Understanding Fasting
Fasting has always been a very interesting topic around the body of Christ with many questions and responses from various chosen vessels of God about its dimensions and its benefits. Other people have walked towards fasting with trembling and fear of going without food. I do believe that before anyone engages in fasting they need to understand what it is, and most importantly one needs to understand who they are first as a spirit because fasting is likened to fuel for the spirit. Our creator designed us to live in the physical world but to access Him with our spirit and fasting is one way that catapults us into the reality of Christ and we come face to face with the person who is the truth and life and our spiritual inheritance.
The world we experience in our physical body is validated through our five senses namely the sense of taste touch smell hear and see. However, each of us has a spirit and soul constructed from materials not discernable by our senses. Fasting feeds our spirit and starves our senses, creating an atmosphere of silence inside our body and mind bringing us to a consciousness of the Lord's presence and ushering in more of His peace and tranquility. The life God has designed for us is inside our spirit.
Once the knowledge of the aforementioned is established in us, we do not approach fasting with dreading and effort but we approach it with joy because we know that the power of life is not in the physical dimension. Those who hunger for His presence and make fasting a lifestyle will experience places inside Him reserved for disciples and the disciplined ones. There one will discover the treasures too wonderful for words and more valuable than physical life itself.
Jesus mentioned something to his disciples after they dismally failed at healing the epileptic boy, his response was a revelation of the dimensions afforded to us through fasting He mentioned in Matthew 17:21 "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." Point and emphasis on FASTING - we read of a number of fasts that took place in scripture and the results are those that brought God to the scene, results that intercepted the natural and released the supernatural. Esther fasted for 3 days without food or drink the result was the deliverance of an entire Jewish nation, we see this in Esther 4:16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”
Daniel went on a partial fast by abstaining from sugar and meat and through this fast angel Gabriel came to the scene to bring him a message and revelation from the Lord. We find this account in Daniel 10:2-3 “In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. 3 I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” Jesus fasted for 40 days and satan himself showed up because of the threat posed to his operation of darkness, he gave Jesus an offer to break the fast by asking him to turn stones into bread; after Jesus told him IT IS WRITTEN we see Jesus operate in dimensions of complete open heavens. Matthew 4:3-4 "During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Christ defeated the devil on an empty stomach, and those who follow His example will live in victory on the earth. Our lives are more than food or drink, but if we do not fast and pray the devil will lead us around by our stomach. The fall of mankind was on the account of food look at Adam and Eve and look at how Esau lost his birthright because of food as well. Fasting is the principal tool that displays our determination to take back what we have surrendered through ignorance.
In closing family If we sacrifice physical food for his presence greater is the opportunity to be fed by The Holy Spirit Fasting is for our spirit what oxygen is for our body it is a physical step into an invisible portal that can lead to experiences with Christ. It is the quickest way to effectively divorce oneself from the material world.
Shalom: Kay King