21. Monday Meditations: Fasting
MIDWEEK RISE UP
Erika Kirk
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Fasting releases us from the constant distractions surrounding us and the unworthy things vying for our attention. It helps us to be attune to God’s voice and to remember that we need to depend on Him every single moment of every single day. He is the one we must rely on for our spiritual, emotional and physical well-being. No other source can satisfy. John Piper explained it well when he wrote that, at its heart, fasting is “an intensification of prayer. It’s a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, ‘We hunger for you to come in power.’ It’s a cry with your body, ‘I really mean it, Lord! This much, I hunger for you.’ “
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Monday Meditations. I hope that you had a great weekend, |
| 0:06.1 | that you were able to unplug and just spend some time with your friends and your family, |
| 0:10.0 | and really be able to have some time to dive into the Word and just have some alone time with God, |
| 0:14.6 | which is so important, especially with the week ahead. But to start the week off right, the word we're going to be meditating on is fasting. |
| 0:22.6 | Of all the spiritual disciplines, fasting is probably one of the least practice today. |
| 0:28.6 | Fasting is hard. It's not easy. It takes grit. But it is so worth it. |
| 0:34.6 | In the Old Testament, the main Hebrew word for fasting is Somme, which means to abstain |
| 0:39.5 | from food. And in the New Testament, the Greek word, Nesteu, that we translate as fast, means |
| 0:46.5 | to abstain from eating. Biblically speaking, fasting means going without food for the purpose |
| 0:52.3 | of earnestly seeking God in prayer. |
| 0:55.0 | It's something to be done privately, not publicly, as a demonstration to God that we are desperate for him and his counsel. |
| 1:04.0 | Humans don't naturally desire to go without food. That's not something on our agenda. |
| 1:08.0 | Fasting is a way to show God that we are crying out to him so fervently that we will forsake a total necessity in order to seek him and hear his voice. |
| 1:20.0 | There are many examples of fasting in the Bible. |
| 1:23.0 | Moses fasted while meeting with God on Mount Sinai and receiving divine revelation. |
| 1:28.3 | Daniel fasted and received revelation regarding Israel's future. |
| 1:32.3 | You have Hannah who was barren and desperately wanted a child and she prayed and fasted and became pregnant with Samuel, a great Old Testament leader. |
| 1:40.3 | There are examples of fasting in times of emergency, disaster and war, and moments |
| 1:46.1 | when nations fasted as a form of repentance. After being blinded on the road to Damascus, Saul of |
| 1:52.9 | Tarsus fasted and ultimately experienced restoration of his sight and was baptized and filled with the |
| 2:00.3 | Holy Spirit. |
| 2:01.6 | Jesus himself fasted for 40 days in preparation for his public ministry and also to overcome the temptation of the devil. |
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