Why You Should Fast - 100 Days Of Discipleship - Day 84 by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Fasting Is More Natural Than People Realize

Fasting is more entrenched in human nature than most people realize. Think about it: if you were eating and someone told you that a loved one had died, what would you do? You would stop eating. If the news is sad enough, continuing to eat would feel completely wrong. Even people with no religious motivation at all have different reasons for abstaining from food — the Jews in Acts 23:12 bound themselves in an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. The motivation was malicious, but the point stands: fasting is woven into the fabric of human nature.

The Principle Behind Fasting

The principle behind fasting is this: I desire God more than necessary food. Job 23:12.

If you focus on the abstinence from food itself, you miss the point. That is how people end up in hunger strikes — not eating, but not with God either. Absence from food is supposed to be presence with God.

One of the earliest accounts of fasting in the Bible is Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24. From verse 16: "The glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days, and on the seventh day he called to Moses in the midst of the cloud." The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire. Moses went into the midst of the cloud and was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. This was supernatural — you cannot stay forty days and forty nights without water by natural means. But the key principle is this: Moses was not deliberately attempting to stay without food. He was deliberately attempting to be with God. The fasting was a by-product of the encounter, not the point itself.

The next time Moses fasted in Exodus 34, verse 9 records his prayer: "If I have found grace in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us as your inheritance." And verse 28 says he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. Again — he had a request so pressing that food was not a priority. The Bible does not even record that Moses set out to fast. The desire just suspended the hunger.

Why you fast is more important than the fact that you are fasting.

Fasting and the Discipline of the Flesh

Hebrews 12:15–16 gives a sobering warning: "Look carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble — lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for a morsel of food sold his birthright."

The pairing of fornication with what Esau did is deliberate and significant. Lust is one. It simply has different tributaries — lust for food, lust for sex, lust for money. It is developed the same way. Just as the fruit of the Spirit finds expression in love, joy, and peace when the spirit is vibrant, lust finds expression in different areas of life when the flesh is dominant.

Every time you find yourself eating everything in sight — not even for spiritual reasons, just failing to keep your health goals, your exercise goals, satisfying everything that calls to your eyes — you are strengthening your flesh. What fasting does is to re-establish priority.

For Esau, the issue was valuing a bowl of stew over his birthright. The application is this: value your destiny in God more than food. Fasting is a declaration — to yourself and to the realm of the spirit — that there are bigger priorities in your life. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

What Fasting Resets

When you have food and deliberately choose not to eat, you are demonstrating that you have bigger priorities. Cornelius fasted before he was even born again, in Acts 10 — which tells you that fasting is not magic, and the purpose matters.

What fasting does is put the body under. If you have any area of inconsistency in your walk with God, fasting will work. When someone asks how abstaining from food could possibly address sexual indiscipline, the answer is: it is all connected. The same underlying principle of lack of discipline and self-restraint finds expression in different aspects of life. It may be stronger in some areas, but it is the same root. When you start building discipline in any area, that discipline will find expression in multiple areas.

Fasting is not a direct instruction to the church, but it was clearly the culture of the church — and that makes it implicitly commanded.

• Paul fasted — 2 Corinthians 6
• Jesus fasted
• The apostles fasted — Acts 13
• In Acts 27, Paul literally besought people to eat because they had been fasting for fourteen days

Fasting is one of the hard reset principles. If you are lagging behind in your walk with God, or strange behaviors are springing up and you don't know why, go on a fast. It will reset everything. If you go dry from water — which is more severe — by the second day, everything typically returns to normal.

All spiritual principles also have practical benefits. Health experts increasingly advise fasting and document its medical benefits. The God of the Bible is always right.

It doesn't have to be seven days dry or three days dry. Build the discipline and the consistency — even 6am to 6pm, or 6am to 2pm. Start. Don't let anyone tell you it's too short.