01-20-12
How We Should Fast – A Strategy for Successful Fasting
Let me give you a strategy for successful fasting ...
This will not be an exhaustive list, but rather serve as a means
to helping you see some legitimate reasons for fasting through out your
Christian Life:
1. Remember that Jesus said “when you fast” not “if you fast”. Denoting that He expected His followers to Fast at some point and time in their discipleship. (Mat. 6:16)
2. We fast in order to seek God’s Face and Fellowship or His presence and purpose and we remain in God’s presence until we feel He has or is going to meet our need. Fasting is the quickest way to get yourself into the position where God can give you what He was wanted to give you all along!
3. Fasting helps us to humble ourselves before God. It is a means of declaring to God that He is the most important thing in our lives. Fasting helps us to recall our utter dependency upon God. It is a very practical and experiential means of remembering that we are dependent upon God for our very existence.
4. Fasting helps us to get focused and sense the seriousness of the issues that we are praying about. By removing ourselves from the realm of natural, conditioned responses/ activities, we are enabled to give ourselves wholly to a matter. It removes the distractions of everyday life that often times hinder the effectiveness of our prayer life.
5. Fasting helps us to control and discipline our lives. We choose to go without in order to gain something of greater consequence. A.W. Tozer had this to say about his own practice of fasting, “I fast just often enough to let my stomach know who’s boss.”
6. Fasting helps to keep us from being enslaved by habit. Tilden H. Edwards writes, “Fasting…can simplify the compulsive, distracting, grasping nature of our appetites. When we fast intentionally, one of the first things we notice is how little food we really need, yet how much we have been wolfing down. The dull, bloated feeling from over-eating slowly vanishes. We become lighter and more lucid. We see that we really are capable of not responding to that grasping wave of appetite that clicks in our brain. That is a little realization of freedom. If we don’t respond to that shallow, driving wave, we are free to flow in a simpler, deeper, more even-flowing stream” (Living Simply Through the Day).
7. Fasting helps us to stay physically fit. It helps to keep us from becoming overweight and soft. To quote Bill Bright, “We have more food reserves stored in body fat than we realize, and most of us would be happy to give up the fat”.
8. Fasting helps to release the purposes and power of God in our lives and in the lives of those we are praying for. One example of the power and purposes of God being released through fasting and prayer is found in the life of Moses. He fasted 40 days without food or water and it resulted in the reception of the Law. I cannot help but wonder what great events never happen because of our aversion to fasting.
1. Remember that Jesus said “when you fast” not “if you fast”. Denoting that He expected His followers to Fast at some point and time in their discipleship. (Mat. 6:16)
2. We fast in order to seek God’s Face and Fellowship or His presence and purpose and we remain in God’s presence until we feel He has or is going to meet our need. Fasting is the quickest way to get yourself into the position where God can give you what He was wanted to give you all along!
3. Fasting helps us to humble ourselves before God. It is a means of declaring to God that He is the most important thing in our lives. Fasting helps us to recall our utter dependency upon God. It is a very practical and experiential means of remembering that we are dependent upon God for our very existence.
4. Fasting helps us to get focused and sense the seriousness of the issues that we are praying about. By removing ourselves from the realm of natural, conditioned responses/ activities, we are enabled to give ourselves wholly to a matter. It removes the distractions of everyday life that often times hinder the effectiveness of our prayer life.
5. Fasting helps us to control and discipline our lives. We choose to go without in order to gain something of greater consequence. A.W. Tozer had this to say about his own practice of fasting, “I fast just often enough to let my stomach know who’s boss.”
6. Fasting helps to keep us from being enslaved by habit. Tilden H. Edwards writes, “Fasting…can simplify the compulsive, distracting, grasping nature of our appetites. When we fast intentionally, one of the first things we notice is how little food we really need, yet how much we have been wolfing down. The dull, bloated feeling from over-eating slowly vanishes. We become lighter and more lucid. We see that we really are capable of not responding to that grasping wave of appetite that clicks in our brain. That is a little realization of freedom. If we don’t respond to that shallow, driving wave, we are free to flow in a simpler, deeper, more even-flowing stream” (Living Simply Through the Day).
7. Fasting helps us to stay physically fit. It helps to keep us from becoming overweight and soft. To quote Bill Bright, “We have more food reserves stored in body fat than we realize, and most of us would be happy to give up the fat”.
8. Fasting helps to release the purposes and power of God in our lives and in the lives of those we are praying for. One example of the power and purposes of God being released through fasting and prayer is found in the life of Moses. He fasted 40 days without food or water and it resulted in the reception of the Law. I cannot help but wonder what great events never happen because of our aversion to fasting.
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