Lei Yu

My Notes

Fasting is very counter cultural in the west and often not talked about in the west, so there is a lot of confusion and misconceptions about fasting.

When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God. – J. I. Packer

Do we earnestly seek God or do we just earnestly seek after things from God?

Oh taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! – Psalm 34:8

Don’t make fasting legalistic (1 Timothy 4:1-3, Col 2:20-21)

Fast so that our desire for God is greater. Fast because God is greater than these things (food).

Fasting because of homesickness for God.

Fast because our hunger for God is greater than hunger for food.

Fast is resisted when hunger for other things is greater. We fight our physical appetite through fasting.

It is often the good things (God’s gift) that kept us away from enjoying Him.

Fasting is not just about food but anything that can become a substitute for God.

Abraham chose God over his one and only son Issac.

“Fasting is not the forfeit of evil but of good.:

I am concerned with the question “If God is omniscient he must have known what Abraham would do, without any experiment; why, then, this needless torture?” But as St. Augustine points out, whatever God knew, Abraham at any rate did not know that this obedience would endure such a command until the event taught him; and the obedience which he did not know that he would choose, he cannot be said to have chosen. The reality of Abraham’s obedience was the act itself; and what God knew in knowing that Abraham “would obey” was Abraham’s actual obedience on that mountain top at that moment. To say that God “need not have tried the experiment” is to say that because God knows, the thing known by God need not exist. – The Problem with Pain by C.S. Lewis

What ever God knew must have to have happened for it to be true. God wants to know the real stuff. Not an “imagined” world.

How can we know that we love God unless we are being put to the test?

Fasting gives us opportunities to test our love for God.

Fasting is a test that shows what controls us

We all have things that help us “cope”

God created food, hunger, water, and thirst so that we may understand John 6:35. These things are created for the glory of Christ (Colossians 1:16).

When we eat we glorify God what food symbolizes. When we fast we glorify God by saying we prefer the reality over the symbols.

The more we taste and see that God is good the more we will hunger for God.

Our havings are wantings — C.S. Lewish

If you have little wanting for God it doesn’t mean you are satisfied with God but that you are okay with the worldly stuff.

Is Fasting Christian?

• Fasting is found in all kinds of culture and religion. How can fasting be Christian?

• Does fasting still apply in NT?

• Different reason people fast:

  • Political and protest fasting
  • Gandhi and debtors
  • Fasting as a health regime

• In Paul’s letters, food is celebrated as good (1 Timothy 4:1-5, 1 Corinthians 11:34)

• Colossians 2:20-22

  • Fasting can stir up pride as much as it reduces appetite
  • Fasting is only good as a mean to holiness and not good as an end

• Eating or not eating is not essential, they are of value when they glory God (Romans 14:3-6)

  • Colossians 2:16
  • 1 Corinthians 8:8
  • 1 Corinthians 6:12

• Matthew 9:14–17

  • Fasting is associated with mourning in Jesus’ time
  • The Messiah has come, and so they don’t need to fast while Jesus is with them.
    • Jesus as the bridegroom of a wedding feast
      • Isaiah 62:5, Ezekiel 16:8, Hosea 2:19-20
  • The disciples will fast after Christ has gone back to the Father (the present now)
  • The traditional fasting from OT is the old wineskin, fasting in the context that the Messiah has not come
  • New fasting is the in the context that the Messiah has come, and we are now longing for His return. Sin has been defeated. Kingdom of God has come but not fully consummated.
    • We have tasted salvation and we want more!

• The New Fasting is the feasting of faith that stands on the completed work of Christ.

• Fasting as an expression of dissatisfied contentment.

• Food is good, but God is better.

• In every fast there should be an attitude of Philippians 3:8 and 12

Man Shall Not Live By Bread Alone

• Jesus in the wilderness and Israel in the wilderness
  • OT shadows becoming NT realities
  • In this case Jesus triumphed in the wilderness, while Israel failed
• Jesus began His ministry with fasting
• Fasting reveals what we are controlled by and aims to change our desire back to God. (Matthew 4:4)
• Mana in the wilderness teaches that God can fulfill your needs even when all else seems hopeless.
• Trust in God, not in bread, or even God’s miracle bread.
• Do we hunger for God more than we hunger for food?
• Habakkuk 3:17-18

Fasting for the Reward of the Father

• Matthew 6:16-18 says not if you fast, but when you fast. Jesus excepts his followers to fast.
• Do not fast to be seen and to get praises from men. Fast to be seen by the Father
• Effectiveness of spiritual disciplines is dependent on whether or not God sees, rather than whether or not people sees.
• Matthew 6:18, it is good and right for us to seek rewards from God when fasting
• Doing right to enlarge our delight in God is the Christian ideal.
• The reward we get from God is primarily God Himself.
  • Matthew 6:9-13, that God’s name be glorified, His Kingdom Come, and His will be done

Fasting for the King’s Coming

• The communion looks to the past to what Christ has done, while fast looks forward with longing for the King’s return
• Our lack of fasting shows our contentment with the things of the world.
• Fasting is an expression of our longing for the coming of the Kingdom
• Fasting also creates more hunger for the coming of the Kingdom
• Simeon and Anna demonstrates to us that longing before the Messiah’s first coming. How much more shall we who have already tasted and seen Christ hunger for His full return?
• If we long for Christ’s second coming, then we shall also strive toward world evangelization (Matthew 24:14)

Fasting and the Course of History

• Many great revivals and course of history has been said to be caused by fasting and prayer
  • South Korea’s revival
  • Acts 13:1-4
• Great deeds, success in ministry does not necessarily mean that the person’s methods, means, or theology is 100% good. It’s all God’s grace. (Matthew 7:22)
• The normative method for seeking God’s will is Roman 12:2. Testing it against God’s word.

Finding God in the Garden of Pain

• There are wrong ways to fast, and they will do spiritual damage to you
  1. Fast to be seen by men
  2. Fast to cover up your sins (Isaiah 58)
• God’s prescribed fast
  • To Free People
  • To Feed People
  • To House People
  • To Cloth the naked
  • To be sympathetic toward others
  • To put away gesture and words that show contempt to others
  • To give yourself to satisfy the soul of the afflicted
• God’s promised
  • God will turn your gloom to light
  • God will strengthen you
  • God will be before you, behind you and with you
  • God will guide you
  • God will satisfy your soul
  • God will turn you into a watered garden
    • As you pour yourself out for other, God will water you more than if you didn’t.
  • God will restore the ruin of His city, and His people
• Acts 20:35b “It is more blessed to give than to receive”

Fasting For The Little Ones

• Abortion causes one of the most moral deterioration of the modern world. As it allows mothers to kill their own child.
• We don’t just want abortion to be illegal, we want it to be “unthinkable”
• God sways the mind of kings (Proverb 21:1).
• We also fast for God to redeem the ills of the modern world.

Conclusion: Why does God Reward Fasting? (Matthew 6:18)

• God doesn’t not reward us because of our merits.
• Fasting, and all the other spiritual disciplines are a gift from God. Our ability to do them are also a gift from God. It would be wrong to be rewarded for something that God Himself have given to us.
• Fasting as an offering of emptiness to where fullness can be found; God rewards those who humbles and looks away from themselves and looks toward God.