Day 6: Breaking The Fast

The best meal you’ll ever have is the first meal after a fast. That was certainly the case tonight.

We started the evening by gathering for an hour of prayer to complete our 6 nights of corporate prayer. Everybody was hungry and before we prayed the topic kept turning to food.

Our pastor didn’t realize it, but people kept slipping out into the garage to sign his birthday card. When he asked where two of the people had gone, we told him they had snuck out into the garage to look at a food magazine, which after a 6 day fast seemed a credible cover. Continue reading “Day 6: Breaking The Fast”

Day 5: Another Benefit To Fasting

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. Continue reading “Day 5: Another Benefit To Fasting”

Day 4: Fasting And Not Eating

My church is on day 4 of a 6 day fast. I mentioned in my first post I would explain my personal fasting plan in the middle of the week.

I did a water only fast from Sunday night until Tuesday night. I had some great time in the Word and in prayer.

I had a previously scheduled breakfast meeting with other leaders of our local bar association Wednesday, a deposition today and a previously scheduled dinner meeting with a group of civil trial specialists and former state Supreme Court justice tonight.

So, I did not fast Wednesday and today. Tomorrow I go back on the fast and will continue through Saturday night when I, and other church members, will pray and then break the fast together at a local restaurant. Continue reading “Day 4: Fasting And Not Eating”

Day 3: How To Pray In A Group

My church just completed day 3 of a 6 day fast. In addition to fasting, we are praying corporately each evening.

I never liked praying in groups until I got around people who really knew how to do group prayer. When I saw it done well, my attitude toward it changed.

Good group prayer is not just serial praying by a group of individuals. In good group prayer one person prays, and what they pray is what others in the group were getting ready to pray.

When one person finishes, the next person picks up where the previous person left off, as if they were reading from the same paragraph.

Good group prayer is like one person praying through different voices. And when it’s finished you know it. It gets quiet; everything that needed to be prayed has been prayed. Continue reading “Day 3: How To Pray In A Group”

Day 2: Jesus on Fasting

I’m on day 2 of a week of fasting with my church. Yesterday I blogged on the why of fasting. Today is a look at the Master fasting.

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.”  (Matthew 4:1-2).

I’ve always thought this was the biggest understatement in the Bible.  Duh! Of course Jesus became hungry; He hadn’t eaten for forty days!  Why is that even worth saying? Yet, there it is:  “He then became hungry.”

Here’s what I’m thinking.  Because I believe the Bible is God-breathed, I must assume that here God stated the obvious for some reason other than the obvious.  And what was not obvious at the time the Gospel of Matthew was written was that while Jesus was fully God He was also fully man.  The statement, “He then became hungry,” places Jesus fully in the human category (though still fully God). Continue reading “Day 2: Jesus on Fasting”