Fasting must include your willingness to give to others what you need God to give to you.

Dr. Tony Evans says being a conduit of God's goodness can open up the floodgates of his favor.

The best way to be blessed is to be a blessing.

This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oakleaf Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas,

and president of the Urban Alternative.

Most people think of fasting in terms of what we don't do, eat, but the Bible describes a very active

side to fasting. Things that prove our act of sacrifice is more than just an act. Let's join Dr. Evans

as he explains. In Isaiah 58, the prophet talks to the children of Israel, and he speaks to us today,

it is the single longest passage in scripture on fasting. People fasted for different kinds of

situations throughout the Bible. Single people fasted for a mate. When people were in trouble,

they fasted for relief from the trouble, all kinds of scenario called for it.

But it was a time where they would set aside the physical in order to gain something more important

in the spiritual. Fasting can be defined as the deliberate abstinence from some form of physical

gratification for a period of time in order to activate a greater spiritual goal or to achieve a

greatest spiritual goal. Isaiah 7 verses 5 and 6 says, you fast for God, you eat for yourself.

We eat faithful, our physical well-being for our nutritional value, but he says, when you fast,

when you intentionally give up the physical to gain the spiritual, you do that for God.

And so Jesus made the point that in my absence, after my death, resurrection and ascension,

you will fast until I come again. And the people had a question, verse 3 of Isaiah 58, why have we fasted

and you do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and you do not notice?

Behold, on the day of your fast, you find your desire. In other words, we come to you, we tell you

what we want, we tell you what we need, we give you our desires and we know he a thing.

...