February 18th, 2026: Ash Wednesday - "Wilderness Survival Guide - Fasting" - Johnna Kosnoff

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find out

more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us online

at FUMC bentonville.org, or check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

So my name is Johnna Kosnoff and I am a certified lay minister here at the church.

I will be reading Psalm 69 verses six through 13.

Lord God of heavenly forces.

Don't let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, Lord of Israel.

Don't let those who seek you be disgraced because of me.

I am insulted because of you.

Shame covers my face.

I have become a stranger to my own brothers, an immigrant to my

mother's children because passion for your house has consumed me.

The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.

I wept while I fasted.

Even for that, I was insulted when I wore funeral clothes.

People made fun of me.

Those who sit at the city gate muttered things about me.

Drunkards made up rude songs.

But me, my prayer reaches you, Lord, at just the right time.

God, in your great and faithful love, answer me with your certain salvation.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Will you please be in prayer with me?

Gracious God.

May your spirit open our hearts to transformation during this Linton season.

Please use the words that I am about to say to encourage the ones

who hear them, to create in all of us the spirit of repentance.

Lead us to a deeper faith through your son Jesus Christ.

In your holy name I pray, amen.

So I mentioned that I'm a certified lay minister here, but I'm also serving as

a community development coordinator, and that means that I'm developing

communities outside the church, like with the school partnerships

as well as the city of Bentonville.

We do some things for like the half marathon that's

coming up inside the church.

I'm also developing.

Or I have helped develop many communities, but the one I wanna mention tonight is

the Women's Spiritual Formation Group.

Shanna Parles, who is in our choir, also is a spiritual director, and she

has been leading us for the past year through some spiritual disciplines,

sometimes called exercises or practices.

We have been.

Learning about these and soul training is what we call them.

Training our souls to more readily recognize God's nearness in our daily

lives, in just our everyday walkabouts.

Shanna, along with Reverend Sarah Bainbridge, who is also a spiritual

director, will be leading a pop-up Sunday school class on Sunday mornings

at 10:00 AM in room two 17 upstairs.

I want to encourage all of you to join that Sunday school class and

participate and learn these spiritual disciplines and just take advantage

of this during the Linton series.

Tonight I'm gonna be talking to you about fasting and there will not be

a Sunday School class on that, so I'm gonna give you a lot of information.

My fasting experience began when I was in high school.

My best friend belonged to a church that practiced fasting as a community.

So on a regular basis, the entire church would fast for a day and

they would be in prayer about whatever issue might be at hand.

So she would join me at lunch in the cafeteria, and she would have some water,

and we would just talk about our usual.

Talk, whatever, whatever that was.

Sometimes she shared what her church was praying, but mostly she didn't

wanna draw any attention to her fast.

Uh, she was concerned about becoming prideful or boastful, and so most people

just thought she wasn't hungry that day.

That was my first experience with fasting.

Fast forward multiple years and I joined a Methodist church.

I, in my prior denomination, we did not practice lint.

Um.

Mm. So I began to learn about it, and I learned of the three pillars,

fasting, prayer, and Almsgiving, which is also known as charity.

I could get behind prayer and almsgiving like that made sense to me.

I could get closer to God through those things.

But how in the world did skipping a meal bring me closer to God?

Or glorify God in any way.

I couldn't get it.

So a friend of mine who was a Methodist and had been fasting for a while, she

shared with me her practice during Lent.

She would often give up lunch and she would save the money that she would have

been spending on lunch, and at the end of L she would donate it to a charity.

And with the time she would have been spending in line to buy lunch or.

Preparing lunch or eating lunch or cleaning up after lunch.

She would use that extra time for prayer and for reading her Bible.

Some seasons, she didn't give up a full lunch.

She would give up her loved diet Coke or her dark chocolate.

But again, she would make special time just for prayer and save

the money she would've spent on those things and gave to charity.

It seemed like a good way to get started.

I understood that, so I began to practice fasting from certain things during Lent.

Then eventually when I started the training to become a certified lay

minister, I began to dive deeper into these spiritual practices

that you're gonna be learning about during these next 40 days.

And fasting kept coming back to me as something I needed to try.

And so I looked a little deeper into the biblical history of fasting, and there's

a lot of information out there, y'all.

I can't share it all with you tonight, but I'm gonna share a

few of maybe the most common ones.

We know Moses, that's where the first mention of fasting is in the Old

Testament, he stayed on the mountain with God for 40 days without food or water.

When he received the 10 Commandments, Daniel pled for God's mercy

through prayer and fasting.

When he was a captive in Babylon, Esther and the Jews who lived in Suse

both prayed and fasted to prevent Mordecai's plan to kill all the Jews.

And of course, Jesus.

He's our best example of fasting, especially during Lent, because

that's what we're honoring here.

In Lent.

Jesus, after his baptism was filled with the Holy Spirit and immediately

led into the wilderness area and fasted and prayed for 40 days, and then he

was tempted by Satan after resisting Satan's temptations, Satan left him

and Jesus was attended to by angels.

And of course we see that after Jesus left this earth, the apostles also

prayed and fasted throughout the New Testament Biblically, it seems

that fasting is always accompanied with prayer without prayer.

Fasting is just dieting.

So keep that in mind.

John Wesley preached on fasting, and if you don't know who John Wesley

is, he is the founder of Methodism.

He was an Anglican priest and he remained in the Anglican church his entire life.

There's a lot to that story, so if you wanna hear, just let me know later.

He said fasting is a means of grace.

It's a means to an end.

Fasting itself isn't what gives me grace from God, but it helps

me experience God's grace.

What I do with the time when I'm not eating matters, it's when I'm in prayer

and reading my Bible and listening to God.

It helps me be more aware of God's presence and grace.

The ancient Christians fasted from morning to evening for special events.

Wesley observed a half fast throughout the year, not just the

Lenin season, and he did it this way.

He fasted after dinner one evening and threw high tea the

next day, so around three o'clock sometimes he didn't have high tea.

He just waited until dinner.

Now, he did allow water and black tea during this time.

He also focused on prayer and reading scripture, and sometimes visiting

the feeble and the needy, and sharing prayers and scriptures with them.

On the days he was fasting, he fasted twice a week.

He fasted on Wednesdays to remember Judas Scar, its betrayal

that happened on a Wednesday.

He fasted on Fridays to commemorate the crucifixion.

If we follow this example and we fast on Wednesdays, and remember, Judas is

betrayal and Fridays to commemorate the crucifixion, and then we come to church on

Sundays and have communion and celebrate the great mystery that Christ has died.

Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

We celebrate Easter every week that we do that.

That's kind of fun, isn't it?

A little mini Easter throughout the year.

Wesley also said it's about asserting will over desire, not through our

power do we do this, but through prayer and scripture, which allows

the spirit to lead our practice.

It also grows our spiritual hunger and focus.

And of course, we should always fast discreetly and remember

not to become prideful.

Wesley says, our intention should be to glorify our father, to express

our sorrow over our sins, to wait for an increase of purifying grace.

Again, it's not the fasting that's giving us grace, but while we're fasting, we draw

closer to God to things above which helps us pray more seriously and earnestly.

And to obtain or remember all the great and precious promises which

God has made to us in Jesus Christ.

Salvation is one of those beautiful gifts.

We are saved by grace for an abundant life today, tomorrow, and eternally.

I want to encourage you to fast with me.

During this Lenten season, John Wesley asked, what do

you think you cannot give up?

Just take a moment and think about that question.

What is it that you just can't give up?

Maybe food isn't for you.

Maybe that's not what you would wanna fast from.

Maybe it's social media and all the scorn and hate that comes there sometimes,

or just the distraction that it is.

Maybe it's those addicting New York time, puzzle games, tv, or shopping.

Well, John Wesley suggests whatever it is that you think you can't

give up is your God, and you should maybe give it up for a fast.

What you do with your fast is important.

Will you use the extra time to practice these spiritual gifts

that you're learning during Lent?

And if there's money that's saved, maybe you'll wanna use

that money to donate to charity.

I do need to mention that if you choose food, I recommend that you check with a

doctor, make sure you're safe, physically, mentally, emotionally, to skip meals.

Let me also warn you that practicing these disciplines may cause others to

notice something different about you.

You may not be on Facebook.

You might not join others for a meal, or you might just drink water.

While you do, you might skip a popular TV show to read your Bible or to pray.

These spiritual disciplines will require a little time away.

From things that you've been doing.

Today's scripture says that because passion for your house has

consumed me, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.

When I humbled my soul with fasting, they insulted me for doing soul.

You may receive some pushback when you began to practice new spiritual things,

but this can also be an opportunity to share your faith with others.

Hopefully there will be something different in you.

Something that will draw people to notice your love for God, your love for Jesus.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit and being able to love neighbors

as ourselves or yourself, just as we're directed to do in the Bible.

That's what these spiritual disciplines help us do.

Also, the first time you practice them, you may not feel any different.

But if you practice them regularly, you will begin to notice a change.

There's one last thing I wanna share with you, and God often

speaks to me through trees.

I know that probably sounds really silly and I feel like

a Lorax if you know Dr. Seuss.

But in January, as my husband and I were driving back from Indiana,

I began to think about what am I gonna share with you this evening?

And I was noticing just how beautiful the trees were.

It was January, they were bare, but the lights were just shimmering off the bark

and they looked like birch trees, even though I don't think birch trees really

grow much in Missouri, but they were just so pretty and the shapes of the branches.

Kind of revealed the uniqueness of each tree.

Some were, you know, reaching toward the sky.

Some were drooping, but each tree was a little bit different.

Some were bent from the strong winds.

I thought of how the trees dropped their beautiful leaves in order

to stay healthy through the winter without their leaves, they were better

protected to withstand the strong winds.

They could better store their vital nutrients.

Providing fuel for their spring growth and maintain their bark for insulation

and prevent them from drying out.

This got me thinking about lint and how when we declutter our hearts and minds to

focus on what Jesus did and does for us.

For me, that's what happens when I fast.

I get rid of the clutter of food to accept Jesus's spiritual food.

I use the time in prayer and God's word, and I am protected to better withstand the

strong winds that life may bring my way.

I receive vital nutrients from the Lord to fuel my own spiritual growth.

I can better maintain my spiritual relationship and prevent my

own soul from drying out.

As we get rid of things that are cluttering our relationship with God,

God reveals something beautiful in us.

Just like the uniqueness we see in the branches of trees, different shapes,

some are bent over crooked straight.

We are each shaped by our life experiences as well as our relationship with God.

I looked at these trees and I thought, again, of how beautiful

they are without their leaves.

And then as I drove, I saw a tree that had a giant bird's nest in it.

But without the tree having dropped its sleeves, it's

unlikely I would have seen that.

Bird's nest.

When we declutter our hearts and minds with a fast and focus on God, we allow

God to be revealed in our lives just like the beautiful bird's nest that I

wouldn't have seen hidden by the leaves.

Whether you choose to fast from food like I've been doing or something else, like

social media, tv, whatever your God is, as John Wesley puts it, I encourage you

to take time during this Linton season to practice these spiritual disciplines.

Take advantage of the Sunday school class and go deeper than just hearing about

them on Sunday mornings, and I pray.

That your practice will glorify our father.

And help you experience the great and precious promises which he has made

to us in Jesus Christ, our Savior.

And through God's spirit, may your branches be strengthened and may

God's beautiful presence be revealed.

Amen.

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Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Grace and Peace.