We'll talk about fasting tonight, a text that is relevant for fasting, as you'll see, I hope by the time we're done, is the last three verses of the prophet Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 317.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines,

though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food,

though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls.

In other words, every kind of food is taken away.

Yet, I will exalt in the Lord.

I will rejoice in in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

So the goal of Christian living to me is to become and to help other people become the kind of people who would experience that loss and say that and mean it. No food, wherever you turn,

it's that desolate. Yet I will exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation and there's only one possible way that can happen

and that is if Psalm 63-3

is true for you

the steadfast love of the Lord

is better than life.

Let's start with a testimony from Carl Lindquist.

Carl Lindquist was the president of Bethel College and Seminary until a decade or so ago.

He wrote in a letter to some of us called an evangelical order of the burning heart.

My own serious consideration of fasting, the discipline, as a spiritual discipline, began as a result of a visit to Dr. Jungon Kim in Seoul Korea.

Is it true, I asked him him that you spent 40 days in

fasting prior to the evangelism crusade in 1980. Yes, he responded, it's true. Dr. Kim was chairman

of the crusade, expected to bring a million people to Yoido Plaza. But six months before the meeting, the police informed him they were revoking the permission for the crusade.

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