We’ll talk about fasting tonight. A text that is relevant for fasting, as you’ll see, I hope, by the time we’re done, is the last three verses of the prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk 3:17–18 says:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
     nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
     and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
     and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

The goal of Christian living to me is to become and to help other people become the kind of people who would experience that loss, and say that, and mean it. No food wherever you turn. It’s that desolate. But then say, “Yet I will exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.” There’s only one possible way that can happen, and that is if Psalm 63:3 is true for you: “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.”

Order of the Burning Heart

Let’s start with the testimony from Carl Lundquist. Carl Lundquist was the president of Bethel College and Seminary until a decade or so ago. He wrote in a letter to some of us called “An Evangelical Order of the Burning Heart”:

My own serious consideration of fasting, the discipline, as a spiritual discipline began as a result of a visit to Dr. Kim in Seoul, Korea. “Is it true,” I asked him, “that you spent 40 days in fasting prior to the evangelism crusade in 1980?” “Yes,” he responded, “it’s true.” Dr. Kim was chairman of the crusade, expected to bring a million people to Yeouido Plaza, but six months before the meeting, the police informed him they were revoking the permission for the crusade. Korea at that time was in political turmoil, and Seoul was under martial law. The officers decided they would not take the risk of having so many people together in one place. Dr. Kim and some associates went to a prayer mountain and there spent 40 days before God in prayer and fasting for the crusade. Then they returned and made their way to the police station. “Oh,” said the officer when he saw Dr. Kim, “we have changed our mind and you can have your meeting.”

As I went back to the hotel, I reflected that I had never fasted like that. Perhaps I had never desired a work of God with the same intensity. His body is marked by many 40-day fasts during his long spiritual leadership of God’s work in Asia. Also, however, I haven’t seen the miracles Dr. Kim has.

Then Dr. Lundquist said in the latter years of his own ministry, he found a modified fast very helpful. He described it like this:

Instead of taking an hour for lunch, I used the time to go to a prayer room, usually the Flame Room in the nearby Bethel Theological Seminary. There I spend my lunch break in fellowship with God and in prayer. I have learned a very personal dimension to what Jesus declared: “I have meat to eat ye know not of.”

Foundational Texts for Fasting

Now, look at a couple of foundational texts for this one. It’s a remarkable thing that some know better than others. Some of you in this room have never fasted a day in your life, and others have fasted many times. We’re all over the map. Don’t feel threatened by this. If you’re 50, or 60, or 70, and have never fasted, it’s not too late to learn a discipline, which I think Jesus taught to be fairly normal. Let’s see if that’s true. Now I quote this one first because right after this section in Dr. Lundquist’s letter, he said that the text that arrested him and drew him into this discipline was this one:

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 have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:16–18).

I’m going to come back to this text later. Here, the only point I want to see is the foundational point of the when. I do think this text suggests very strongly that in Jesus’s mind, fasting was going to be a normal part of his disciples’ lives, and it probably should be. I think there’s an even more foundational text right here in Matthew 9:14–17. It goes like this:

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”

Let’s pause here. God portrayed himself often in the Old Testament as the husband or bridegroom of his people, Israel. There is a very weighty claim being made here by Jesus about his own identity in relation to his disciples. He’s the Messiah, but he’s more than a Son of David. He is the husband of the people of God, which, in the Old Testament was God. That’s not anything more than what Jesus is claiming here, I believe. Then he says:

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast (Matthew 9:15).

New Wine, New Wineskins

Now here’s a break, only not much of a break, and a little parable about an unshrunk piece of cloth and some new wine. Now what’s the relationship? Why does he follow this word on fasting with this word on the cloth and the wine?

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved (Matthew 9:16–17).

Now here’s the question: What’s the old garment that should not have a new patch put on it? What’s the old wineskins that can’t hold the new wine? Well, the new wine is Jesus and his message of the arrival of the kingdom and all the glorious work that he’s going to do. The old wineskin is fasting, I think. Why else would it be here? You have this old custom. It goes back to the Old Testament. It happened a lot there. Here comes the new wine of Jesus. You don’t put the new wine into the old wineskin. If I’m right, then there’s a tension between verse 15 and verse 17 because Matthew 9:15 says, “They will fast when I’m taken away.” In other words, “I’ve brought the new wine. I’m going to die for sins. I’m going to rise again. I’m going to ascend into heaven. I’m going to pour out the Holy Spirit. It’s a new day with new wine.” If you try to get this into the old wineskins, then they’re going to be ruined and so is the wine in the process.

Richard Foster, in his book, Celebration of Discipline, says this text is perhaps the most important statement in the New Testament on whether Christians should fast or not, picking up on this, “They will fast.” What about the tension between verses 15 and 17, assuming that I’m right about construing the wineskins as fasting? Here’s my effort to answer that.

The great central decisive act of salvation for us today is past, not future. On the basis of that work of the bridegroom, nothing can ever be the same again. The wine is new. The blood is shed. The lamb is slain. The punishment of the sins is executed. Death is defeated. The spirit is sent. The wine is new. The old fasting mindset is simply not adequate. My answer is fasting per se doesn’t go, but the old fasting goes. A new fasting comes. It’s fasting conceived in a new way, fasting on a new basis, fasting with a new mindset.

Longing for the Bridegroom

Now I’m going to ask, what’s new about it? What’s new about the fasting is that it rests on all this finished work of the bridegroom. The yearning that we feel for revival, for awakening, for deliverance from corruption, or for the mere presence of the bridegroom, is not merely longing and aching. The first fruits of what we long for have already come. That’s different from the old fasting in the Old Testament. The down payment of what we yearn for is already paid. The fullness that we are longing for and fasting for has appeared in history. We have beheld his glory. It is not merely future. We have tasted the manifestation of Christ’s glory. Our fasting is not because we are hungry for something we have not tasted, but because the new wine of Christ’s presence is so real and so satisfying on the basis of what we’ve already tasted. That’s what’s new about the new wineskin.

If you try to fast in order to get a taste of it, that’s called legalism. If you fast because you’ve tasted it, and it’s met you and satisfied you by faith in Jesus, then fasting becomes evangelical fasting, gospel fasting. It’s just a desire for more, more, more based on the glorious free gift that we received through faith in Christ at the cross and the resurrection. That’s what makes it not old wineskin or unshrunk cloth. My argument is that the New Testament fasting that we will do when the bridegroom is taken away is this. The bridegroom is come. He’s shown us his glory and his love for us. He manifested it in his life, manifested it in his death, manifested it in his resurrection, and manifested it by pouring out his Spirit on us. We’ve tasted that by faith, and we said, “Yes. That’s my life. That’s my God. That’s my Savior. That’s my Lord. I am his.” You’re saved by that, not by any fasting.

Then this bridegroom is taken away. He’s not here. You can’t find him anywhere in person. You can’t touch him. You can’t put your hand on his chest like John did. You can’t ask Him a question with your mouth and have him speak with an audible mouth back to you. Yet we long for that. Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha. That’s why I think it says in Matthew 9:15, “Then they will fast,” which means that the essence of the meaning of fasting is longing for the fullness of the presence of Jesus. It’s about the fuller measure we can have now and the coming of the Lord Jesus in glory, which is why on the first Tuesday of every month for over a year, we have been doing what we call the First Tuesday Fasts, which are centrally fasts for the coming of the Lord.

How many of you have ever fasted for the Second Coming? Come, Lord Jesus. I’m hungry for you. John Bloom, bless his heart, has written a great song: “We are hungry for you, so hungry for you. In a dry and weary land, we are so thirsty for you.” We sing it, every one of our First Tuesday Fasts because that’s the meaning of fasting. Fasting is a creation of a hunger at the physical level that you then transpose into a spiritual offering to God and say, “This much, O God, this much I want you.” It can be for a lot of practical things, like, “I want you for my marriage. I want you for my lost job. I want you for my colleagues at work. I want you for my health. I want you for whatever.”

I love to tell you a story about John MacArthur who a lot of people think of as a hard-nosed Bible expositor who doesn’t do things like fasting. That’s not true. He’s not hard-nosed or against fasting. When his boy had a brain tumor, I think it was, or they didn’t know what it was, he fasted long. The Lord released him from it one night. He tells the story about how in the very moment when the Lord just released him and said, “It’s okay,” a woman knocked on his door. This is late at night, about 9:00 p.m. She said, “I’m going by. I didn’t eat my lunch today. I just thought you might want it.” That’s John MacArthur telling the story like that.

The newness of fasting is this. Its intensity comes not because we have never tasted the wine of Christ’s presence. You have to taste it first. You can’t fast your way into salvation, but because we have tasted it so wonderfully, by his Spirit, and cannot now be satisfied until the consummation of joy arrives.

Secret Righteousness

What do we long for and experience in this new fasting? I’ll go back to this text now in Matthew 6:16–18:

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Now I do not think this rules out corporate fasting. I’ll show you a text on corporate fasting in a minute. It does rule out fasting to be seen. Motive is the issue here. It’s okay for people to know you’re fasting. It’s not okay for you to want them to know you’re fasting. This is a big difference. When we’re doing the corporate fast, your wife, or your roommate has to know. You didn’t eat breakfast. Somebody is going to know. You can’t keep fasting secretively if you fast for a day, or two, or three.

Someone asked, “What about writing a book on it and sharing your experiences about it?” I think that can probably be done. I wrote a book on it. I didn’t talk too much about my experience. I think that’s what you’re asking. There’s a line there. We all know it’s a difficult issue. It’s not just fasting. It’s talking about any of your spiritual experiences, right? There are three issues in Matthew 6, not just one. There’s doing your alms to be seen by men, praying to be seen by men, and fasting to be seen by men.

Well, the alms cannot be kept secret. If you give alms to somebody, they know you have given it. It says, “Don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Do it so silently that, yes, somebody’s going to know you’re doing it, but you’re not saying, “Here’s my money. Thank you.” I think we know there’s a motive issue here. Let’s just all search our hearts. When we talk about it and talk about our own experiences, only God knows, perhaps, and you, whether you’re doing it from the wrong motive. Here’s what I want you to see:

That your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:18).

Is God Real for You?

What are you after here? You’re after a reward, but on the way to that reward, which is all that God is for you in Jesus is the way I’d sum up the reward, however it might be manifest practically as well. But what I want you to see here is this. When you’re venturing some new spiritual disciplines, you’re trying to read your Bible faithfully, or you’re trying to pray faithfully, or you’re trying to keep a journal faithfully, or you’re trying to fast, or you’re trying to witness or something, and you’re getting some success at it, the temptation for wanting people to know what you’re doing is huge. To want people to know that you fasted for a few days is huge.

At those moments, you get tested on one main thing: Is God real to you? Is God looking upon you as a person from heaven, and drawing near to you, and putting his arm on your shoulder, and saying, “I’m with you in this. I’m ministering to you in this. I’m loving you in this,” enough? Or do you feel like, “I’ve got to tell somebody so that they’ll praise me?” It’s a huge temptation. Jesus wouldn’t have dealt with it here like he does three times over if it weren’t huge.

Really, the test in quiet fasting is a test of whether you’re after God, whether God’s enough, whether this is a God issue or a man issue. If it’s a God issue, then you’re being satisfied by God. He knows. He’s drawing near. He delights in this hunger that I’m offering him, and that’s enough. The degree to which you feel content in that shows you how much he’s your portion. He’s your bread. He’s your drink. The degree to which you feel the strong desire that others know you’re praying, and know you’re fasting, and know you’re doing alms shows how utterly worldly you are. You’re a second-hander.

Feeding Our Self-Promotion

What’s the response at that point when you do have wrong motives? It’s to cry out, “Oh, wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this insidious, man-centered desire?” We talked about this last time, that everybody is wired this way. The desire for human praise is about as endemic as you can get, which is why I do not like very much, evangelistic approaches that exploit it because it is tapping in to one of the most insidious, and destructive, and spiritually weakening enforces in our lives, namely, to be known as somebody great — great in our spirituality.

Everybody likes applause. Everybody likes compliments. There’s a whole philosophy of child-rearing, a whole philosophy of education, a whole philosophy of psychological health that says, “Feed that.” Well, there’s a biblical way, and that’s not it because these texts here say, “Mortify that. Let God be that for you. Let God draw near and say, ‘I’m with you. I’m what you need. You don’t need the praise of men. I’m your portion here.’”

There are so many sins that get exposed through fasting. I mean, the most obvious is lack of discipline. The most obvious is bondage to food. But anger is another one. Boy, you want to see how short your fuse really is? Skip about four meals. Drink water. Don’t skip water, but your fuse will get shorter and shorter. You’re wondering, “It really is food that has been sanctifying me, and not Jesus.” It’s a devastating thing to see what you discover when you fast, to watch your very body move against you. And there are many other things, like the praise of men. That’s the one I was focusing on. We think, “Oh, that somebody would know it’s been a whole day, or three days, or 39 days. Oh, that somebody would know this.” That’s the danger that Justin was pointing out. Writing a book about your experience is very dangerous.

A Bodily Intensifier

There’s another thing we’re after. It’s another way of saying the same thing. Let’s look at it here. This is Acts 13:1–3. This is important because this fasting that we’re going to read about here was done after Christ’s departure. One of the possible arguments from Matthew 9:15 was when the bridegroom is taken away, then you will fast. People might say, “That means taken away in death, so fast between Good Friday and Easter.” I don’t think that’s what it means. I think when the bridegroom is taken away, it means when he goes back to heaven, you will fast.

They’re fasting here long after he’s gone back to heaven. It’s not as though you fast for three days while he’s in the tomb because you’re grieving, and now he’s back by the power of the Holy Spirit, and it’s party time until Jesus comes. That’s not the image there in that story at all. There’s a sense of yearning, longing, and aching in the absence of King Jesus even though we have him present by the Holy Spirit. We groan inwardly, awaiting our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. “More, more, more,” is the heart cry of every true Christian. The passage says:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off (Acts 13:1–3).

There’s something about fasting, years after Jesus has gone back to heaven, when you are about to do something really remarkable and send out a Saul and a Barnabas on a venture that has not been undertaken yet, namely, the expansion of the gospel into Asia Minor. They fasted with praying, and then they put their hands on them.

I think the reason for that is that fasting strips away your reliance upon the comforts and pleasures of food, causes you to take that discomfort and that yearning that you’re feeling, and do something else with it besides slake it with food, namely, direct it towards God through prayer and thus, it intensifies the longing. That’s what it’s supposed to do. You say to God, “I not only say I long for you. I not only feel in my spirit I long for you. I’m telling my body, ‘You can’t have this because I’m going to make you long and then I’m going to make you a servant of this prayer.’ That’s how much I long for you and want for you to bless Barnabas and Saul as they go.”

It’s a bodily intensifier of a spiritual hunger. The essence of fasting then, as I understand it, is a hunger for God.

Dangerous Satisfaction

Let me just show you why this idea of hunger for God is so biblical. Let me just pile up a few texts here and then make some concluding observations. Revelation 21:6 says:

And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

What’s the qualification for getting the water of life? Tell me. Thirst. I will give to the one who thirsts. That’s true throughout life. It’s a sad, sad day when Christians become satisfied with the way they are, or their church is, or their family is. Satisfied Christians — that is, with their circumstances, their own life, their marriage, their job — are in danger. The only satisfaction that should be complete is satisfaction in God.

We don’t have all of God that we need. We don’t love him all that we should. We don’t trust him all that we should. We don’t obey him all that we should. Our lives are incomplete big time from what they should be in the experience of God. Therefore, we should not be satisfied, but ever yearning, ever questing, and ever pursuing. One of the little chapters A Godward Life is called “More, More, More.” I just collected all the verses in the New Testament where Paul is saying, “That you might abound more and more.” He compliments them for where they are to encourage them, and he says, “Oh, that you might abound more and more in your love for one another, abound more in your faith, abound more in your hope.”

Contented Christians who don’t cry out much for more are in danger and are spiritually sick. When you lose your appetite, you’re sick physically and you’re sick spiritually. Revelation 22:17 says:

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

Isaiah 55:1

Come, everyone who thirsts,
     come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
     come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
     without money and without price.

I think I have another little article called “How To Buy Gold When You’re Broke”. That’s it right there. Only this is food, not gold. The gold comes from Revelation where you’re blind, naked, and poor. He holds out gold to you.

Take the Bread that Satisfies

Isaiah 55:2–3 says:

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
     and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
     hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
     my steadfast, sure love for David (Isaiah 55:2–3).

The bread that comes down from heaven will satisfy. He’s saying, “The very mercy shown to King David will be shown to you if you come broken, empty, bankrupt, hungry, and thirsty, and turn away from the white bread of the world and all the drink of the world, and say, ‘You are all I need and want.’”

John 6:26 says:

Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

Now here they are trying to get more. Then he says:

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal. Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (John 6:27–28).

He said, “Don’t work. Don’t work. Don’t work for this food that perishes.” And they say, “Well, what shall we do that we may work the works of God?” Jesus said to them:

This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent (John 6:29).

Believe in John 6:35 says:

I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Believing in John is a coming to Jesus to eat all that he is for us unto satisfaction. Don’t labor for the food that perishes. Labor — that is, believe — for the food that endures to eternal life. Psalm 63:1–3 says:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
     my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
     as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
     beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
     my lips will praise you.

If it’s better than life, it’s better than food. If we’re going to experience it as better than life so that we don’t get angry at him when we die or lose a loved one, it would be good to practice dying now and test ourselves.

Our Eating and Our Fasting

There are some more verses, but I will read you a concluding statement. Bread magnifies Christ in two ways: by being eaten with gratitude for his goodness and by being forfeited out of hunger for God himself. When we eat, we taste the emblem of our heavenly food, the bread of life. When we fast, we say, “I love the reality above the emblem.” I would just ask you, do you? Do you love the reality above the emblem? In the heart of the saint, both eating and fasting are worship. It should be. Both eating and fasting magnify Christ. Both send the heart grateful and yearning to the giver. Each has its appointed place, and each has its danger. The danger of eating is that we fall in love with the gift. The danger of fasting is that we belittle the gift and glory in our willpower.

Fasting is peculiarly suited to glorify God. It is fundamentally an offering of emptiness to God in hope. It is a sacrifice of need, of hunger. It says by its very nature, “Father, I’m empty, but you are full. I’m hungry, but you are the bread of life. I’m thirsty, but you are the fountain of life. I’m weak, but you are strong. I’m poor, but you are rich. I’m foolish, but you are wise. I’m broken, but you are whole. I’m dying, but your steadfast love is better than life.” When God sees this confession of need and this expression of trust he acts because the glory of his all-sufficient grace is at stake. The final answer is that God rewards fasting because fasting expresses the cry of the heart that nothing on earth can satisfy our souls besides God. God must reward this cry because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

I have three sets of overheads here that I could fill up our time with, but I’m inclined to think we should take some significant time for you to ask questions about the whole array of practical, theological, and biblical issues relating to prayer, meditation, and fasting. You can be thinking about questions that you’d like to ask. We’ll just see how that goes. If it slows down or becomes unhelpful, then we’ll retreat to the overheads. I think I’ve said the basics of what I want to say. You can, of course, talk forever about prayer, and forever about meditating on the Bible, and forever about fasting. We might as well stop sometime. We’ll see how that goes. Raise your hand, and ask me a question, and be the one that gets it going here. I’ll move around here. I’ll hold my Bible as a security blanket in my hand here.

Question and Answer

On days of fasting, what types of thoughts should go through our head? What should the attitude of our heart be? What should we think when we feel hunger?

The answer to that is going to depend partly on what your aim is in fasting, what prompted it. One of my sets of overheads is “Six Aims in Fasting.” Maybe we’ll do that before we’re done. I think you should set your mind on that towards which you’re fasting and meditate on it and God’s ability to do it.

I said last time, two weeks ago now, that I think the essence under all fasting is to take a physical longing that you are creating by denying the body food and transpose that physical longing into a spiritual key and say, “Lord, just as and even more than I now feel hunger for food, I long for you.” Then what you want is for him to manifest himself in a bunch of different ways, probably. It might be that somebody’s terribly sick. My guess is, right now, Rick Gamache and Delaine don’t feel like eating supper with their little Cosette down at Children’s Hospital with possible cystic fibrosis. That is something that takes your appetite away.

I think we have lots of instances in the Bible of that kind of fasting. They would, for the time being, say, “Lord, there’s nothing we can do here, and yet we long for you to stand forth and show your power. We long for it so much, we’re going to deny ourselves food, and take our stomachs, and turn them into long-ers as well.” It’s that taking physical longing and making it bear witness to a spiritual longing. I say, “Bear witness to,” and I would also add “in addition to.”

I think sometimes we just need to fast for no particular thing except to prove that we’re not living by bread alone. Men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Well, how do you know if you’re living by bread alone until you can see if you can deny yourself bread and then see what happens to you? When you feel that longing and that hunger, and the hand just kind of automatically reaches for a tangerine or whatever while you’re walking through the kitchen, you say, “What are you doing, hand? Reach up. Why are you so wired immediately to reach here? Reach up.”

Then you say, “May all the hands of my heart and may all the hands of my mind be that naturally reaching up like I’m right now reaching for a cookie, or reaching for milk, or reaching for pop, or reaching for a tangerine. Why can’t I have a heart that is so wired to reach to God the same way my body is?” The body and the heart are so interwoven that I think if we just build fasting into our lives in some kind of regular way, we will learn much about our own souls.

Here’s a little advertisement. This coming Tuesday is the first Tuesday of the month. We call it the First Tuesday Fast. We as a staff skip our lunch that we usually eat together. We gather in the chapel. You’re all welcome to come for one hour with us from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Skip your lunch, come down, and we just sing, pray, and say to the Lord, “We want you more than we want lunch today. We want you back. We want you to come, Lord Jesus. Do whatever you have to do to set in place the Second Coming.”

Could you talk more about the relationship between fasting and spiritual breakthroughs?

My guess is there’s some mystery there that we don’t know, but I’ll make a stab at it. If you have my book on Hunger For God. You don’t have to read that book straight through. You just bounce around in it. The last thing I wrote is on why God responds to fasting. Why? I mean, are we bribing Him? Are we twisting his arm? What are we doing? Why does God respond to fasting? I presume he does because the Bible holds that out to us as one of the means by which we pray. I think the answer would go something like this.

When you fast in the right spirit — that is, not to be seen by men — you are both expressing and intensifying a longing for and a dependence on God rather than something else. That’s what God seems to respond to in the Bible. That’s what makes it a gracious response. In other words, if you can find a form of petition that shows more dependence on him and less dependence on you, then his response would show more of him and less of you. That’s what God’s into in the universe, big time.

Our whole theology here is that God glorifies God above all things. That’s his main passion. What we’re always on the lookout for is ways to live, and ways to talk, and ways to act that will highlight his action, not our action. Now prayer is the main one because prayer is saying, “I’m helpless and you’re the great helper.” Or it says, “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.” You see the dynamic there in Psalm 50:15. Now fasting simply kicks in as an intensifier. That’s my best judgment. It kicks in as an expressor and an intensifier so that we really mean what we say when we say, “I want you. I need you. I depend on you.” I don’t think God is limited to this, but at times he seems to make His answers dependent on the authenticity, reality, and intensity of our dependence. Otherwise, I don’t think it would say things like Jeremiah 29:13, which says, “If you seek me with all your heart, then I will answer.” It’s with all your heart.

Well, how do you do that, I wonder. You’re praying. You’re kind of looking at yourself in the mirror of your own soul and saying, “This doesn’t feel very intense. This feels kind of half-hearted this morning.” What would you do? I mean, can you just push a button and say, “Now it’s intense. Now it’s with all my heart.” I don’t think we have that simple control over our own hearts, but we can take steps. We can meditate on promises. We can ask other people to pray for us. We can fast.

If you fast for something, then I think your own soul starts to bear witness to your soul, saying, “You really mean this, don’t you? I feel that you mean this.” The body bears witness to your soul, “Hey, would you please feed me?” You say, “No.” The body says, “Why?” The answer that comes back is, “I really need God.” The body says, “Well, I need food.” You say, “Well, wait. Just wait. You’re not God here.” That’s just an acted-out, dramatic way of showing how the intensification works, how the body begins to bear witness to the soul, “Hey, you’re serious. You’re serious about this. Give me what I want.” You say, “No.” I think, Jason, it has to do with the measure of authenticity and intensity with which we lean on God. That’s my best effort anyway.

What role is there in silence? Psalm 62:1 says, “My soul waits in silence for God only.”

I haven’t studied the Psalm in this regard, so I don’t know. I wonder if silence there means absence of a meditative word or if it doesn’t mean something like, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Be still. Be still, be quiet, stop striving, and know that I am God. Maybe the word for “quiet” is a bigger word than not letting anything come out of your mouth. Maybe it’s a stillness of soul. It’s a gathering of your thoughts. It’s a ceasing of frenzy. You’re not running around doing things in a kind of noisy, hectic life. You’ve settled yourself. You’ve focused yourself. Maybe it’s that you’re not just rattling away right off the bat to God. You’re stopping and fronting your mouth. When Jonathan Edwards died at age 54, his wife wrote a letter to their daughter and said, “I put my hand on my mouth,” meaning, “I mustn’t say anything here because I might say something inappropriate.” She simply silences her mouth so that she doesn’t just blab out something.

I’ve tried this now and then. As you come to your place of prayer, in your time of prayer, don’t just run into it and start chattering away about the need that you feel. Just get settled. Be silent for a moment. You probably should whisper at least something like, “Lord, I offer this silence to you. Please use it to prepare me to meet you,” or just something like that. Then be silent. When I stress meditation like I have been, I don’t want to rule out moments of silence.

I’ll give you an example. I was with some pastors today for lunch, the Edgren Fellowship, and there came a point in our discussion about an hour into it where we were not sure what to do, where to go in some planning we were making. I said, “Why don’t we just stop and seek the Lord about what he might want us to do here and what he might be pleased to bring to mind that we have not yet thought of in regard to our planning?” Well now, if you pray a prayer like that, you better shut up for a minute. We can say, “Lord, we’ve been talking. We’ve been reading. We’ve been studying. We’ve been discussing, but we have blind spots. We see through a glass darkly. We may be missing something important entirely. Would you just come and help us to know what way you want us to go?” I think at that moment, it’s very good to be still, not to demand that some verse be in your mind at that moment. You wait, and he may well bring something to mind.

I think he did. I think we made good progress after that. I really believe the Lord can bring thoughts to your mind about where you lost your brooch. You can just stop. Here’s what I do. I don’t do it often enough, and I kick myself for not doing it more enough. I’m going to an elder’s meeting. I’m coming to church, or I’m running off somewhere, or on a vacation, or I’ve just packed up quickly. I have to run to Winnipeg for 24 hours and give two talks. I stop at the door as I leave my study. I say, “Now Lord, what have I forgotten that I’m going to be so upset with myself on the plane?” I have saved myself so much trouble by doing that.

Now, what are you saying? What do I believe? That there can be new revelation from God? Well, I don’t know what you’re going to call it. God can say, “Pajamas,” or, “Toothbrush,” or, “Your lectures.” This has happened most often — the plane ticket. Really, just try this. At that moment, give yourself 30 seconds of silence. “Lord, am I ready? Is there a book out to be put in my briefcase?” I’ve done that. This happened. This happened Friday. He said, “Why don’t you take along a couple copies of Desiring God. You might meet somebody at a hotel. You might meet the maid who cleans your room and be able to leave her a book.” I do that a lot. I sign books and leave them. I say, “Thanks for cleaning my room,” and leave them a free book. That’s my best effort with silence. I’m sure I’m just nowhere near where some of you are in this issue of learning how to commune with God. I’m just talking from where I am. Take it if it’s helpful, and go beyond me, please.

Colossians 2:20–23 relates to fasting. Could you speak about that?

Colossians 2:20–23 says:

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used) — according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

He lists off these things in Colossians 2:21: “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch.” He says, “Now why are you submitting to these worldly decrees? You have died with Christ to the elementary principles.” Maybe that’s the right translation of that word. Now my sense there is what that verse means is that the “elementary principles” are a way of relating to God that relates to him mainly through rules:Don’t eat, don’t taste, don’t handle, don’t touch. That’s the way you get right with God. That’s the way you maintain your rightness with God. There’s these ceremonial things. Fasting would be one of them, perhaps. Don’t eat catfish because it’s slimy on the outside and it doesn’t have scales, etc. Those are the elementary things of the world.

He is saying, “Why in the world are you still doing that?” He says. “These are matters which have to do with the appearance of wisdom and self-made religion, and self-abasement.” There, he’s addressing the issue of self-abasement, that is, denying yourself food. And he says, “And severe treatment of the body.” That would be possibly extended fasting. But then he says, “They are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” I think I quoted this verse in the very first page of the book. The book starts by saying, “Beware of books on fasting, and beware of fasting.” Fasting carries as many dangers, probably, as it does benefits. This is one of them. The flesh can use fasting as much as the flesh can be subdued by fasting because the flesh is not, in Paul’s thinking, only or perhaps mainly what the body feels.

If you read the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:16–25 they are things like anger, and pride, and divisiveness. That’s not body stuff. That’s soul stuff. The flesh are those outcroppings of the human heart that aren’t reliant upon God and aren’t manifestations of the Spirit. He says, “Fasting (per se) is not going to fix that. In fact, it might deepen it because you can boast in fasting, big time.” That’s why Jesus had to warn against doing it in front of people, right? In Matthew 6, those folks were fasting to be seen by men, which means it was pure flesh.

So I take those verses not to be a wholesale condemnation of fasting, but one of those great warnings that outward things, may be an opportunity for the flesh. It can be anything. It can be Bible reading. It can be prayer. You can boast in prayer. You can stand on the street corner and pray long prayers to be seen by men. It can be preaching. It can be the clothes you wear. It can be all kinds of spiritual disciplines or other things. We are capable of turning every human act into a sin. I mean that. That’s a carefully thought-through thought. We are capable of turning every single human act — meaning, what you do with your body — into a sin.

I take it as a warning, not a condemnation. The reason I don’t take it as a complete condemnation that all things you would do severely with the body just play into flesh is because other places, Paul and Jesus talk about denying yourself and self-discipline. The last fruit of the Holy Spirit is enkrateia. How is it translated? What’s the last fruit of the Holy Spirit? Self-control. That’s a sex word in Paul’s vocabulary. I think it has implications for other kinds of self-control, but enkrateia in Greek meant mainly continence — being able not to have sex when you shouldn’t. Don’t do stuff with your brain that you shouldn’t. There are things that you should do bodily that put governors on desires, whether food desires or sex desires.

Remember what Paul said? “I will not be enslaved by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). That was in the context of food in 1 Corinthians 6. He says, “I will not be enslaved by anything. Food is for the stomach, the stomach for food. God will destroy both in hell.” He says, “You’re free to eat. You’re free not to eat. Don’t be enslaved.” I think self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, but it has to be a fruit of the spirit, which is what Colossians says it might not be. It might be a thing you boast in.

Is a long duration in fasting something to be strived for? If so, how long?

I don’t know how you decide that. I know of nothing in the Bible that would tell you that a 40-day fast is better than a 28-day fast, or a 7-day fast, or a 24-hour fast. You have models. You have models, illustrations in the Bible: Jesus was 40 days, Moses was 40 days, and Esther was three days. There are different ones. In our spiritual lives between now and when we die, should we be moving towards a longer period so that the idea would be everybody would do a 40-day fast before they were done.

It kind of has adverse effects on your body.

Ken said he can’t imagine anybody fasting 40 days. Well, they do it, and they do it a lot. Probably, most of them drink juice. Very, very, very few people go 40 days on just water. You can’t go 40 days without water and without a miracle. God has done that, I think. You can do 40 days with juice. You’d lose a lot of weight, but you could do it. There’s a lot of people that do it. I mean, there are people in Korea who do it all the time.

Back to the question, is it something to be pursued? I don’t feel any impulse to do a 40-day fast myself at this time in my life. I think one of the reasons — and judge the temperature of my own spirituality — is that it would be so incredibly disruptive to about a thousand things in my life. It would be hard to be a family member if you never ate with your family for 40 days. It would be hard to be with staff. It would be hard to travel. It would be hard to just do a lot of things. Now those can be overcome.

Can you accomplish the same thing by skipping one or two meals a day as opposed to a two or three-day fast?

I don’t know. I think the Lord will probably. If you go to the Lord, if we all go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I’m willing on any given issue, like a lost loved one, or a sick daughter, or 9 million dollars to be given to the church, or whatever, what would you have me do by way of denying myself food in order to seek you with greater intensity?” I’ll bet if we all did that, we’d all come up with a whole bunch of different strategies, probably about 250 different strategies in this room. They would all be good. They would all be blessed by the Lord. We shouldn’t point our finger and say, “You didn’t do the three-day thing.”

Let me just hold out to you. I’m sure there are people in this room who’ve never fasted a day in their life. The last thing on your agenda is to fast. Let me just hold out to you that you do contemplate another step. Let’s just all do that, okay? You who have done the three weeks or 40 days of fasting, probably don’t go beyond 40 days. You’ve reached where you need to go. Wherever you’ve arrived, take one more step. At least ask the Lord if you should. The easiest kind of fast to do, at least for me anyway, is a day. It’s a 24-hour thing where you eat supper, you go to bed, and you don’t eat again until supper. Good night. That’s no big deal. If it is a big deal physically for you, then you say, “All right. I’ll do what I can do.”

I’m the kind of person that if I don’t have apple juice every hour, I get sick. I can remember one time. I’m just being honest with you here. It was a prayer week and I was fasting. I had to speak to the young people on fasting on Wednesday night. I started on Sunday. I got so sick, nauseous, on Wednesday afternoon that I was in the pastor’s office up there heaving these dry, awful heaves, and sweating like a loon. I had to speak in about 10 minutes to these teenagers. Well, I learned what my body is capable of and what is not. I don’t press it anymore. I drink juice when I’m fasting.

Can we fast from things other than food?

That’s very important. I got an email a few years ago when I was preaching on this from a woman, so helpful. She said, “I’m a diabetic. My doctor has said, ‘Don’t ever do that.’” Every month, we published a different card. We said, “We’d like 40 people in Bethlehem to fast one meal a day for that month. You are the fasting 40. You represent us as a church.” Now I forget just what we were fasting toward that year, but it was significant. Well, she wanted to be a part of that. She said, “I’m going to do television.” I said, “That is perfectly legitimate.” Find the thing that you lean on. What do you lean on? All of us lean on food, but there are other things we lean on that we also could test how unhealthily and spiritually inappropriately we lean on them by denying them for a season. It might be a week with no TV, or every night we skip that show we like to watch.

Maybe I should try to win a million dollars for the church.

Yes, he wants the building fund to be helped. I’ve heard that before. Anybody that goes to the casino for the building fund, you’re fired. We don’t take that money. Anybody want to give a little testimony here about other things that you have found helpful to target as a discipline in your life to say no to that for a season? I mean, that’s what Lent is all about, right?

Driving is one. I try to go a few days a week if I can do it and not drive.

That’s interesting. I think that’s a good idea if you live as close as I do, especially. Get out of your car, for goodness’ sake.

If you find you have a tendency to go to someone else, go to the Lord in prayer instead.

I hadn’t thought of that one, if you lean on people too much. I think that’s perfectly legitimate, especially if you can’t miss food because of medical reasons. Please, don’t feel you’re spiritually inferior or something if that’s the case. There’s nothing sacred about that form of denial. The principle is, do you want more of God enough to be without something that you would ordinarily lean on.

What do you do when you’re fasting and you get to the place of pain and anger?

Let me make sure I’m understanding you. My reference to anger and having a short fuse was not anger towards God, though that may come out, but just towards cabinets that get in the way, or clutches that aren’t working, or doors that won’t work. You can’t turn the lock. My office has a door that you try to turn and you can’t. Jonathan Edwards had a resolution. He said, “It is sin to get angry at an inanimate object.” There’s no moral quality to indict here. This lock is not in your face. If this key isn’t turning, God’s doing that, not the lock. Don’t kick this door. That’s sin. You’re more serious than this. Your question is, if the anger and the pain are there, what do you do with it? Well, I think you measure the degree of pain, probably, like I did with nausea. I’m not going to ruin my week. I mean, why be sick all week, right? If your aim is to get your mind cleared to pray and bless people, you don’t want to be in the bathroom all week long.

I think you back up and you find what you can do: apple juice, orange juice, or whatever. Maybe you take one glass every meal or something like that. If that’s what you mean by pain, I would say, don’t push yourself beyond what would be healthy or useful for your life. With regard to the anger, that’s just really good for us to have that exposed in our lives. The Bible talks about putting away anger. There are steps you can take, I think, to actually assault the anger in your life. You need a probe to see what the roots of it are. What is going on in my life? Why do I have so much anger?

It is a huge problem, by the way. We did a men’s retreat a few years ago. We had a little survey and hand-raising. Just so you know, I think anger was above lust in the problems that these men had. There’s a lot of anger in the world, a lot of anger. The reason there’s a lot of anger is because there’s a lot of frustration. Things don’t go your way with your spouse, things don’t go your way with your kids, things don’t go with your job, things don’t go your way with your health, things don’t go your way with the church. You walk through the day, and nothing’s going your way. Every time something doesn’t go your way, there’s this sense of tension that rises. It becomes bitterness and anger. The Bible says, “Don’t let the sun go down on that.” The next phrase is, “Don’t give place to the devil.”

If you have a lot of anger and it starts showing itself during fasting, you have to develop some strategies to pull the plug on that anger. There’s a bunch of strategies to use. There’s not just one. See what comes to mind here. I’ll just mention a few. If the anger is being directed towards a person who’s sinning against you, or a spouse who’s abused your kids or something, think about Romans 12:18–20 and 1 Peter 2:21–23. Both of those texts say, “Do not avenge yourself. Give place to wrath. Vengeance is mine. I will repay,” says the Lord. What does that little phrase, “Give place to wrath,” mean? Give place to wrath. God says, “Vengeance is mine. I’ll repay.”

I think there’s a psychological dynamic that by faith, you’re able to take anger against legitimate sins against you and give place to God’s wrath by saying, “God, this is wrong. I am being treated wrong here. I am being let down wrongly here. I know you have told me not to return evil for evil, but to bless and not to curse. I feel very much like cursing right now. I feel very much like vengeance in some form or another, but I will now consciously take this anger and give it to you and trust you to do whatever should be done with it for justice’s sake.” I do believe that’s possible. That was Romans.

In Peter, it says, “When Christ was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. He handed over to him who judges justly.” Many translations say, “He handed himself over.” That is not what it says. It just says, “He handed over to him who judges justly.” The context is really clear. He’s being reviled. The natural human tendency is spit back or hit back. Get the last word here. He’s suffering and he would want to at least feel angry towards this person instead of saying, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.” What did he do with it? He’s human. He’s being sinned against. It’s not wrong to feel indignation about that. People shouldn’t sin against you. What do you do with it? Answer: He handed over to him who judges justly. Just walk with him through everything. When they pressed that thing down on his head, imagine what that would be like. I’ve seen thorn bushes that aren’t like stickers I grew up with in South Carolina.

If somebody were to put that on your head and then hit you with a rod, one of those would go in about three-quarters of an inch. At that moment, you just want to hit him. I mean, it’s just a reaction. Or you want to say, “Quit that,” or, “Curse you, you whitewashed wall,” or something like that. What can control that? What can release that? I think what Jesus did at every point along the way, just like he did in Gethsemane, was to whisper, “O God, take it. Do with it whatever you have to do, and give me a spirit of meekness here. I must maintain my lamblike, substitutionary sinlessness here, O God. Take it and do whatever you need to do.” Now when he said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing,” God had given him a grace that was a step beyond, “I hand over to you their judgment, so judge it.” He handed over their judgment, and then he asked that the judgment be a certain thing, which is the most gracious thing imaginable.

My first strategy is simply to say that one strategy is a conscious, faith-based handing over. That may sound naïve to you, but I can testify that it works. It works in a lot of other areas. It works in lust, sexual temptation. You can learn to take those thoughts, men and women here. Women have different kinds of thoughts and fantasies, but they have their own issues here. As soon as one comes into your head, you can form that same thing. You can say, “No,” right out loud, or you can say it to the brain — “No, you will not occupy my brain and my thought process here for the next two minutes.” You consciously say, “Take it, Lord,” and then you very consciously direct your mind toward a superior satisfaction, or some other thing that would be valuable to you.

Let me say one other thing. Here’s a second strategy. That’s a forward-looking strategy. That’s a future-grace strategy. A backward-grace strategy is Ephesians 4:32, which says, “Forgive as you have been forgiven.” Meditate when you get angry on how you have been forgiven. I think that’s probably as powerful or more than the other one. Here you are getting angry that this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and this happened against you. Take those and measure those against what you have done that were so bad, Jesus had to die. Then look at him dying. Look at him dying and see if you can emotionally muster the same anger towards these offenses against you when he’s dying to rescue you from offenses against him. The cross is the bottom-line key to this issue of anger. Those are two strategies. There are more, but let’s go another direction.

When you’re praying, do you think a lot of Christ purchasing your victory when you pray?

What I can say is this. Regularly, I think of Romans 8:32 because it’s just sort of my warp and woof favorite verse:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

That means all the answers to our prayers, plus lots more. Every answer to prayer that I plead for is owing to the Father not sparing the Son. Now let me just say one other thing about that and then we’ll be dismissed. Know what you mean when you close your prayer, “in Jesus name, amen.” Know what you mean. That’s what you mean. It bothers me when people end their prayers without saying that. I mean, I usually cut them slack and say, “They usually say it, and they mean it, and they didn’t feel like they had to toss those words in.”

Frankly, I think they’re very important words to say out loud and to mean in a certain way. When you say, “Give us this day our daily bread. In Jesus name, amen,” you mean, I don’t deserve daily bread. Jesus deserves daily bread. In his name, I’m putting the check on the table. He signed the check. I’m writing the check for food, and he signed it with his blood. That’s what you mean by, “in Jesus name.” You don’t deserve one thing you ask God for except hell. If you get anything better than hell, Jesus bought it for you. Therefore, when you end your prayer, you should say, “In his name,” and, “for his sake,” and, “for his glory,” and, “because he died,” and, “because of his worth, not my worth.”

I think even though we may not have in our heads some verses, that little phrase at the end, in Jesus name, ought to carry a mega ton of freight. If you have children, get this into their heads early. That’s not a throwaway phrase. Jesus died so that you could pray to the Father and not be squished like a bug but be received like a child. The child-father relationship is, of course, the basis of a lot of prayer teaching in the Bible. Our adoption was bought by the blood of Jesus. When we pray, in Jesus name, we’re saying, “I’m your child. I have an approach. I can come boldly. I have a high priest because of the blood.” That’s a good place to stop.