasted.
SPEAKER_01: It was said of Jesus that he came eating and drinking, and that's why I love following him.
SPEAKER_01: Because he didn't forsake that.
SPEAKER_01: And it actually is very deeply theological.
SPEAKER_01: The incarnation of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He came participating in the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: He came as well to eat and to drink.
SPEAKER_01: And the one way that he asked us to remember him was through a meal.
SPEAKER_01: And let that not just breeze by you.
SPEAKER_01: That is a significant thing.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Do this in remembrance of me every time that you eat and drink the cup.
SPEAKER_01: Let it remind you of what I've done for you.
SPEAKER_01: And so he left us with the bread and the wine and a table to remember him by.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I love him so much.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus feasted, right?
SPEAKER_01: But he also fasted.
SPEAKER_01: And can we just look at that for a moment?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus also fasted.
SPEAKER_01: He began his ministry with 40 days of fasting in the wilderness when the devil tempted him to turn stones into bread.
SPEAKER_01: What did he say back to the devil?
SPEAKER_01: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_01: So for Jesus, while he participated in all the things that we love as well, he also fasted because his primary motivation was communion with the Father.
SPEAKER_01: His motivation was abiding with the Father, staying attuned.
SPEAKER_01: And he knew when feasting would be a part of staying attuned to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: He knew when fasting was going to help him stay attuned to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we say as a church, Jesus is our vision, what we're talking about is Christ's likeness.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: What we're talking about is where we're what we're after is in every single one of us, our desire and our prayers, God, would you grow us into Christ's likeness through and through, that we can become the kind of people that are many Christs, little Christs walking in this world.
SPEAKER_01: That it could be said of us that we look like you, that we sound like you, that we smell like you.
SPEAKER_01: And we want that to be true.
SPEAKER_01: And if that's true, then we have to follow Jesus not just with our hearts, but his overall lifestyle to do what Jesus did himself.
SPEAKER_01: John Mark Comer says it like this if you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And this is important because a lot of us want the Jesus things, but we want to live in the way that we want to live.
SPEAKER_01: We want to have our cake and eat it too.
SPEAKER_01: We want God to permeate us, but we don't always think about what kind of lifestyle is required in order to live the Jesus life.
SPEAKER_01: Can we talk about that for a second?
SPEAKER_01: You guys awake this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And so today, while most Christians feast, very few fast.
SPEAKER_01: But you know, the truth is this if fasting is not part of your discipleship to Jesus, you're not alone.
SPEAKER_01: Statistically, only 2% of Christians actually engage in fasting.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a few reasons for that.
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of modern Christian circles, fasting has basically disappeared from Christianity, specifically in the West.
SPEAKER_01: You're more likely to hear about fasting from your wellness coach or your fitness guru or your Muslim neighbor than you are a Christian, probably.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting is kind of the trend when it comes to any kind of new, you know, you can watch all kinds of Instagram reels about the benefits, the physical benefits of fasting and things that you should do to modify your diet to achieve optimal performance.
SPEAKER_01: You'll probably hear about it from there, but you don't often hear about Christians with a fasting discipline.
SPEAKER_01: Um if but you know, but maybe, maybe if you're like me, you grew up in a circle where that was very much emphasized.
SPEAKER_01: And uh in a lot of the the my upbringing, I grew up in a lot of environments where fasting was uh so emphasized that it was almost like, do you guys even enjoy life anymore, right?
SPEAKER_01: Um do you is this all you do?
SPEAKER_01: Do you eat anything ever?
SPEAKER_01: And uh and it was almost for me, it was fasting.
SPEAKER_01: When I was growing up, there was times where uh it was enshrined as the pinnacle of spiritual achievement.
SPEAKER_01: You're really not experiencing much of God unless you're you're fasting for 40 days in the desert, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so and so for me growing up, I always had this thing of wow, that's that's really intense.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, and there there was there have been times in my life it was kind of a turnoff because it I saw what it produced in certain people, not everybody.
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of these people were um very well-meaning, but it's one of those practices that kind of overtook the point of what fasting is supposed to produce.
SPEAKER_01: Do you guys hear what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01: But the third reason why I think a lot of us in the West have stopped because our relationship with our bodies um, you know, by and large, is deeply unhealthy.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people who have an unhealthy relationship with food, and so the idea of fasting is a trigger for many people of body shame or ongoing struggles or eating disorders, or maybe you know what that's like.
SPEAKER_01: And so fasting is kind of a is it's it's an interesting thing because it hits you in a different way than it does others.
SPEAKER_01: And so, for all of those reasons, a lot of people just don't want anything to do with fasting because we it kind of starts to begging the questions like, why would I ever want to do that anyways?
SPEAKER_01: Why would I want to just not eat food?
SPEAKER_01: Um, what and what is the point?
SPEAKER_01: And and are we trying to get God to feel sorry for us enough to where he answers our prayers, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, look at that poor guy.
SPEAKER_01: Gosh, he hasn't eaten in days.
SPEAKER_01: I probably should answer his prayers.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he he looks pretty sad.
SPEAKER_01: Is that the point?
SPEAKER_01: Is it to get God to like feel sorry?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it to move him to by by trying to prove that, man, we've we we finally get it.
SPEAKER_01: We're so spiritual that we're not eating food anymore, right?
SPEAKER_01: So it starts to unload all these questions of like, what is the point?
SPEAKER_01: Why are we doing this?
SPEAKER_01: Does this actually even matter?
SPEAKER_01: And what does it mean when we combine prayer and fasting together?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, those are the kinds of questions I want to answer here in just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: So let's go back to the screen.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to take a look at this passage here.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and when you fast, I I want to look at this because this this passage in Matthew 6, you guys will remember, this is from Sermon on the Mount, which we can't quite get away from.
SPEAKER_01: We keep coming back to it, guys.
SPEAKER_01: It's still a good one.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna share my screen here and uh and and I'll show you a couple key phrases here.
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: There, there we go.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus is talking about fasting, there's a couple key phrases he gets to.
SPEAKER_01: One is this, and when you fast, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And when you fast, it's an interesting thing because he doesn't actually ever tell people to fast.
SPEAKER_01: He assumes that they're already fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Do you guys get that?
SPEAKER_01: He assumes this is already a part of their lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: So he, and when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: So the first reading of this passage, it's pretty clear what Jesus is trying to do is he's taking people, have taken a spiritual practice or a discipline, and they've used it for their own perception.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't really into that.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that doesn't quite work in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: So he has to, he has to re-redo, rework um everything that they believe about fasting.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, or they disfigure their faces that the fasting may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_01: And so they they did it for a sense of to get on a pedestal.
SPEAKER_01: He says, but when you fast, anoint your head with uh anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret.
SPEAKER_01: And so for Jesus, it really is is about the Father.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the Father who is in secret, and it really does matter.
SPEAKER_01: But he ends with this really fascinating phrase to you.
SPEAKER_01: And your father who is in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's an interesting word, this word reward.
SPEAKER_01: Um, because in Christian circles, it that doesn't quite match up with our paradigm because we're taught all the time we don't do things to earn it, right?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not fasting to earn anything from God.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a difference between earning something, doing something to earn something from God or prove something to God, and doing something knowing that the Father has a gift waiting on the other side.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that there's ways of living before God where there's a gift waiting on the other side?
SPEAKER_01: And and what Jesus is trying to say is like, listen, when you give yourself to fasting and you do it before God, and it's not just about how you're perceived, and not about just trying to manipulate God into doing whatever you want, but if you do it from the Father who's in secret, the Father has rewards waiting for you, which is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, fasting historically, it's interesting because we see that the people of God for millennia have given themselves to fasting in order to deeply commune with God and to amplify their prayers before God, um, and and even to stand in solidarity with the poor.
SPEAKER_01: There are there are stories all throughout the Old Testament, all the major characters fasted: Moses, David, Samuel, Esther, the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: Globally, fasting is encouraged and practiced by nearly every major world religion.
SPEAKER_01: This is not unique to Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: This is a practice by almost everybody, and specifically outside of the West, it's very much more a normal way of life.
SPEAKER_01: And this has been the case for about a millennia and a half until it started to die out just a couple hundred years ago.
SPEAKER_01: And that the trend happened during the Enlightenment, and we start to see that I think with the inbreaking of rational, logical thinking, everyone kind of started disconnected their minds from their bodies, and we started disintegrating our beings before God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that you are one being before God?
SPEAKER_01: Body, soul, and spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You can't just separate them all out.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this started to happen a couple hundred years ago to where even John Wesley lamented, uh, famous revivalist John Wesley in the 18th century.
SPEAKER_01: He said this.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I fear there are now thousands of Methodists, so-called, both in England and Ireland, who following the same bad example have entirely left off fasting, who are so far from fasting twice a week that they do not even fast twice a month.
SPEAKER_01: You know who you are.
SPEAKER_01: So, like, so his standard is like the normal Christian life, twice a week you're fasting.
SPEAKER_01: And can you imagine that there would even be Christians who don't fast twice a month?
SPEAKER_01: You know, so that's where he was at, you know, a couple hundred years ago.
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you know, like that standard, it's not like that standard should apply to all believers everywhere, but that's that was what was culturally kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01: Almost all of the church fathers throughout history talked about fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Almost everybody that you probably respect or admire as far as a preaching or ministry standpoint have regular rhythms of fasting and prayer in their lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what St.
SPEAKER_01: Brit Basil the Great said, and this is A.D.
SPEAKER_01: 330.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, he lived around A.D.
SPEAKER_01: 330.
SPEAKER_01: He said this fasting gives birth to prophets.
SPEAKER_01: She strengthens the powerful.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting makes lawgivers wise.
SPEAKER_01: She is a safeguard for the soul, a steadfast companion for the body, a weapon for the brave, and a discipline for champions.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting repels temptations, anoints for godliness.
SPEAKER_01: She is a companion for sobriety, the crafter of a sound mind.
SPEAKER_01: In wars, she fights bravely.
SPEAKER_01: In peace, she teaches tranquility.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on.
SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't want to fast after that?
SPEAKER_01: It's like the ultimate papitock for fasting.
SPEAKER_01: More recently, John Piper worded it very succinctly.
SPEAKER_01: He said, ultimately we fast simply because we want God more than we want anything this world has to offer us.
SPEAKER_01: So fasting has its place historically.
SPEAKER_01: And as followers of Jesus, if we consider ourselves disciples of Jesus, it's something we have to take seriously, at least know where its place is in our life.
SPEAKER_01: For us, for our lives to look like what Jesus' life looked like a lifestyle of feasting and a lifestyle of fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So can I just get more logistical here?
SPEAKER_01: What actually is fasting?
SPEAKER_01: Not eating food and sometimes water.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Now, over the years in church world, we've added all kinds of different fasts, different types of fasts.
SPEAKER_01: So you'll hear us every now and then talking about a social media fast or a news fast or an entertainment fast or I'm gonna fast from just this or that.
SPEAKER_01: Technically, uh like a social media fast is not actually a fast.
SPEAKER_01: It would be called abstinence, it'd be called abstaining from social media.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the reason that's important is because if even just to hold the historical kind of classical definition of fasting, it's not just a restricted diet, it's not just abstaining from different types of things, though we should do those things as well.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting really is having a period of time where you're not eating food, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So we've created other kinds of things like a Daniel fast, which really is a restricted diet.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the reason why it's important to understand specifically to hold fasting, the definition of fasting as abstaining from food, is again, because there's something powerful that happens when we don't eat food for a specific period of time.
SPEAKER_01: We'll get to that in a second.
SPEAKER_01: Um so another question though would be when you fast, how often should you fast?
SPEAKER_01: And this is actually, this is a really good question.
SPEAKER_01: And and honestly, there's no command about this in scripture.
SPEAKER_01: There's no New Testament command of this is how often you should do this, this is the rhythm.
SPEAKER_01: It's completely up to you.
SPEAKER_01: There's this isn't supposed to be a heavy yoke or this pressure or this burden.
SPEAKER_01: But historically, again, if we were to look at the historical church, it was adopted as a way of life where twice a week that you would fast, specifically on Wednesdays and Fridays.
SPEAKER_01: And it's much like for us what regular exercise is to us.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's telling you, you know, there's no rule on how much you should exercise, but generally we all have rhythms for how often you should be using your body.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way, I would I would propose that the life of the believer, we should have rhythms in a year, in a month, or in a week where fasting is a part of our normal life before God.
SPEAKER_01: But what's what's more important than how often and how much is understanding this.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting is both a rhythm and a response.
SPEAKER_01: And so the early Christian writings, um, there's a document called the Didiche, which housed the collection of a lot of the early Christian writings.
SPEAKER_01: This were this was not in the Bible, it's not in the New Testament, but as the letters were circulating, as they were trying to live in communities where they were living the Jesus life together, they would have kind of certain standards.
SPEAKER_01: And so for them, it was Wednesdays and Fridays.
SPEAKER_01: In ancient Hebrew culture, it was more Mondays and Thursdays.
SPEAKER_01: They Christians switched it to Wednesdays and Fridays so that it would match Passion Week, where Wednesdays was the day where Jesus was betrayed, and Fridays were the day where Jesus would lay down his life.
SPEAKER_01: And so they would fast on Wednesdays and Fridays to remind them in their bodies of what would happen to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now they would say on Sabbath day, you are not to fast because Sabbath day is not a day for not eating food.
SPEAKER_01: Sabbath day is a day for celebration and for eating.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna eat your best food on your Sabbath day to remind yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna feast to remind yourself of the provision and the goodness of God, and you want to remind yourself of that.
SPEAKER_01: But a couple other days a week, give yourself to fasting.
SPEAKER_01: And usually what they would do is they would fast sunrise to sunset.
SPEAKER_01: So before the sun would come up, they would begin their fast, and after the sunset, they would break their fast.
SPEAKER_01: So not necessarily even a full 24 hours or 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: It was probably 12 to 15 hours, you know, during the course of the day, a couple days a week.
SPEAKER_01: And in doing so, and and depriving themselves from food, they were calling their bodies to attention to what God was doing, to the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_01: So fasting was a rhythm, but it was also a response.
SPEAKER_01: We read all throughout the Old Testament, um, again, um, with Esther and with the prophets, and in several different places where a fast was called in response to grief or in response to loss or a war, a national tragedy, or a need for a breakthrough.
SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes in the life of the church historically, we call ourselves to a specific fast in order, again, to call attention to our spirits before God, where we've fallen asleep, and to amplify our prayers before God and say, God, would you move on our behalf?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that's all in in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot we could talk about about the purpose of fasting, what's actually happening.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and those would be the spiritual benefits.
SPEAKER_01: There are a ton of physical benefits to fasting if you're doing it healthy, and certainly you want to consult your doctor, healthcare professionals, depending on your body type or how that should look for you.
SPEAKER_01: So that's not assuming it should look the same for everybody.
SPEAKER_01: But there are a tremendous amount of physical attributes, but in the scriptures, it's not specifically for physical, it's not for losing weight or for looking trim or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: It's not even for maximum productivity or you know, or keeping your mind sharp.
SPEAKER_01: It really is about setting yourself apart to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And if I had several weeks, we could we could take several weeks on just what fasting does in the life of the believer.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna get into all of that today, but just to mention a couple things.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting is primarily about offering yourself to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: It's about offering yourself to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 12, 1, Paul says this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting about this passage, to end to present your bodies as a sacrifice, your bodies as a worship.
SPEAKER_01: That word body is this word soma, which is like your your whole being.
SPEAKER_01: It's like your mind, will, emotion, spirit, your body, your physical body is actually means something to God.
SPEAKER_01: And what we've done with this passage, though, is we've we've taken everything and we've put it into our minds or into our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: So God, I'm gonna offer you my heart as my living sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Take my heart.
SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm asking your heart, ask for your body, your whole life before God.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we offer our bodies to Him, what fasting is one of the ways that we connect our reintegrate our actual bodies back with our spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Spirits and our minds and our hearts again.
SPEAKER_01: We fast not to just get something from Jesus, but to give something to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And so this word stoma that we talked about, the whole person, your whole being before God.
SPEAKER_01: It's part of the root of the word psychosomatic.
SPEAKER_01: So fasting is a psychosomatic practice.
SPEAKER_01: It connects again, it reintegrates your mind and your body in a way that almost no other practice does.
SPEAKER_01: Most of our spiritual practices are like intellectual or sent, or if they're thinking about things, or are positioning our hearts, which are all great and needed, and we need that.
SPEAKER_01: But in our culture, we have so separate our actual bodies from our discipleship to Jesus that we need practices that reinfuse them together so our bodies match what our spirits are praying.
SPEAKER_01: You guys with me?
SPEAKER_01: And this is widely accepted and encouraged all around the world.
SPEAKER_01: I've even heard that in Africa, a lot of mediums or psychics or witch doctors, before you would go and visit a psychic or a medium, they would actually ask that you fast for five days beforehand before you come and visit.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because they know that if you come in a fasted state, you are going to be more attuned to what the spiritual realm is doing and more receptive to anything that they would have to offer you.
SPEAKER_01: So if the enemy knows that, if evil spirits know that, how much more for those who are given, who are meant to be filled to the temple of the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: That we have to fast in order to attune ourselves to even be receptive, to be, to pay attention to what God is doing in our lives, in our homes, in our churches, our neighborhoods, in our world.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's such a powerful practice if we're able to receive it.
SPEAKER_01: So fasting is about offering ourselves to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's about growing in holiness.
SPEAKER_01: It's about, it is, it is at times about standing in solidarity with the poor and reminding ourselves that what we experience right here, right now, is not normal around the world.
SPEAKER_01: Do you guys realize that?
SPEAKER_01: The amount of food that you have access to, that I have access to, you go and open your pantry, oh wow.
SPEAKER_01: That's something else, right?
SPEAKER_01: Around the world, that is not always the case.
SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes fasting is about staying connected globally with the poor.
SPEAKER_01: But fasting, one of the great things about fasting, and the reason I think this is really important for us, listen to me here.
SPEAKER_01: The reason why I'm proposing this, and that we, and I'm inviting you to consider this, especially as we're going into a week of prayer next year, is this fasting awakens our latent hunger for God.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting awakens our latent hunger for God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you realize that in your spirit, man, there is a craving for God?
SPEAKER_01: A craving, insatiable desire.
SPEAKER_01: But in our culture, in an abundance culture, our desire for God so often gets buried under the concerns of this world and the conveniences and the comforts of our world.
SPEAKER_01: We attempt to satisfy that God craving with all kinds of things that this world has to offer.
SPEAKER_01: And so part of the way we create an actual resistance, it's a counter-cultural resistance.
SPEAKER_01: As we call it, we almost like, it's like we're declaring war against the things that bury our craving and our longings for God from the inside out.
SPEAKER_01: Do you realize that that that's important to do?
SPEAKER_01: That every now and then throughout the year or throughout our lives, we actually have to strip, we have to enter into a season of stripping ourselves back from what we become accustomed to, to remind ourselves of what we're actually made for.
SPEAKER_01: So fasting, what it does, it's a purposeful, instead of letting life do it to us, I'm gonna intentionally strip myself back for a time in order to awaken that latent hunger for God.
SPEAKER_01: I think I just, what I've realized for myself, and what I realized for much of the church, and probably a lot of you as well, it's so easy to be a Christian, but to live numb.
SPEAKER_01: To live completely numb.
SPEAKER_01: To not be connected to this deep, energetic uh heart cry that is in our spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You know, realize that God has given us his spirit, he's given us a spirit of sonship, and there's the spirit inside of you that is crying out, above the Father.
SPEAKER_01: That's in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: You know that there is something inside of you.
SPEAKER_01: If you're given to Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, He's given you His Spirit in such a way, with whether you know it or not, the Spirit inside of you is actually crying out as best as possible.
SPEAKER_01: Ah! Father! Are you connected with that voice inside of you?
SPEAKER_01: Are you are you hearing the longing inside of you?
SPEAKER_01: And if not, this is why we give ourselves to a moment where I'm gonna purposefully take something away in order to let my spirit, the spirit man, come forth, the spirit of God inside of me, because I want to stay connected to the heartbeat of God.
SPEAKER_01: I want to stay awake to what God is awake to.
SPEAKER_01: And it was part of, it was part of the whole culture of the early church.
SPEAKER_01: We see this in Acts all through the early church.
SPEAKER_01: They were praying and fasting all the time.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, fasting and prayer together is not just about, it's about communion with God, but all communion with God leads us to mission with God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_01: It's about actually getting the burden for what God has a burden for, the people that God wants to love.
SPEAKER_01: And what a love is in Acts 13, we read that fasting was a prominent factor in the launching of the first missionary journey in the history of the church.
SPEAKER_01: Saul and Barnabas and three other friends in the church at Antioch, it says this they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, worshiping and fasting, and the Holy Spirit said, Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that so cool?
SPEAKER_01: They were worshiping and fasting, and God said, All right, it's time to leave this room.
SPEAKER_01: It's time to go.
SPEAKER_01: So the church, after fasting and prayer, they sent Paul and Barnabas off to the nations.
SPEAKER_01: On the journey, Saul and Barnabas established churches and they would appoint elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_01: So they took the same thing, and every time God was breaking in somewhere, they would continue to pray and fast, discover who God was resting on, empower them to continue the journey, and they would keep moving out.
SPEAKER_01: It was all part of movement.
SPEAKER_01: It was not meant to be static.
SPEAKER_01: It was about, it was meant to realign with the heartbeat of God so we can stay on mission and be going where God is going.
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm saying here is this, guys, fasting for us is critically important that we take this seriously because it's it's about communion with God and it's about us staying awake to God and not being numb, and it's about us moving where God is moving.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just telling you this next season, those are my prayers.
SPEAKER_01: My prayers are that what God is doing in us, that God would also do through us, that what God does in this house, and we're in a prayer room, does not stay in a prayer room, but we catch a vision for what he wants to do on your neighborhood street and in your workplace and in the nations and in Mexico and in Africa and all the places that God blesses us to send.
SPEAKER_01: He did not call us to live static lives.
SPEAKER_01: He called us to align with him to go where he is going.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want me to keep ramping up there?
SPEAKER_01: Should we accelerate a little bit?
SPEAKER_01: Are you guys hearing me this morning?
SPEAKER_01: So, this is the teaching today.
SPEAKER_01: This is a both a it's both a teaching about something that's been lost, this is a pastoral invitation, and I would even say prophetic for us.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we can be the type of church that does not see fasting as this peripheral kind of goofy thing, but as integral to Christ's likeness in the mission of God, I'm telling you, then we will continue to be a force to be reckoned with because the Spirit of God will continue to move through us and move through our prayers as we align with his heart.
SPEAKER_01: I've always been, I've always been reluctant to start a fast because again, I love food.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like that feeling of feeling hangry because I'm like, gosh, is this helpful?
SPEAKER_01: If I'm just angry all day, is this helpful to God or me?
SPEAKER_01: But once I push through that, and the the times I give myself to fasting, and it continues to increase.
SPEAKER_01: I continue to long for you know just just times of fasting in my life as that continues to increase, I find myself more dependent on God, I find myself walking uh uh more aware of my own sin, which which makes me humble before God.
SPEAKER_01: But then I I find these moments where I start to love people in a different in a different way because the the things that I've relied on for comfort and convenience that have satisfied those things that those just kind of fade away.
SPEAKER_01: And I can find myself seeing people differently.
SPEAKER_01: Every major move of God in church history has started with prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to, as a church, hold this before us.
SPEAKER_01: I've never taught a sermon on fasting before because it's always, I've always kind of seen it as this, you know, this side thing, but I'm just I'm pulling it front and center because together as a church, I just want to I just want to invite us, this is our time to come to God, to awaken our spirits and say, God, we want what you want.
SPEAKER_01: So next week, next Monday, October 14th through the 20th, we've set aside an entire week for what we're calling a week of unbroken prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And we're inviting everybody in the church to be a part of this.
SPEAKER_01: And and and we've said this before, this is part of a larger thing that's going on.
SPEAKER_01: There's this huge network called 24-7 Prayer USA, and they have 52 churches, all taking one week to cover the entire year of 2024 with unbroken prayer, praying for our nation, praying that hearts would return to God, and specifically praying for revival in our churches and renewal in our land, revival in the church and renewal in the land.
SPEAKER_01: And there's so many different ways to orient our prayers towards that.
SPEAKER_01: But what we're doing is fairly simple.
SPEAKER_01: We're inviting everybody in the church to consider over the course of next week if you're able to set aside one hour a day for seven days to join us in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: We invite you to do that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you go to that QR code on the seat in front of you, you'll see a link.
SPEAKER_01: This is week of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: When you sign up, you're gonna see a whole calendar.
SPEAKER_01: The good news is over half of that calendar is already full.
SPEAKER_01: We already have like 92 hours that's already full of prayer, of the whatever it is, 144 a week.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not good at math, um, but we have a lot of hours in the week.
SPEAKER_01: So over uh half of it's full, but you your name's not most of you, your name's not on the list yet, okay?
SPEAKER_01: You might not be able to do an hour a day.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, this is not a heavy yoke.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't want you to feel some sense of pressure.
SPEAKER_01: It's just an invitation.
SPEAKER_01: But if you can only do an hour of the week, that's fine too.
SPEAKER_01: We invite everybody to try as try to try to get some time every day so we can do it together.
SPEAKER_01: But put your name on the list.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're not sure how to do that at the link, at the table in the foyer after the service, Shannon Cape will be back there.
SPEAKER_01: She's gonna recruit you, she's gonna give you it, she's gonna sign you a time slot.
SPEAKER_01: I'm joking about that.
SPEAKER_01: Um, she will help you, uh, she will help you uh get signed up.
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things we're doing, we're having prayer points over the course of the week, each day specific passage and some prayer points that way we're all aligned with what we're praying for today.
SPEAKER_01: All the prayers have to do with different pictures of what we believe or prayers that lead to revival in the church or renewal in our land.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh and we're gonna send those out via email.
SPEAKER_01: All of you, if you're on our email list, you will get those and even a playlist with worship songs and some extra reading.
SPEAKER_01: So it should be really cool, should be really fun.
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for it.
SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be groups meeting in the evening, and the ladies and men's are gonna be eating uh meeting in the evenings next week.
SPEAKER_01: Um the youth group, the youth ministry is taking Thursday night next week.
SPEAKER_01: So everyone gets to be a part of women's Bible study and Wednesday mornings is gonna be a part.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you run a group, just turn it into a prayer meeting for this next week, and it's gonna be awesome, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But I believe um, I believe moments like this I get excited for because anytime the church consecrates uh a moment in time and says, we're gonna clear away some clutter and we're gonna bring ourselves to you, it only serves to awaken us from the inside out and to bring us closer to what God is doing and stir us up as a church.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you believe we need to continue to be stirred up as a church?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I believe that we're in an important year in our nation, we're in an important season with elections coming up.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a chance for us to not get sucked into all the vortexes of what everybody else is saying, but to as a church say, set apart to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
SPEAKER_01: What do you have?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's the invitation.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what I'm asking you to do.
SPEAKER_01: Consider this next week, if you've never fasted before unto God, consider taking one meal or one day or multiple days, and choosing which hours of the day that you will fast and using some of that time to stay attuned to God and prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: That's the invitation.
SPEAKER_01: Very simple.