If you’ve ever fasted for any length of time, one of the first things you notice is how enslaved you are to the desire to eat.
A person can easily go a day without food, so it’s not the need to eat that’s is so difficult to overcome, but the desire to eat.
Even as I write this blog I want to eat, but I don’t need to. I’m looking forward to eating tomorrow night, not because I need to eat but because I want to. I could probably go for weeks more without eating, if it wasn’t for my desire to eat.
One of the benefits of fasting is that it helps break the yoke of slavery between us and our desires, so we can more freely serve Jesus.
The Apostle Peter said that a person is enslaved to what he cannot resist. (2 Peter 2:19). The Apostle Paul talked about those who were “slaves, not of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetites…” (Romans 16:18). In another place, he wrote of those “whose god is their appetite…” (Philippians 3:18-19).
I don’t want any desire to separate me from Jesus; I fast so Jesus can separate me from my desires. GS
This is One main things I got from my first fast. If I can resist the desire to eat for an extended period of time, I should also be able to resist the desire to engage in sinful behavior.
Yep. And after not eating for a while, the temptation to eat is usually stronger than sinful behavior.