7 Transformational Habits, Part III - Fasting

Good morning.

Good morning, go ahead and take your seat.

Worship team.

Thank you all so much for leading us today, hey, as we move into this teaching time this morning, we really believe that prayer changes everything, and so we have a lot that we can pray about today, and I think we need to pray together today.

So, right, where you are, I just want to ask you for a moment to bow your head and pray where you are, for God to meet with us here today during this time Could take a moment and pray for the future of our church in both locations and the future plans that God has in store for us.

Take a moment and pray for our world, that churches across the globe would be salt and light signpost pointing the world to the good news of Jesus.

And if we'll take a moment and pray, for there are a few different circumstances that people in our church today are walking through Some who are grieving the loss of a loved one, some who are dealing with surgery or recovering from surgery, some who have just experienced tragedy in various forms, and we just pray for the people around you.

Maybe you know the, maybe you know the circumstances, maybe you don't, but let's pray for one another today.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful to be in your house today, god.

We're grateful for the time of worship that we've just experienced, as we were led in music and God reminded that all things are called to rise and to bless your name and, father, that all things, that includes us, and so that's ultimately why we're here today to bring our worship before you, to pour out our lives before you, god, to offer to you our lives as living sacrifices, because you're worthy of it all.

What you've done for us in Christ is incredible, father, may we never get over the good news of Jesus.

So, god, now, as we open your word together, and Father, we simply pray that your spirit would be at work, god, that you would challenge us, god, you would confront us, god, in areas of our lives where we've grown complacent or we've gotten distracted or we've feasted too long at the table of the world.

Father, call us back to you today In Jesus' name, and everybody says amen, amen.

Well, thank you so much for being at church today.

I think you're gonna be encouraged as we jump into the word.

One order of business.

Before we get there, we are less than 40 days from Easter.

Anybody, anybody know that today Anybody Easter on anybody's radar.

Today, easter's got a way of sneaking up on us, and I say that to say two things.

One, be thinking, praying, looking in your life for people that you can invite to Easter Sunday, people that you know, that don't know God, that maybe one invite God could use that invite to change their eternity.

So be thinking, praying, looking for opportunities to invite people in your life to join you here on Easter Sunday.

With that said, just imagine for a second if all couple hundred adults that are in this room every single weekend, if we all invited one person, what that would look like for us on Easter Sunday.

We'd have a parking problem, right, we'd have some issues.

And so, with that said, here's my ask to you we want to get in the habit, the mindset, of leaving this front lot here for our families with kids, for our first time guests and for our senior adults.

And so the ask for the next few weeks and on into the future if you're able, park in the lot behind Freedom Hall.

Some of you all remember we started Pinewood out in Freedom Hall on the other side of campus.

You can go in the next exit or the next entrance on campus at Pinewood.

We're gonna post something about this this week, but you can drive around back.

Behind Freedom Hall there's actually a sidewalk that brings you up right to these doors.

It's actually a shorter walk than parking in the front way down there.

So if you don't mind helping us out with that, as we get closer to Easter, we want to make space at the front for kids with families, for senior adults and for our first time guests, to make it easy for people to get into a place where they can hear the good news of Jesus.

That makes sense With me there.

Fantastic, mark, chapter two.

Mark, chapter two.

We're gonna talk about fasting today.

We're gonna talk about fasting.

I told the first service.

I went back in the archives.

I don't know that I've ever preached an entire message on fasting before the nine o'clock service this morning.

So I've doubled my quotient on messages on fasting just today.

That's pretty amazing and I'm just out of curiosity.

Can anybody remember hearing a sermon completely on the idea of fasting before?

Just curious.

I wanna see what we're working with today.

Fantastic, I got one, maybe two.

We got some new material.

I love that.

I love that, and here's why.

To me, that's an interesting thing, because fasting according to Jesus is a big deal when it comes to following after Him.

If we know Jesus as Lord and Savior, then the expectation is just like we pray, just like we give that, we will also fast, and we're gonna see that together this morning To help us get there.

I wanna tell you a story kind of my first experience with fasting.

Some of you are gonna judge me, and I realized about halfway through telling this story to the nine o'clock service, I'm like I probably shouldn't be telling this story today.

I'm supposed to be a pastor and this just doesn't.

So here's the story.

10 years ago or so, I was leading a youth ministry in the upstate of South Carolina and we were doing a series called Take the Land, and it was a series from the story of Joshua, the narrative of Joshua's life, and it was about challenging and encouraging our youth to be bold and courageous like Joshua in their faith, to share the good news about what Jesus has done and to boldly step into the future that God had for them.

And it was, I thought in that time.

It was a great series, it was encouraging to me, it was good for our group and as part of that series.

We had a night that we said, hey, this is the night we want you to invite your friends, we want you to bring people to church.

And in the lead up to that night we're gonna do a seven day fast.

And so our middle schoolers and high schoolers are like, well, what's fasting?

I'm like, well, you mean, you give something up.

All right, you give something up.

And the middle schoolers like, okay, well, we'll give up YouTube for a week.

And our high schoolers like, okay, we'll get off Instagram for a week.

And I'm like, great, we're fasting.

That's amazing.

And so for me, I remember telling my wife, I'm gonna give up, like not all food, but like some food and dessert for a week.

And Tara's like, okay, that's fine.

And then it hit me that I had messed up, because the same week that we had scheduled the seven day fast was also Tara's birthday week and we had already booked and planned and penciled in a trip to Charleston for a few days that week.

Now we live in the upstate of South Carolina.

Seafood there was like Captain D's and Long John Silver's, and we're coming to Charleston, which is like the holy land of seafood.

And not only that, charleston had Kamenskis.

Anybody ever been to Kamenskis, so we haven't heard a sermon on fasting, but we've been to Kamenskis, amen.

And that's what I was thinking.

I was like I have messed up.

And so then, then I did what you would do, I started bargaining with God.

I was like, well, lord, you know my heart and this is the wife that you gave me, lord, and I'm just trying to honor her and celebrate her birthday.

And so what if God?

What if, for like two days, like one day I fast from everything but seafood, the next day I'll fast from everything but dessert, you know, and then we can kind of make it work that way.

And listen y'all, I was young and immature, I didn't know really like the heart of fasting at all.

I thought that if we fasted and God would pay better attention to us and maybe do what we wanted him to do, and fortunately for us and for me and for all of us, god is gracious, is he not?

And he honored, I think, our feeble attempts as a youth ministry to fast for a week.

And I mean again, like I look back at that, I'm like I can't believe, I can't believe it, I just can't believe it.

And I say all that to say, when it comes to this topic of fasting, maybe that's kind of the place you find yourself in.

You got some like weird experiences from your past where somebody was like, hey, we're gonna fast for this amount of time from this and you're like, okay, let's do it.

And maybe you did it, maybe you half-heartedly did it, maybe you didn't do it at all, you just said you were gonna do it or maybe, like fasting is just this foreign concept to you.

But there's an interesting moment in Mark, chapter two, where Jesus gets a question about fasting.

And the reason that Jesus gets a question about fasting was because that in those days, in Jesus's day, fasting was a common practice for people that were religious.

In other words, it was like a test of your faithfulness to God.

Was your fasting Like if you fasted a lot, you were really faithful to God?

If you never fasted at all, then you didn't have much of a connection to God.

And so there comes a moment in Mark, chapter two, verse 18, where John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, john being John the Baptist, the Pharisees being the religious leaders of the day.

So people came and they said to Jesus why did John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast.

People were like, hey, we're noticing some discrepancy, some differences between John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples and the way your disciples are doing things.

These guys are all fasting.

You and your guys are not fasting.

And Jesus's response?

He said to them can the wedding guest fast while the bridegroom is with them?

As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day.

No one sows a piece of untrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the patch tears away from it the new from the old, and the worst hair is made.

And no one puts new wine in its old wine skins.

If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wine skins.

So Jesus in this passage fields this question about fasting.

And for us today, let's start with the definition of fasting.

Fasting is an intentional no to my flesh in order to give an intentional yes to God.

When we talk about fasting, what are we talking about?

We're talking about intentionally saying no to self in order to say yes to God.

And it's important to note that, in the context of the scriptures, the idea of fasting always has to do with going without food.

You know, sometimes in our day and time we talk about fasting from social media.

We talk about fasting from sugar or coffee or, you know, mountain dew or whatever, like we're gonna fast from certain things.

But in Jesus's day and time, the idea of fasting was always about food.

We could drink water, but it always had to do with the denial of the flesh through the limiting intake of food.

And so Jesus fields this question.

Because people are like okay, well, john's disciples, john the Baptist's disciples, they're fasting all the time.

Why are they fasting?

Well, they're fasting because they're longing, waiting for the Messiah to come.

And the Pharisees they're disciples.

They're fasting too because for them it's an external picture of their piety before God.

And so they're all fasting before God.

Why do you and your disciples not fast?

And in Mark, chapter two, we're gonna see two things this morning about fasting that I think we can learn from.

Number one Jesus gives fasting a new meaning.

Maybe you're here and you're like okay, why should I consider fasting?

Because Jesus has given fasting a new meaning.

Let's do a little Bible study on fasting together this morning.

If you go all the way back to Leviticus, chapter 16, we see the idea of fasting introduced In Leviticus, chapter 16, it's a chapter about what's called the day of atonement, which is when a bull and a ram will be sacrificed for the forgiveness of the sins of Israel.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

It happened once a year.

Once a year, the seventh month, the 10th day, and the day of atonement was the day there would be an animal killed, sacrificed, the shedding of blood would take place, and then there would be another goat that would be sent away into the wilderness.

It was called the scapegoat.

And so you had an animal killed for the forgiveness of sin into the shedding of blood, and then you had another goat upon which were symbolically laid the sins of the people of God, and that goat was sent off into the wilderness, again symbolically, symbolizing the removal of sin from God's people.

Shedding of blood, forgiveness of sin, and then the removal of that sin, guilt, from God's people.

Now, as part of that day of atonement, in Leviticus, chapter 16, god tells the Israelites this it will be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the 10th day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

And that phrase shall afflict yourselves can also be translated you shall fast.

So part of what was commanded by God with the day of atonement was that, on that day, what's Israel supposed to do?

They're supposed to afflict themselves.

They're supposed to suffer, if you will.

They're supposed to deny their flesh.

They're supposed to say no to self and intentional no to what the flesh wants.

In order to celebrate what God has done, you shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.

For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you.

You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins.

It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you.

And there the phrase is again and you shall afflict yourselves or you shall fast.

So at its institution in Leviticus, chapter 16, fasting had to do with two things.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

One, it was a mourning and repentance over sin, and two, a celebration of the graciousness of God.

We're mourning our brokenness that has required the shedding of blood for our sin, and two, we're celebrating that God, in his grace, has cleansed us and made us clean.

And so that was why fasting began.

Now, if you know the story of the Old Testament, things get strange right.

Fast forward a little bit to the book of Judges, right?

Israel's got all of these laws from God, 10 commandments.

This is what it takes to live in relationship with the holy God and Israel.

Time and time again they fail, they fall, they don't live up to the standard of God.

And so what you see in the book of Judges is Israel would rebel against God, they would worship false gods, and then they would somehow come to their senses, they would repent and fast so that God would pay attention to them again, god would forgive them, god would give them a judge to deliver them from their pain and their suffering, and then the cycle would repeat.

Have you read the book of Judges?

It's like the book you don't read in Sunday school, because every story in there is wild and it's just this descent into chaos as Israel gets further and further and further away from the goodness of God.

But throughout that narrative is this idea that Israel, when they open their eyes and they see their brokenness, they fast to get God's attention.

Fast forward again.

Israel comes to a point in time where they're looking around at the other nations and they're like, hey, everybody else has a king.

We want a king.

God's like you don't need a king, and Israel's like no, we want a king.

God's like I'm your king and Israel's like no, but we want an actual king that we can see with our own eyes.

And so God gives Israel what they want and he raises up Saul as their king.

And externally, saul looks the part right he's tall, he's handsome, he's strong, he's a warrior, he's got it all figured out externally.

But internally Saul's got some stuff going on.

Externally he's good put together.

Internally he's got some deficits.

And as a side note, his story is this stark reminder to us that it's not about the external appearance, it's about the internal content of our heart.

It's about what's going on on the inside.

And so Saul becomes the king of Israel, and his external capacity can't make up for his lack of internal character and he ultimately falls.

And when he falls, he dies, and so does his son, jonathan.

And as a response to the death of their king, guess what Israel does?

They fast, fast forward again.

There are moments in time where David, as king, in acts of repentance, in the morning, he orders Israel to fast.

And so, as time progresses, in the Old Testament, fasting becomes an act of mourning and repentance before God.

One scholar I was reading this past week said for most of the people in the Old Testament, it appears that fasting takes on this idea of it's a means by which we can placate the wrath of God when we have rebelled against the goodness of God.

And so that's how they begin to see fasting.

We have blown it, we have messed up.

God is not thrilled with us.

What do we need to do?

We need to fast, and so fast forward again.

587, 586 BC.

The Babylonians invade the southern kingdom of Judah.

The northern kingdom's already been conquered by Babylon or by Assyria.

Then Babylon took them over.

Southern kingdom of Judah is conquered, jerusalem falls and all of the Israelites are now led into exile.

It's not a great time in the nation of Israel.

Right, their rebellion, their sin, has brought about some devastating consequences in their lives.

Ultimately, god again is gracious.

He redeems, he restores, he, under, through the leadership of the Persian king, darius, allows some people to return to Jerusalem.

The city wall is rebuilt.

Ultimately the temple is rebuilt and eventually some groups of exiles go back to Jerusalem, and when they do guess what they do they're like.

Well, if one fast in the day of atonement once a year is good, and if there have been moments throughout the years where, as an act of repentance, in mourning before God, in order to placate the wrath of God and get God to pay attention to us again, if that fasting was the answer, then then what we need to do is what?

More fasting.

And so they're like okay, if one annual fast is good, how about let's make four more and then we'll have five annual fast and let's just add those to the calendar.

And so, post exile, that's exactly what happens.

And so now Israel's got five days a year where they're supposed to fast before God fast.

Forward again to a couple of hundred years before Jesus, a group called the Pharisees come on the scene and they begin layering law upon law upon law.

There's 613 laws that these people were supposed to follow by the time Jesus walks on to the scene.

Part of that, for the Pharisees, was that they fasted every Monday and every Thursday, in addition to the five annual fast.

So do you see what's happened here?

As the timeline of Israel's history progresses, the nation falls more and more away from God and in response to their falling away from God, what they do part of what they do is like we need to add more laws and more fasting, because then maybe God will not be mad at us anymore and maybe he'll notice us, redeem us and restore us.

And so, by the time that Jesus comes on to the scene in Mark chapter two, fasting had become this picture, externally, of faithfulness to God.

Now, what we know from scripture is that the Pharisees were all about the external.

And isn't that the danger?

So many times, if we're not careful, acts of devotion to God can become less about actual devotion to God and much more about impressing the people around us.

And so when Jesus shows up and he's questioned in Mark chapter two about fasting, what he does is he gives new meaning to fasting.

He takes an old idea, a God-given idea, and he reminds the people of its original intent.

He says to the question, the group of people that question him, he says hey, can the wedding guest fast while the bridegroom is with them?

In other words, this isn't a time for mourning, because the one that you've been waiting on is here.

This isn't a time for mourning and brokenness.

This is a time for joy and celebration, because the promised Messiah is now on the planet.

And so Jesus uses this illustration of a bridegroom and a wedding, to say, hey, now's not the time to fast, to mourn, because your redemption is close.

But then he also goes on and he says to them he says as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

The days will come.

We say that together this morning.

The days will come, not might come, could come, potentially have a chance to come.

No, jesus says the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day Again.

Not, they might fast, not they could fast, they could choose to fast.

No, the expectation is they will fast in that day.

So here's the new meaning that Jesus gives to fasting.

He says fasting has more to do about longing for the presence of Jesus than it does about impressing the people around you.

You're not fasting so people look at your life and go, wow, that person is so spiritual, they must really love God.

No, you're fasting because you have this longing to be in the presence of Jesus.

Jesus says to the Pharisees and those that are gathered around him questioning him that day, he's like why would you fast?

Now?

This is a time for joy because Jesus is here.

The day's coming where Jesus will shed his blood on a cross.

He will make the atoning sacrifice one time for all sin.

He will take the sin of the world upon his shoulders.

Talk about some parallels to Leviticus, chapter 16.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

He will die, he will be buried, he will resurrect from the dead.

That day's coming because after that day he's going to ascend back to the right hand of the Father.

Then Jesus says then you can fast, because you know that the Savior, who has come, who gave his life for the sins of the world, who resurrected from the dead, will come again.

Fasting is about longing for the presence of Jesus.

In Matthew, chapter six, jesus gives us another bit of insight into the new meaning of fasting.

He's talking about giving and praying to things that, as followers of Christ, we know that we're called to do right.

We're called to be generous, we're called to be people of prayer.

And then he begins to talk about fasting.

He says and when you fast, just like when you give, just like when you pray, when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.

They disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.

Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

Their fasting has everything to do with the external and impressing other people.

Jesus says but when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, wash your hair and clean the dirt off.

When he said, take a shower, look normal, right, so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your father, who is in secret, and your father, who sees in secret, rewards you.

So again, it's not an external demonstration of faithfulness that characterizes fasting, it's an internal longing for the presence of Jesus.

Not only does Jesus give fasting a new meaning, he introduces to us a new way of relating to God.

Mark, chapter two.

He goes on and he gives two parables that help us understand why he's talking about fasting the way he's talking about fasting.

The first in verse 21,.

Jesus says no one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.

Now, I'm not a tailor or somebody who sows I don't know if that's called or I don't make garments for a living but I do know that fabric, new fabric, what does it do?

It shrinks, right, gentlemen, have you ever put something in the dryer that didn't belong in the dryer?

How did that go for you, right?

Not well, because what happens?

It shrinks, right.

And Jesus says hey, if you have a new piece of fabric and you stitch a new piece of fabric to a garment that is old, at some point in time the new fabric's gonna shrink and when it does it's gonna tear away from the old and what you're left with is a mess.

Now you got new fabric that's ruined, an old fabric that's ruined and you can't use any of it.

Then he goes on and he says not only that, but no one puts new wine into old wine skins.

If he does, the wine will burst the skins.

Now, I don't know how much you know about wine skins in those days, but a wine skin in that day was basically the carcass of an animal.

They'd get down to the leather, essentially, and they would fashion it into a skin for a container.

They would put the wine into it.

But it was only good for one use.

It was the first century version of a plastic bag, right, like, it's only good for one time and it's gotta go into the trash, because if you use it again, what's gonna happen is it's gonna be brittle.

And Jesus says the wine will burst the skin If you put new wine into old wine skins, the wine will burst the skin and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wine skins.

Jesus's point is this you can't superimpose the life, the teachings, the ministry, the gospel of Jesus onto an old way of life.

In this context in particular, he's saying hey, the old traditions of religion that you have built up over the years, you can't just add Jesus to the top of it.

It's like putting a new patch on an old garment.

It's like putting new wine into old wine skins.

For us, in our context, it would be like saying you can't just add Jesus as another category in your life.

It's not how it works.

You don't get to just keep doing what you're doing and then follow Jesus on the side.

You don't get to just keep living however you want to live, and then just add the grace and the forgiveness of Jesus when you need it.

When Jesus comes in, he takes over, and what he's saying to the Pharisees, to the people gathered around him that day, is simply this I've come to do a new thing.

I've not come just to slightly improve the old thing.

The law was a type, a shadow, a signpost pointing forward.

Jesus comes onto the scene and he says I've got an entirely new way for you to relate to God.

It's all about grace and mercy and forgiveness that produces a holiness within you that is not possible apart from Christ.

We don't add Jesus to our lives.

We look to Jesus for our very lives, and this is what he's saying.

We don't take old or new wine and put it in an old wine skin.

Jesus is doing something new.

And aren't you grateful today that Jesus is willing to do something new in your life, that he didn't just marginally improve you as a person, that he didn't just sand off some of the rough edges, that he didn't just repair some of the damage that you had wrought in your own life?

No, paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has gone and the new has come.

How does this happen?

2 Corinthians 5, 21 says that God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we could become the righteousness of God.

This isn't new wine in old wine skins.

Jesus is doing something new.

So the challenge for me and for you is don't try to fit Jesus into your old way of life.

Don't try to just add Jesus to your daily routines, your rhythms, your habits.

Let Jesus redefine who you are.

Let him reshape your priorities, your habits, your relationships, your views on your career and your finances and why you're on this planet.

Let him move in and take over.

And that is the underlying principle of fasting.

There has to be an emptying so that we can be filled.

There has to be a denial of self so that we can fix our attention on God.

So maybe you're here and you're like, okay, I'm convinced.

I wasn't convinced until that, but I see myself doing that in my life.

I see me trying to add Jesus to my marriage or add Jesus to my family or just add Jesus on top of the way I see the world.

And I know what I need is an emptying so that Jesus can fill me.

I'm interested in this fasting thing.

I understand that fasting is a for Christians thing.

Like you can intermittent fast all you want and you might drop a few pounds and that might be amazing and what you need, but it's not going to carry with it the same spiritual benefit as the fasting that we're talking about here today.

Maybe you want that kind of connection to God through fasting.

Maybe you understand.

Hey, I've got so much to be grateful for, because the Messiah has come and he's taken my sin on his shoulders.

He shed his blood.

He died the death that I should die.

He rose from the dead with resurrection power and one day he's coming back.

I long for the presence of Jesus in my life.

Maybe I need to fast.

What do you do next?

Four practical thoughts, really quickly, and then we're done.

Number one start small.

Maybe you're here.

You never fasted before in your life.

Don't walk out of here and go.

You know what I'm going?

Just vegetables and water for 21 days.

Even better, I'm going like Moses in the Old Testament no food, no water for 40 days.

That was supernatural.

I looked it up on the internet.

Google says you can't do that unless God intervenes.

I'm just telling you Start small, like miss a meal, skip dinner one night, skip breakfast one morning.

Start small.

What's the old saying?

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Right, start small, work your way up.

Start small, work your way up.

Second thing be wise.

Be wise.

Martin Lloyd-Jones was talking about fasting one time and he says you know that under the covenant of grace, the New Testament covenant that Jesus ushers in, that in fasting there's freedom.

Even in fasting, yeah, we're saying no to our flesh, that we can say yes to God, but we also have to take into account, you know, some of us have health things going on and so maybe going without food isn't an option.

So, yeah, you can fast from something else.

You can fast from meat and only eat vegetables.

You can fast from coffee.

Yeah, there's freedom there now under the New Covenant of Grace to do that.

So be wise, like, think about your schedule.

Right, if you've got, if you're running a marathon next weekend, maybe don't fast all day on Friday.

Might not go well for you.

Right, like, be wise, like, like, do fasting in a way that makes sense to your rhythm, to your life.

So that's a sustainable thing.

Third thing expect opposition.

How many of you know you decided to take a step of faith and follow Jesus.

It's not going to be easy, whether it's sharing the gospel with somebody you love, or being consistent in a life group, or being generous with your finances or serving in some capacity.

The second you say, hey, I'm crossing the line and taking this next step.

You might as well expect opposition.

Same thing's true when you fast, maybe even more so, because when you fast, not only are you advancing against the gates of hell and say, hey, we're trying to take some ground for the kingdom of God here, you're also saying no to yourself.

How many of you know, sometimes the hardest person to say no to is you.

Your flesh is going to fight back a little bit.

You ever heard the word hangry Right?

I mean you might get a little bit of hangry right, like your emotions might go a little bit wonky on you, because there's opposition that comes when you say no to the flesh, some of its internal, some of its external.

There might be some spiritual struggle with this.

Expect that.

So start small, be wise, expect opposition.

But then, number four think addition, not subtraction.

Now let me clarify.

I'm not saying that we add anything to what God has done in our lives.

This is for followers of Jesus, right, if you're a Christian and you're called to fast, think addition, not subtraction.

You're not adding to the salvation God has given you.

But when you subtract food from your life for a meal or a day or a couple of days, whatever it looks like for you, think addition.

So don't just like not eat.

Add in some intentional time and prayer.

Or take the half hour that you would have spent eating breakfast and drinking your coffee to be in the word.

Maybe go for a ride in your car and drive and see the water, see the beach, see the trees, see the beauty of the world that God has made, and spend some time in silence and in solitude.

But we're not just taking away something.

We're saying yes to God.

So do something in that moment to cultivate an awareness of God's presence in your life.

So start small, be wise, expect opposition.

Think addition, not subtraction.

Bottom line is this we want to say no to the flesh that we can say yes to God.

You ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet?

You're like that's a weird way to end a sermon on fasting.

James, come on, man.

The beauty of an all-you-can-eat buffet is the fact that it is all you can eat.

Big fan, right, I mean.

You can fill up one plate, you eat it.

You go back in another plate, you can eat all you want, and it's a glorious thing.

Y'all our world is an all-you-can-eat buffet of distraction and pleasure and numbing agents that, if we let it, will dull our senses.

It'll fill every space within our soul, and you've been there and I've been there and we've seen people who get there.

We get so full of the world's buffet that we don't have room for God.

We can't hear God because we're stuffed to the brim from the all-you-can-eat buffet of life on this planet.

And that is why we need to fast To say no to my flesh, no to the things of this world, no to the temporary pleasures that rob us of the joy of walking with Christ.

We want to say no to that so that we can say yes to Almighty God.

So, father, I pray in this moment today, god, that you would challenge us, father, maybe to consider a habit that we have never considered before, father, that you would convict us by your word to pursue you, not to just add Jesus in on top of our regularly scheduled programming, but, god, to really add Jesus in on top of our regularly scheduled programming, to really ask the question what is it that you're calling us to?

And what does that look like for me?

To fully surrender to your call on my life.

Father, help us to long for your presence, to not be satisfied with what the world has to offer, but to long for the presence of Christ.

In Jesus' name, everybody says Amen.

Hey, just by the way, if today's conversation on fasting has sparked some things in you and you're like, I'd like to hear more about that.

My friend Taylor, back there on the drums, is teaching a class on Wednesday nights right now, all about spiritual formation, and he's got a week on fasting coming up in a few weeks.

So you got questions about that or interested in that.

Go talk to Taylor after church about the group that he's leading.

It's going to be a phenomenal study on fasting.

But as we stand and respond in worship this morning, I just want to invite you to respond as the Spirit leads.

Maybe for the first time, you're like I need to give my life to Jesus, I need to receive the forgiveness that his shed blood offers.

I need to know him, I need to walk with him, and then we can have the conversation about fasting in a later day.

But I just know today that for the first time, I need Jesus.

Maybe you today would say I want to join the church.

I've been here a while, been around, but God's called me here.

I want to plant my roots, my family here.

Maybe you just need to pray.

This is the moment for you to respond as the Spirit leads, let's stand and sing together.