3 Day Fast Devotional
You are about to embark on a 3 day fast. I am hoping today to help awaken you to the power and importance of a lost discipline in the church. The vast majority of the church just simply doesn’t fast and many have never fasted, but for centuries, the common practice of Christians since the days of the early church was to fast two days a week. Only until recently has the church gotten away from this discipline. We’ve opted out of genuine food fasts for pseudo fasts like social media fasts or daniel fasts, which are both honorable and important disciplines, but not exactly what Jesus had in mind. Today I want to help us to see that fasting is a deeply transformative exercise, and I’m hoping that we can restore a vision of fasting to our church.
Jesus expected His followers to fast. In Matthew 6 Jesus is in the middle of his greatest sermon, the sermon on the mount, and Jesus gives instructions on three different topics. He starts his instruction on each of these topics by saying:
“And when you give…”
“And when you pray…”
“And when you fast…”
These three things, giving, praying, and fasting, are so foundational to the Christian life that Jesus starts His instructions with the expectation that the disciples are already doing these things. In other words, these three things are the “given” disciplines of Christianity. Christians are those that “give, pray, and fast.”
Fasting was a part of the culture that Jesus was born into. Most of the devout jewish population in Israel during the time of Jesus would fast on Monday and Thursday. In the early church, Christians would also fast two days. They would fast on Wednesday and Friday. These days were intentionally picked. They would fast every Wednesday because Jesus was betrayed on a Wednesday. They would fast every Friday because Jesus was crucified on a Friday. So their fasting routine would bring them into greater solidarity with Christ and his crucifixion. Every week became a miniature Holy week. Imagine, setting aside your Friday to fast and remember the crucifixion, to remind yourself, through the pain of your stomach of the incredible price that Christ paid for you. Imagine how transformative that type of fasting would be.
Most Christians don’t fast do they. Not only is fasting not foundational to our Christianity, it’s almost non-existent in our Christianity. Why?
As Americans, we can’t imagine that spiritual growth would come by way of our stomach. If I was to ask someone in our culture the question, “how can someone change their life,” what would their answer be? It would probably have to do with 2 things: information and inspiration. People in our culture might say, “read a book, listen to a podcast, listen to an inspiring sermon…” Those are our routes to transformation. Is that what Jesus said though? Is that His answer? Absolutely not. His answer is much more profound and counterintuitive than that. In fact, His answer includes people periodically not eating food. How could that be? How could someone not eating actually transform the deep places of the heart?
I’d say, much of our bias against the spiritual benefits of fasting come from something called the “cartesian split.” This is just a fancy phrase that describes our view that the body and the mind are two completely separate entities. It comes from Rene Descartes’ famous phrase: “I think, therefore I am.” From this phrase, western culture has come to see people as primarily “thinking beings.” The idea is that you are your mind and your body is just the shell that houses the real you. If you put Christian labels on this idea, we believe that the spiritual part of us is our mind, and the temporal part of us is our body (just a reminder, you will have a body for the rest of eternity, read 1 Corinthians 15). What this does is elevates the importance of the “inner you” and devalues your “outer you.” We tend to believe that we are just a brain on a stick. This idea (which comes from the enlightenment, not from the bible), has fundamentally changed how the American church approaches their discipleship to Christ. We approach Christianity, “head first.” Meaning, we approach Christianity by way of the brain, and by doing this, we have overestimated the importance of the mind and underestimated the importance of the physical aspects of discipleship. So, spiritual disciplines which seem to engage the mind like worship, bible reading, and prayer get elevated and spiritual disciplines which seem to mostly engage the body like silence, fasting, and sabbath become second class spiritual disciplines. They are seen more as optional aspects of the Christian life, because they pertain to the body over the mind. Christ’s approach to discipleship is a whole person approach.
Think about the practical ways that what you do with your body actually transforms your person. When my kids are scared at night in their rooms, and their souls are in fear how do I engage them? Well, fear is something we often associate with the “inner” part of us. What do I do first? I bend down, and I wrap my arms around them. The act of hugging them has an immediate effect on them. A peace overcomes their body, their nerves die down, and their soul relaxes. I haven’t yet engaged the “inner” them, just the body, and yet, through that hug I can change what’s happening inside of them. In this illustration, the intertwined nature of the inner you and outer you is exposed. What you do with the body has an effect on the spirit. In fact, the reverse is true as well. Think about when you’re anxious (an inner emotion), where do you carry that anxiety? You carry it in your body. You feel it as tightness in your jaw, or a pressure on your chest. The spiritual bleeds into the physical and the physical bleeds into the spiritual.
Modern people have often discounted fasting’s ability to transform us, but Christ in His ancient and heavenly wisdom charts for us a path to transformation with a route that travels through our stomach. When we fast, we take the most foundational and ever-present desire in our bodies, the desire to eat, and we reassign that desire to God. Every day, several times a day, your body, through hunger or (let’s be honest) gluttony, says: “let’s eat that.” Think about how much you think about eating everyday. So much right? Me too, friend. It’s a problem. In fasting, you are taking the most foundational and ever-present desire in you, and you are using that desire to express and proclaim who God is to you. As you are fasting this week, every time you feel hungry or have the urge to eat, remember that: “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” -Matthew 4:4. Remind yourself that He is the real bread of life. Remind your stomach and the Lord what matters more to you than the chicken casserole that’s in front of you. As you make that declaration, you are shaping the deep places of your heart. Those constant reminders are going to do something inside of you that is unique, something that the act of prayer, bible reading, or intercession aren’t designed to do. That’s why prayer isn’t fasting and fasting isn’t prayer, because they are designed to facilitate different encounters with God. There is a reason that Jesus, in Matthew chapter 4, chose to fast. We often look at this story and think, “oh that poor weak Jesus didn’t eat for 40 days and the devil comes to Him at His weakest moment to try to get Him while He’s down.” Is that the real story though? No. Jesus fasts because He is strengthening Himself for spiritual battle. Fasting brings you to a place of spiritual strength, not spiritual weakness.
When you fast, you are using a powerful tool to refocus the deep desires of your heart toward Jesus and reawaken in you, a spiritual hunger. Fasting for me has always been like reorganizing a messy and chaotic bookshelf, when you put those books back in order, everything is in its proper place. Our desires in life can easily become messy and out of order. Desires for social media or food can outweigh our desire to read our bibles and these disordered desires can bring havoc to our lives. Fasting has a way of taking the disordered desires of our lives and putting them back in their proper place. So, don’t be surprised if by the end of three days, there’s a little part of you that wants to keep going because fasting restores to you an inner sanity that you haven’t had in a long time.
Action step: Everytime you’re hungry today, use that hunger as a cue to remind yourself that “man doesn’t live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them. -Luke 6:12-13
In that passage we read here, Jesus chooses his 12 disciples. Now, most of us when we read the list of names of the people Jesus picked to be His followers, we scratch our heads a bit and have to ask ourselves, what the heck was Jesus thinking? However, when you flip forward just two books, you see very clearly that the dozen misfits that Jesus picks to be His all star team, in the end turn out to be pretty great picks. Peter, the hot head that can’t seem to keep ridiculous things from flowing out of his mouth, ends up giving a moving sermon that converts 3,000 people and jump-starts the church. Matthew the tax-collector ends up being a pretty good writer and writes the first book of the new testament. What a twist. How did Jesus know who to pick? Here’s a clue:
“Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray.”
Jesus was preparing to choose the people that would walk with Him into the next season of this new public ministry and then eventually take the reigns of His ministry after he left. This was a big decision. Jesus didn’t rely on worldly wisdom to pick his team. Jesus didn’t look for leadership qualities and select the “best of the best.” Jesus prayed, sought the Lord, heard his voice, and then picked His team.
You are at a natural break in life right. Around the Holidays people pause and slow down and at the new year people start to look ahead at what’s next for the coming year. This time of the year creates the perfect time of reflection for you. You can be different than you were last year. You don’t need to repeat the same mistakes, you don’t need to live in the same patterns. That’s what new year’s resolutions are all about. Resolutions are polarizing, you either love them or you hate them, and most swing back and forth on that pendulum at least a few times in their lives. One thing however is abundantly clear, we all need pause points to reflect on life, make changes, and move forward in a new way. What a gift the Lord has given you right now. You have that opportunity. So, how do we move forward into a new season? How do we know the direction to choose? Well what did Jesus do when He needed direction for his next season? He prayed and received divine guidance. Today, I’d like to give you one quick tool to help you understand how the voice of the Lord might be speaking to you and how to recognize His voice when He does.
We’re gonna learn to hear his voice from this passage: Luke 24:13-32 – 13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him…. 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
This verse takes place after the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus encounters two of his disciples walking on the road to Emmaus. In order to unpack this verse, I wanna narrow in on some key phrases: “Jesus himself came up and walked along them, but they were kept from recognizing him… He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself… Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him… They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.”
Jesus comes to his disciples in this passage to speak to them, and as he walks up alongside them, the resurrected Jesus, the God of glory, the king of Heaven, the Alpha and the Omega, blends into the background of everyday life. These men are walking on a path. Much of their lives would be spent walking from one place to another. As they are doing what they normally do, God is speaking and He is speaking to them in such a normal way, they they are “kept from recognizing him.” God is speaking to us in the ordinary. We often think, if God is going to speak to me his voice is going to be loud, or at least British. We think there will be something different about the voice of God that will distinguish Him from the rest of my life, but that certainly isn’t true for this passage and really isn’t true of how He speaks in a great number of passages in the scriptures. God’s voice is speaking to normal people, while they’re doing normal things, and his voice is often so normal they might mistake his voice for something else.
That’s true for Samuel in 1 Samuel 3. God’s voice woke Him up, but it was so normal, he thought it was Eli’s voice. God’s voice scripturally is described as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19). In fact, the Messiah is described as one who speaks like this: Isaiah 42:2 – “He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.” The voice of God will not compete with the other voices. If you want to hear the voice of God, you have to quiet your life to hear Him. He refuses to shout. What if God’s voice is speaking to you quietly within your heart, but your life is too noisy to hear it?
In fact, there’s a part of this Emmaus passage where Christ “continued on as if he were going farther.” He was gonna keep walking to the next town, as if He, the newly resurrected Jesus, had a meeting He had to get to. The God of glory was with these believers, but they almost missed recognizing it. They did the right thing though, they begged Him to stay with them. Christ will go where He is wanted, Christ will reveal His voice to those who want to hear it! So, He stays with them, their eyes are opened and now they know it’s Jesus.
Now, I want you to catch a glimpse of the hindsight wisdom they get out of their eyes being opened. They say, “were not our hearts burning within us while He talked to us.” Jesus spoke and their hearts “burned within them.” The burning wasn’t recognized initially as the voice of Jesus. The burning was just that, a burning, but the burning within them was a sign to them that distinguished the words of God from normal words.
Everyday, God is speaking to you, is your life quiet enough to hear him, are you desperate enough to want him, and do you recognize the burning within you when He speaks?
I want to give you an exercise to do. It’s called the Prayer of Examen. I know it sounds very catholic, but don’t worry, it is. The prayer of Examen was introduced to the world by a man named St. Ignatius and this prayer has been a gift to the church for centuries. The prayer of Examen involves taking a certain period of time that you reflect on to “review where God was speaking to you during that time.” Mostly it’s an “end of the day” prayer, but it’s a great way to end any significant period of time. Let’s do an examen for 2023. It’s pretty simple. What you will do is go to a quiet place to pray and spend a moment reflecting on 2023.
Before we begin I need to introduce to you the idea that makes the prayer of Examen so powerful for learning to hear God’s voice. Ignatius had this idea that as you look back on your day or your week or your year, there will be moments in your life where you sensed God’s nearness and moments where you felt distance from him. Nearness might feel like a sense of his peace, love, and pleasure, and distance might feel like the absence of those things. He calls these moments of nearness: “consolations and desolations.” His idea was that through these moments, the voice of God was speaking to us and we must tune into those feelings and listen to how He’s directing us.
Step 1: Review your year with thanksgiving!
Step 2: Invite God to help you see the day the way he sees it.
Step 3: Review your feelings of God’s absence and his presence.
- When did you feel a sense of his nearness? When was your heart burning within you? When did you feel a sense of joy and love?
- When did you feel a distance from God? When was there a sense of your life being drawn away from Him?
Step 4: Personal response to that review.
- “I’m sorry Lord, give me your grace.”
- “Thank you God for your sense of nearness when I was…”
Step 5: Look forward in contemplation.
- Journal, how might your feelings and emotions give you a sense of God’s leading for this year?
- Journal, what ways can you avoid those moments of distance with God?
- Pray for grace to grow in God this year.
If you look at a list of all the spiritual disciplines that the bible teaches about, you’ll find that it’s a pretty robust list. Solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity (oh fun), sacrifice, study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission, and sabbath. That’s certainly not an exhaustive list, but it’s a really great start. Let me ask you, what’s your batting average this year? How many of those have you done? Most Christians are experts in none of these, good at a few of these, and never even considered most of these (especially that one).
Dallas Willard breaks this list down into two different categories: disciplines of engagement and disciplines of abstinence. Disciplines of engagement involve activity in something. Disciplines of abstinence involve setting aside certain things to “make space” for God.
Each of these disciplines are “formative” in nature, meaning they are meant to facilitate an encounter with God and change at a spiritual level in us. We all want change at a spiritual level. That’s why you’re reading this. You are reading this because you want to know how to be different and how to be the person that God desires you to be. Let’s look at how that happens:
7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train (discipline – Greek ‘gymnazo’) yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. -1 Timothy 4:7-8
Take a look at the greek word Paul uses for “train.” It’s the word, ‘gymnazo’. It’s where we get our word gymnasium. What happens at Get Fit, Planet Fitness, or InShape is very closely related to what should be happening in our journey with God, hopefully with less sweating though. When you go to the gym, you train. Dallas Willard says that spiritual disciplines help you do by indirect effort, what you could not do by direct effort. In other words, I can’t do 100 push ups in a row right now, Pastor Kyle can, but I can’t. However, if I did 25 push ups everyday for the next two weeks, and 50 pushups everyday for two weeks in a row after that, and then 75 the next two weeks, could I get to the place where I could do 100 push ups? Most likely. That’s training. I can’t do it now, but if I train, I could get there. This is the nature of your journey with God. If you implement the right disciplines, over time, you can do what Jesus asks you to do.
So much of our Christian walk is about trying, not training. Jesus says, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” We try, but realistically, that’s hard, like doing 100 push ups. However, if I start by praying 5 minutes a day for the first week, 10 minutes the second week, 20 minutes the 3rd week, my bet is that by the end of that third week, I’m going to love the Lord a lot more.
Now, what makes Planet Fitness different than God’s gym is, you are co-laboring with Christ and the Holy Spirit. This whole idea of spiritual transformation, scripturally is almost contradictory. Here’s what I mean.
Ephesians 4:22-24 says: 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
We are instructed to “put off” our old nature and to “put on” our new nature. The greek words have the connotation of taking off clothes and putting on new ones. Sounds easy right? Well, if it were that easy, I would have done that a long time ago. I would have just taken off my grumpy pants, put on Jesus and called it a day, but we all know that it’s not that easy. The emphasis here is that spiritual change and transformation is action oriented. There is something we are responsible to do. At the same time, spiritual transformation is described as a “birth” in John 3:8. Birth is something that happens to you. No baby has an active responsibility to give birth to itself or cause it to happen. So, which is it? Is there something I can do to change, or is it God’s responsibility to change me? The answer is, yes. Transformation happens when the action of man meets the action of God. You have to do the work, but God does the heart work.
By engaging in Spiritual disciplines, you simply bring yourself to a place where God can change you, they themselves are not the conduit for deep spiritual change, God does that by the Spirit. These disciplines are where God coordinates a meeting place between heaven and earth. As you fast, the Spirit of God changes you. As you sit in silence with God, God changes you. As you pray, the Spirit of God changes you. He sees your steps of faith and He honors them.
As we look now at those disciplines that train us in Godliness, I want to talk about what a healthy spiritual walk looks like. Yesterday I said fasting is not prayer and prayer isn’t fasting. These two disciplines facilitate different encounters and types of transformation with the Spirit of God. Each discipline is designed to facilitate a different encounter. Each of these disciplines helps create a healthy Christian. Skipping disciplines is like skipping leg day. You end up developing lopsided spiritual muscles.
Giving helps facilitate the act of putting our trust in the Lord rather than our finances. Service helps us develop a heart of love for others as we give of ourselves for the good of the other. Solitude helps us break away from the unhealthy patterns of our lives so that God can cut off their hold on us and give us power over them. Silence is like when someone stops stirring the waters of the shore of a lake, eventually all the dirt settles. If you’re silent for long enough your soul, like that dirt will settle into God and God will give you peace of heart and mind. You get the picture…
Each one is important, prayer and worship are the most foundational, and you could argue that each one is a form of prayer and worship. Let me ask you this though, what are you missing in your walk with Jesus? What discipline could help facilitate you acquiring that thing in greater measure? Most charismatic Christians would normally tend toward disciplines of engagement. We love activity, intercession, prayer. We want to take more ground and get breakthroughs. We love to say phrases like: “God has more for you,” “press through,” “go after him.” These are important encouragements, but when you don’t counterbalance them with encouragements like “be still” and “rest,” you can end up with a lopsided and unhealthy faith.
I heard John Ortberg say one time that his encouragement to the modern day church is to lean more toward the disciplines of abstinence rather than engagement. His rationale was, our culture is already highly stimulated. We are already engaged in so much. He says, try moving toward Jesus by taking things away from your life rather than trying to add disciplines. One of the greatest spiritual problems that our hearts face is overcrowding. So, to add another discipline or another thing to do on top of an overstimulated heart might actually be counterproductive. Maybe your path to more of God is by way of less. Maybe, you need to remove things from your life in order to gain spiritual ground.
Here’s where I’m going to try these three days, I would encourage you to try them with me. Along with the prayer, worship, and study that we are doing during our revival night services, I’m going to spend some extended time in solitude and silence in the morning. I’m going to retreat from relationships and responsibilities and eliminate the noise from my life in order to be still with the Lord. You might have come into this week thinking: “I’m going to do more for Jesus in 2024,” but have you considered that maybe the way to more is through less? Less noise, less activity, less obligations, less work.
ACTION STEP: Today, write down a few disciplines from the list above that you are interested in diving into. Take time to journal about why you want to start implementing those disciplines.