Fasting (Part I)

Hi, this is Dave Scherrerrer, and welcome to Kingdom Offerings, the site where 100 Full Ministries presents our podcasts. And today we're continuing our series on the Disciplines of the Kingdom. So much of these past two years, our blogs and podcasts have been focused on understanding the Gospel of the Kingdom. That's because here at 100 Full Ministries, we have the sinking suspicion that a lot of Christians today can't really give a working definition of the Gospel of the Kingdom, and that's a phrase that Jesus used. There's at least two huge problems that I think contribute to this Gospel of the Kingdom confusion. First, as churchgoers, evangelicals especially, we have a hard time agreeing on what exactly the Kingdom of God is. If you'd like to tackle some of that subject, you can check in on some of our more recent blogs at Backyard Conversations, but that's the first problem, is understanding exactly what the Kingdom of God is. And so the second issue is that if we're a seasoned Christian, then we hear the term Gospel tossed around, and we may default to reciting what's called the Plan of Salvation rather than unpacking the broader and more theologically expansive Gospel of the Kingdom. They are not one and the same. So now in this current series, we're remembering that the early Christian thinkers applied themselves to understanding how we as believers can become, quote, well-formed in Christ. They identified something called the spiritual disciplines. Those are habits or practices, disciplines, that the believer can lean into the work of the Holy Spirit by engaging these ancient practices or disciplines that help us move forward in our maturity as a follower of Christ. So in this series so far as Kingdom disciplines, we've discussed confession, prayer. We spent three sessions on forgiveness, and now this week and the next, we're going to be exploring the discipline of fasting. Each of these disciplines come directly from the teaching of Christ found in the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the Matthew account beginning in chapter 6. And there we get some instructions from Jesus regarding fasting in His Kingdom Sermon, Matthew chapter 6, verses 16 and 18. Jesus talking says, 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've received their reward. See that your fasting may not be seen by others, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And it's not just the New Testament where we get teaching on fasting. In fact, the Old Testament is filled with references to fasting. Maybe you remember the somewhat famous story of Esther who becomes the queen of Persia. And Esther famously asks the nation of the Hebrews to petition God on her behalf as she intends to go to the king of Persia and ask for the freedom of her fellow Jews. In Esther chapter 4, we read Esther saying, Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa and hold a fast on my behalf. Do not eat or drink for three days, three days, night or day. And I and my young woman will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. So for today, I just want to offer a couple of basic hints or tips about this idea of fasting, imagining that we might be kind of newbies to fasting. First thing I want to pull out of that teaching of Jesus that I read a moment ago is that you can see by Jesus' teaching that he's expecting us to fast. He doesn't say, if you fast, then do this or that. His teaching assumes the practice or the discipline of fasting. He says, when you fast, do it with this attitude of humility and, in this case, with the sense of privacy. So there's an expectation of fasting. The second idea is that the idea of fasting is to employ a practice of limiting or setting aside food or any other sort of worldly attachment for the purpose of listening to and seeking the Lord without distraction. Let me say that again. Fasting is for the purpose of listening to and seeking the Lord without distraction. If you're like me, you may be saying, Dave, honest to goodness, when I'm hungry, I'm distracted. And that's true for me, too. But if I focus on God while I'm fasting from food, I can see how, I don't know, addicted I am to the things of the world. It's only by giving up things for an extended period of time, things like, for me, the news or my phone, a glass of wine, a sugared dessert, it's when I give these things up that I can see how really connected to them that I might be. And God wants us to be free from the connections to the world that keep us from being more deeply connected to him. That's not an easy understanding to come by. We get our best sense of how connected to the world we are by separating ourselves from it for a little while. Let me kind of give a personal illustration. Once for the Lenten season, I gave up sports. Not doing sports, but kind of paying attention to sports on TV or the internet or radio, the news. I decided that I would just not listen or look at that for a period of 40 days. And to put that into perspective, I spend a fair amount of time, maybe even a lot of time, keeping up with sports. I'm quite a fan, and the term fan comes from the word fanatic, so you can decide what that means. So not great, maybe. So when I made my Lenten pledge, I kind of forgot that March Madness happens during the Lenten season, and I discovered in fasting that sports had been taking a great deal of my time and attention, actually more than I would have preferred, really. And that particular season of fasting left a huge impression on me. So I still listen to sports on occasion. I read about it, but far less than I used to. And that has freed up time and energy for me to spend on other worthwhile, probably more worthwhile endeavors. So we're going to continue to explore this discipline of fasting a bit more the next time that we're together here at Kingdom Offerings, and it turns out that the discipline of fasting and the discipline of abiding have much in common. And I want you to know that abiding is the ultimate superpower for living the victorious and the abundant kingdom life. Fasting and abiding have much in common. We'll talk about that the next time we're together. Let me just say a couple things. Before we sign off, let me share a note of caution concerning fasting, because some of us have medical conditions. I have diabetes. And so talking to a doctor, kind of taking some of those things into account is a good idea before you start a fasting experiment. Fasting, we need to remember, is not going to cause God to do something that is outside of His will. Fasting is about changing ourselves to be in agreement with God's plan and to be prepared to carry out our role in His plan. It's crucially important that we remember what fasting is all about, changing ourselves, not changing God. So this is Dave Scherrerrer, and you can connect with me at 100 Fold Ministries. Thanks for listening in to Kingdom Offerings. Peace.