Number one is fasting is about feasting. Remove the idea that, "Oh, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna be
hungry." Yeah, you're gonna be hungry for a little bit but the secret to every revival
is hunger. The secret to spiritual hunger is physical hunger. So the secret to every revival
is hunger and the secret the spiritual hunger, a lot of times is physical hunger, and so spiritual
fasting is feasting on the word of God. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 8:3 the following,
it says this, "So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger." So He speaks to Israel, "And fed you
with manna which you did not know nor your fathers know that He might make you to know that the man
shall not live by bread alone; but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." So Israel
went through season of hunger, and God says, "I made you to hunger," why? So I can change your
appetites and so that I can change your source of food. So you will understand you are not a body,
you are a spirit and you have a soul and you live in the body, and fasting helps to snap
that soulish carnal thing. After a while you begin to realize that your really you does not need a
burger. It does not need a sandwich. It needs the Word of God. And a lot of times because we are so
feeding our flesh all the time and we need to do that, food is a gift from God. And so because we
do that all the time, we don't actually feel the spiritual hunger. A lot of times when I would go
through you know the fasting, Isaiah, I would actually would hear the Lord remind me. And He
said that the way your body right now aches, the way your body craves, your stomach growls and the
way you're just you're like you're hungry. He says that's exactly how your spirit is every single day
when it's malnourished. When it's literally I don't have time to read the Bible today,
I don't have time to pray. Your spirit is literally craving. That's why David says,
"My soul yearns for God." There's a cry but we don't hear it, why? Because we numb the spirit
man. The second thing I want to mention about fasting is fasting will result in favor, because
biblical fasting is always about self-humbling. If you want more favor of God in your life, I want to
encourage you to go into fasting. Not as a, "Hey, I'm gonna fast and God's gonna give me favor." But
I'm gonna fast because I'm going to humble myself and through humility God extends grace and grace
is unmerited favor. Number three is fasting is like a faucet through which the power flows. The
power doesn't come from fasting, the power comes through fasting. The power comes from God. The
power comes from the Holy Spirit. The power comes, God is the source of power. There's no power in
fasting, like religious people fast, Muslim people fast for a month of Ramadan. You know Catholics
fast. We know that Jewish people fasted. We know right now I saw an article, 25 evangelicals
decided to do a hunger strike to change some stuff with voting in the United States. There
are people in India that fasted against the evil regime and they fasted as a hunger strike.
Gandhi fasted I think 20 something times as a way to change political things. So people use fasting
as a political weapon. The fitness people fast for the purpose of losing weight. They practice
intermittent fasting. And so we as Christians, we fast not for physical, not even for political,
we fast for spiritual and that way is to humble ourselves. When you fast, you humble yourself. You
pretty much you're breaking down before God, and you say, "God, I need you." There's tears begin
to stream your eyes again, your heart begins to repent again for the sins that you've committed.
God begins to expose certain things, bring them to the surface and it's a beautiful season of
cleansing. Number three is the fasting. So I mentioned that fasting is the faucet,
fasting brings favor and fasting is feasting. Number four is fasting is giving up your
physical bowl for a spiritual blessing. It's pretty much giving up what I want, for what I
need. Giving up what I want physically for what I need spiritually. And the story, I've shared this
last year Isaiah on the broadcast with you about fasting, is that Jacob, he gave up a bowl and he
received a spiritual blessing. So he gave up what was physical and he got what was spiritual. It was
not visible. Now he didn't get money, he didn't get health but spiritually things shifted. He
became the man who was born second but he started to qualify for the blessings of the first. Esau,
who had the spiritual blessing but because he refused to forgo for a short period of hunger,
he lost the spiritual blessing, but instead he only got the physical blessing and then he wept
and he cried. And so a lot of Christians what they do is they give up the spiritual for the physical,
instead of giving up the physical for the spiritual. When you're giving up the physical,
my friend, you're getting something better. You're getting the spiritual blessing.
Number five is the fasting is a soul detox, and Isaiah already highlighted that is fasting
exposes unhealthy relationship we have with food. Good food makes us feel good. So often
we comfort our negative emotions and boredom with eating. And when you fast you're forced to
deal with these toxic emotions in the new way by bringing your emotions to the Holy Spirit,
instead of finding false comfort in food. Fasting trains you to share your
feelings with the Father, instead of the fridge. Come on. Type that in the chat.
Fasting forces you to deal with toxic negative emotions with validation problems,
with how you're treating your you had a bad day and you're going to the bottle,
you have a bad day and you go numbing yourself with food. And so fasting forces you to find
a different way to deal with your toxic emotions by going to the Father, going to the Holy Spirit,
instead of going to the fridge. Number six is fasting is embracing crucified life and instead
of living a carnal life. Jesus says, "If you want to follow you're going to have to forsake." The
Bible says that we offer our body as a living sacrifice. It's part of discipleship. Now is
there one verse in the Bible where Jesus commands us to fast? No. He does say, "When you fast," but
He's not telling us when, He doesn't tell you how you should fast. But we know that Jesus invites
us to be disciples and part of discipleship is being disciplined and part of the discipline deals
with our food. Number seven is that fasting is a rational response to God's grace, not an attempt
to earn it. It's very important to understand that we don't go into a fast so that God can
love us more. And if you broke a fast, or you ate a cracker, or stopped it, couldn't do it anymore,
that God doesn't love you anymore. There's no curse associated with not fasting but there's
a blessing associated with fasting. You know King Saul cursed his man and said, "Anybody who doesn't
fast will be cursed." You know that's legalism, that's not Bible. The Bible way of fasting is
Jesus says, "If you do it the right way with the right heart, your Father will see it and
He'll reward you." Even if you're not praying and reading the Bible. For the very act of fasting,
of you saying, "Lord, you're seeing my sacrifice to God." God is noticing, paying attention to that
and He says, "I'm going to reward you publicly." And so just live that. Do fasting as a response,
not as your way of trying to have God love you more. I like to say it like this, is that fasting
does not improve your spiritual worth, it improves your spiritual weight. In the realm of the spirit
your weight changes but not your worth. You're still love the same way as you fast and as you
don't. Number eight is the fasting is the key to the fresh fire of God. Every move of God is marked
by hunger and hunger, the key to spiritual hunger many times is humbling ourselves, and that is the
physical hunger. I always like to say it like this, if you want to last in your fire you have
to fast. If you fast, you will last. There's something that is connected between physical
hunger and spiritual hunger. If you look at through the history, many men and women of God who
walked before us. Some of them did not have the education, some of them did not have connections,
did not have a Google nonprofit account, Google you know ads. They did not have the knowledge of
the algorithm, they did not know how to market things but they knew how to get on their knees.
They knew how to go into an extended season and a time of fasting, and they would shake and move
things. They would move countries. They would move kings and queens in their day, and I think God
is bringing us back to that. People are dropping out of church like crazy. The new Gallup research
just got released a month ago that the church attendance is dropping more and more. Millennials,
more and more people are saying that they'd want to do nothing with God. Our nation today does
not need a new system, new program, even a new speaker. We genuinely need the move of God. Come
on. We need God to heal our land and He says this is the recipe. If My people. Not the White House,
not the Supreme Court, not your Governor, not your legislative branch, not your judicial branch but
He says, My people. And what will they do? He didn't say if you go get rich, healthy, wealthy
and live right. He says first if you humble yourself. Biblical way of humbling is fasting
and then pray, then turn away from wicked ways and He says, then I will hear, then I
will forgive and then I will heal. Not just you, not just your family, not just your ministry would
go to another level. God says, "I will use that to begin to bring an influence on the land." And
so I just want to challenge you that if you lost your hunger, if you lost your first love for God,
if you are struggling. If you really wish this year to be the best year, I want to invite you.
I'm not saying about starvation. This is not about starvation or hunger strike. This is
about disconnecting from the world. Maybe you're a pregnant woman right now, maybe you're a diabetic
or you're on medicine and you can't fast. There's just no way that you can fast right now because of
your physical condition. There's still things you can do to disconnect from the world and
to connect deeper to God in these next 21 days. Now the goal is to do in 21 days so that it could
shape a habit within you, so that it can continue throughout the year. A few more things is number
nine is that fasting is not only for crisis, fasting is for your calling. A lot of people
go into fasting in the Old Testament because they had problems. But if you read the New Testament,
you will see that most of the fasts in the New Testament was because of purpose. People had a
purpose to fulfill and they went into fast. We see Jesus fasted like that. We see Anna in the temple
was fasting like that. We see Cornelius, he wasn't broke, his mama wasn't sick. Cornelius wasn't
fasting because he needed a breakthrough like in his finances or in his family. He was fasting to
really just press into God, and God made him to be the key guy through which the Gospel came into the
Gentile world. The Bible says in Book of Acts that disciples they minister to the Lord and fasted,
and the Lord says, "Let's bring Paul and Barnabas into the mission that I've called them," and
that's when writing of the Epistles started to happen. A lot of people live normal, comfortable,
good Christian life and you may say, "Why would I fast?" Because there is more to your Christian
life than what you are doing today. Come on. There is the work you're doing and there is the work you
were born to do. There is the work you're paid to do and there's the work you were created and saved
to do. The Bible says we were saved by grace for good works. These good works, my friend,
God opens those good works for us and that could happen when you fast and when you pray. And lastly
is fasting is preparation for temptation. When you fast something begins to happen, your appetites
go under control of the Holy Spirit. I'm not saying that you will no longer have temptation.
It's actually not the truth because Jesus had temptations when He fasted. But because He fasted
I believe that He triumphed over temptation. He was isolated from the world. He was isolated,
He was in the wilderness spending time and with the Father and then He overcame those
temptations. So if you're struggling with lust, if you're struggling with certain bad habits, go into
fasting. I'm not saying you will get delivered but you will definitely be prepared for your
deliverance. And you don't know, maybe through this, through renouncing, through repentance,
through you humbling yourself, God will deliver you and set you free. But even if the deliverance
from demons will still require somebody to pray for you, there is deliverance from the flesh,
my friend. There is the conquering of the flesh that will require fasting.