Fasting

I've always been slightly confused by the idea of fasting... it has always seemed to be a more "Old Testament" teaching that noone follows anymore.... But a week or two ago HokiePundit mentioned that he was fasting... And today, the sermon at NLCF was all about fasting... so here's my insight (taken mainly from what I picked up from Chris Backert's sermon this morning):

Fasting has been and is a highly misunderstood topic in Christian doctrine. But what is it really???

Fasting is a time when people willingly go without food for a spiritual purpose. Why would you fast? Well, to answer this, look at three examples from the Bible:
* Samuel was missing God's favor and protection
* Ezra was missing God's guidance and needed an answer
* Joel was missing God's deliverance and needed relief

Fasting seems to take place when there is something missing from the equation... and that something is God. But, its not just the act of fasting that will bring us back to God like the Pharisees thought ("One day teh disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked him, 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?' Jesus responded, ' Should the wedding guests mourn while celebrating with the groom? Someday he will be taken from them, and then they will fast. And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the patch shrinks and pulls away from teh old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved." ~ Matthew 9:14-17).

Fasting, according to the Pharisees, was a visual, open event. They thought it would earn them God's favor. But looking at the larger story, we don't normally try to put something new into something old... Jesus' way of love, grace, and freedom was so different that it couldn't even exist in teh same container as the religiosity of the Pharisees.

Jesus says you can't earn God's favor when it is right in front of you... God is right in front of you...

Fasting isn't legalistic, but a way of refreshing our life. Going without food helps us find ourselves when we have moved away, rather than find God because he hasn't gone anywhere. Fasting helps put our heart in the right place. We can learn everything there is to know about sin and TRY really hard not to sin, but its not necessarily "the more you know, the further you go." -- You have to put effort into it.

Fasting helps us:
* Deny Ourselves:
- You really want to eat, but you have to learn to stand against desires of the flesh
- most sin comes from the desires of the flesh
- addictions feed off of wrongly placed desires
- fasting teaches us self-control
- our society is a society based on our wants and fulfilling our desires - impulse
- the danger is in thinking that our impulses are reasons to do something

* Finding our True Selves:
- we perceive that our bodies are the central part of our lives - our society idolizes bodies
- we're so fascinated with when the bodies look the best, but it could be when our insides look the worst.
- fasting brings our weaknesses to the surface
- Jesus said that he has food that we couldn't imagine - also, our true sustinence should come from God, rather than food and earthly pleasures
- when we're separated from God, do we crave Him?
- we SHOULD value the spiritual self

When you fast, replace food with God.