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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] today's scripture reading is taken from the book of matthew chapter 6 verse 16 to 18. when you fast do not look somber as the hypocrites do for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting i tell you the truth they have received their reward in full but when you fast put oil on your head and wash your face so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting but only to your father who is unseen and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you may the lord bless a reading of his word
00:00:52 hello everyone today it's my honor to get to share god's word with you and it's on a topic that um i'm not sure if it's common but ever since i've been here in this church i don't think i've met i've heard uh fasting uh being practiced in our worship and so today i'm gonna talk about kingdom fasting and we're going to take this from matthew 6 16 to 18 which we just heard and it's really smack between the lord's prayer and a parable and a teaching on on treasures and you would find that all this is not
00:01:28 an accident it's a an intentional sharing about how uh uh all these things are connected together prayer fasting and what we treasure um so any of you when you look at this picture that you see right here think uh of and uh uh you know you look at this and you say oh i'm craving to eat that bowl of oats when i see a a bowl like this i'd rather fast and not eat at all i hate oats personally i i don't like oats even though they say it's healthy for you and all of us have different preferences isn't it in in today's life
00:02:12 we have uh more of us especially in malaysia we know that malaysia is a food paradise and um i think most of us feast more than fast in our lives and that's a really a privilege most of us don't really need to fast until we're older and we're not well and then we know we have diabetes or something and then we have to fast but the reality is that um we are quite good at understanding what feasting is or even biblical feasting because we have a lot of feasting here even in fbc right uh we we feast but fasting as an exercise
00:02:47 affects fasting as an uh worship is something we hardly practice and i can understand why because uh personally there are two kinds of people in this world we we all usually label right those that live to eat and those that eat to live all right who do you what kind of person do you think i am well if you don't know me by now i do not live to eat but i am very certain that there are some people in this church that live to eat eating is a big thing for them i've heard even for our groups you know in
00:03:22 our gama groups or live groups how people would travel just to take their favorite food even john who's with me now i hear about his food cravings and how he would fulfill them you know at all costs why why would people go to such extends for fisting and what is the other part of it fasting then biblically and spiritually what does it mean for us i think to deal with fasting we need to go back to the very basics of what appetite is um we are thinking and always constantly uh actually thinking that appetite uh you
00:04:03 know uh is a bad thing actually appetite is a good thing um all my life actually i find eating a waste of time and i find that lunch breaks in between office hours are a waste of time i'd rather just get it done with and then after that do work you know but our appetites are actually something god given and i had to recognize it when i'm studying worship and i'm the more i understand about god's word feasting and our appetites and what god has given us it's actually all connected to our worship
00:04:41 in our appetites there are two types of appetites right one is good and natural appetites appetites that have been placed in our design and who we are because of how god made us uh there's appetites for sustenance which is our food our drink uh emotional connection i'm sure we have that kind of appetites too in this prolonged social distancing we will also find that the the physical connection uh the one thing to be with each other together is being heightened to levels that we have never seen before uh in our
00:05:23 in the history of mankind we have natural appetites like enjoyment that's why the entertainment industry the gaming industry is the biggest industry in the world and that is to feed the appetites of people but we also know that appetites can lead us to things that are unnatural unnatural appetites if we do not have proper sustenance if we overeat or we over look at something it becomes addiction and i realized this addiction particularly when i realized the first for the first time i was diabetic
00:06:00 to us we eat sugar like nobody's business but the moment i had to stop taking sugar i can feel how addicted my body to is to it and after really fasting from sugar for like uh six months the first time i actually took a soft drink i could literally feel how that all the cravings uh or all the the high i get from sugar and then if we don't have enough emotional connection uh it or we have unnatural emotional connections that we want and long for it becomes something that is lustful or bad or unnatural physical connection we
00:06:48 have things like pedophilia right you want physical connection with children uh that's just messed up right uh and that should be totally unnatural even among same-sex or we have unnatural connections that we want with people we should not have connections with and that leads to adultery or when enjoyment goes to the next extent it leads things to what we need enjoyment we need fulfillment in things like drugs or or what what they call it i can't think of the words only but it is all to fulfill
00:07:31 our appetites as i was saying um i've never really understood why i had appetites till i studied god's word carefully and i realized that appetites were always something god created us to have see when god created us he created us so that we are supposed to have a connection with him we're supposed to be together with him and he through our togetherness to to being with him we will have sustenance we will have all the connections and all the things that are naturally given to us we will be given life we will be
00:08:12 given all the things that was made so that we can have life eternal and if we choose to stay within that we would continue to be fulfilled we will continue to have our appetites fulfilled and what happened then was when we sent we literally cut that connection and it's kind of like this um we know that a child when they're born when they're in the mom's stomach they're connected and they get all the connections and all their their nutrients and all the things that they need from the mom the umbilical cord right and
00:08:54 that's kind of the chord that we need when we are in like in our relationship with god see when we were created in this earth there's this chord that connects us and when we sin we literally severed that chord and when we sever the chord everybody knows if you take a baby who's in a mother's womb and you sever that chord that child would die and that's why god said if you would do this the punishment of sin is death now the death does not come as an instantaneous death and that's why we have not experienced our entire death
00:09:35 god had created so many things to sustain us which is food the resources the entire earth but look at how our world is dying look at how global warming and climate change is destroying our look at our waterways look at the rubbish that we put out there i can't even imagine the the figures of 7 billion masks being used daily and how they are being discarded because my mind can't comprehend it but all these resources that that god gave us to fulfill our appetites to fulfill our needs to fill those things
00:10:11 that are natural naturally what we need we have perverted them we have cut the lifeline to god and now it has caused this cravings um one of the famous cravings that you've heard uh in stories or people say that there's this god-shaped hole in a human being and everybody uh would eventually need to find god and whether we realize you know it came comes from this person named blaise pascal but this he never actually theorized or said about this god shape hope it was something that people misquote until
00:10:46 today what he really said was was this what else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in a man true happiness true fulfillment true fulfillment of all the appetites of which all that now remains is an empty print and trace this he tries in vain to fill with everything around him seeking in seeking in things that are not there to help he cannot find in those that are though none can help since this infinite abyss or void can be filled only with an infinite and
00:11:25 immutable object in other words by god himself the cravings and the appetites that people have the perverse appetites that we see in our society today it's all because our appetites are not fulfilled with the right thing and it is god and this is because we have no longer seen the need to fast do we need to fast do we do i really need to choose between a donut or an apple i know all you have freaks will eat this but how many of us actually prefer that donut there me for one would say i love donuts
00:12:11 so in this scriptures when we're going through this it is very clear that fasting was not something we do optionally or when we won it says hey when you fast and then in 17 against when you fast that means when jesus said these words it was already assumed that you will be fasting it is not if you fast it is when you fast that means fasting was something that that it was already expected of you to do so do you need to fast fasting is expected of you you see another thing when we see in matthew later on in chapter 9 uh verse
00:12:47 14 to 17 you will read that then john says disciples came and asked him how is it that we and the pharisees far so often but your disciples do not fast then jesus answered how can the guests of the bride room mourn while he is with them the time will come when the bride room bright groom will be taken from them then they will fast and oh don't we live in the times that jesus is now not here with us per se physically but it's coming again so does not this connotate jesus saying that we should be fasting
00:13:28 so why should we fast because the first thing i would say the easiest answer to every answer that most of the time when people ask because this is what jesus did and if we are to imitate christ we should supposed to be a people that fast and if we are people that fast how come we don't do it so often second it's a spiritual exercise i've been i went for a health check recently and uh the main thing i need to do besides not eating certain things right because i'm diabetic is that the doctor says i need to exercise
00:14:06 and boy do we know that exercise always comes last uh in fact if i were to say i think most of us are good at fasting exercise instead of you doing exercises and when we do not do this spiritual exercises when we i don't do that exercise right physically there are consequences my health goes my my my well-being goes my sleep goes and in the same way maybe the symptoms that we are facing in our spiritual walk in our spiritual growth and the things that we are facing is because we have lacked a certain
00:14:41 exercise in our life and one of them could be fasting second fasting reveals a lot of what our worship is it reflects our worship and if you do not fast it actually says a lot about who you worship how you worship why you worship and what your worship is about and so let me encourage you today that as we dive into what fasting is that you would not think uh fasting is just an exercise that's not commanded in the bible yeah you will never find a command that said you must fast fasting was never a command to begin
00:15:22 with neither was our appetite you must have an appetite but we have it don't we and what does fastings have to do with our appetite so as we journey through understanding fasting may i implore you hear what god is saying to you today and i hope at the end of the service you would commit to fasting let us pray father we thank you for uh giving us an appetite an appetite for you and appetite for good things and because these are things we need and that need connects us with who you are but somehow along the way lord these
00:16:03 appetites have been filled with other things ever since we sinned and the connection has been severed lord we have this void of emptiness that we've been trying to fill with things with food with idols with many things in our lives that should not be there and today we pray a lot that as we learn about fasting we learn about kingdom fasting the fasting that you institute we pray oh lord that we will be able to hear and receive what you've called us to do what you've called us to be from the very beginning
00:16:36 in jesus name we pray amen so let us begin with what fasting was like in the old testament and i'm going to have to kind of shorten this and compress this but let me just give you three instances where fasting is seen in the old testament uh i mean three purposes or in some ways three times that we can see it connected in many of the what the uh passages as you can see below that the first reason that the old testament people fast was to what to pray that god would spare them from impending judgment
00:17:10 or calamity you you know the story of uh the story of uh jonah and when he went there so the people uh put on sackcloth they fast it's because they realize that they have seen a god against god and they were asking for forgiveness and then they would also be instances where the fuss would happen would where people would do it because they would be praying for god to liberate them from their troubles and the third one would be they would also be fasting constantly in stories where they had prayers that
00:17:47 they want answered so fasting in general was shown to be in these instances but as the habit of fasting or when fasting progress as fasting progressed in the old testament we realized that fasting in general became an external act it was to project personal piety and a spirituality as a public image fasting moved away from sincere act of self-renunciation and submission to god and and it moved towards something that was more a public display of how great i am spiritually and that was not what biblical fasting
00:18:28 was there for this is not the first time that god cried against their fasting so when we read here when you fast do not look somber as the hypocrites do for they disfigure their faces and show others they are fasting see the same thing is happening right now at jesus time right and you will read that this is not something that was happening for just 10 years 20 years it was happening for hundreds of years and we can tell that so today people faster so do they fast really for for for for spiritual reasons that
00:19:05 god has called them to almost of the time are people fasting for other reasons the first passage we see that i mentioned just now in old testament where god was rebuked kingdom about what their fuss was about you see why do we fast but you do not see why humble ourselves but you do not notice look you serve your own interests on your fast day and oppress all your workers look you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with with a wicked fist such fasting as you do today will not make your voice be heard on
00:19:42 high is such a fast that i choose a day to humble oneself is it to bow down the head like a borus burrush and to lie insect cloth and ashes will you call this a fast a day acceptable to the lord is the not this the fast that i choose to lose the bounds of injustice to undo the thongs and the yolk to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke is it not to share your bread with the hungry and to bring the homeless poor into your house when you see them naked to cover them and not to hide yourself
00:20:25 from your own kin then your light shall break forth like a dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly your vindicator shall go before you then you shall call and the lord will answer you shall cry for help and he will say here i am if you remove the yoke from you the pointing of finger the speaking of evil if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noon day see here so you read in jeremiah although
00:21:02 they fast i do not hear their cry and although they burn offerings and grain offerings i do not accept them but by the sword by famine and by pestilence i will consume them so god takes fast seriously isn't it god takes fasting as seriously as it gets because if you do not do fasts that are acceptable or fast in the right way god says the equivalent is what to die by the sword to suffer by famine i think we have not take fasting as seriously as we need to i don't think we have seen fasting as something that we
00:21:53 need to do but let me implore you that fasting is not something we choose to do when we want to do how we want to do and we can see in this one if we fast for the right reasons you see the first thing that god chooses is to lose the bounds of injustice to undo the tongues of the yoke to set the oppressor to feed the homeless to to to instead of hiding ourselves in one corner or not even hiding ourselves or putting a front of spirituality and self-benefit let's face it today most people fast even if you're doing intermittent fast
00:22:29 or some of you like i was doing intermittent fast for a season and all those kind of things why do we do fasting because we do it for our benefit and kingdom fasting calls us not to a fuss for our own good but a fuss for others and this is what kingdom fasting looks like you see jesus when he began his ministry before he began his mid public ministry before he became the public jesus that we know for 30 years she lived with his family and beginning this ministry he started it with what a fast and i think if we want to learn about
00:23:13 what kingdom's fasting there's no better passage than to go to matthew chapter 4 and see what jesus did when he fast then jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry the tempter came to him and said if you are the son of god tell these stones to become bread jesus answered it is written man shall not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of god then the devil took him to the holy city and
00:23:46 had him stand on the highest point of the temple if you are the son of god throw yourself down for it is written he will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone jesus answered him it is also written do not put the lord of your god to the test again the devil took him on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor all this i will give to you he said if you will bow down and worship me then
00:24:21 jesus said to him away from me satan for the reason it is written worship the lord your god and serve him only then the devil left him and the angels came and attended to him kingdom fasting in its if we base it on what we read just now does three things it us to the source it relies us to the way and realigns us back in control when we fast we remember what it is we are all about let's go back to that first temptation the first part of his ghost then jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness see
00:25:13 every time we're led to fast or every time we're led into a spiritual exercise or every time we're led into anything it is the work of god first that invites us to do so jesus did not fast because he said oh i'm going to do my ministry i'm going to set aside time to pray because i want to be have a powerful ministry i want this ministry to be full of signs and wonders so i'm going to set my time apart and then i'm going to fast from this so that i can pray and then so that god will answer me no it
00:25:44 was not that jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted so it was jesus being let be by the spirit to do something so every fast everything that you do every fast that you want to do every prayer that you want to make whether we realize it or not it has to be led by the spirit and here it says after fasting 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry the tempter said to him if you are the son of god tell these stones to become bread and he said man shall not live by bread alone but on
00:26:23 every word that comes from the mouth hear this very carefully we do not live by fulfilling our appetites paraphrased we live by listening and being connected to who our god is so what does that mean when we fast we remember who the source of life is we are realigned to what fulfills our god-given appetites you see he says that when you fast and i'm just going to skip this quickly you you will receive what a reward you will receive a fulfillment you will receive what you need that's what it basically says and
00:27:12 truly i tell you he was he was upset with the those people who fast and and do it as an outward appearance only and says look they already get their reward they get their fulfillment they get their pride fulfilled they get their their egos or get whatever it is but the true reward comes from god our source and all of us know that fulfilling our appetite is rewarding isn't it um sometimes i'm so busy with my work and i do everything and then i have to stop and eat and when i eat something that is good
00:27:54 oh i remember why i have that appetite in the first place or why i feel hungry in the first place or when you feel absolutely famished and then you eat something you then you suddenly remember oh a banana tastes so nice one huh how come does this taste so good because the way we're designed in fulfilling our appetites is that these rewards actually fulfill us it always helps us remember where these sources comes from and that's why we give thanks for our food each time and every time we pray and say thank you
00:28:33 lord for the food in jesus name we pray amen i know that's the typical length of prayer we pray for that when we taste our food do we taste and see that the lord is good uh well let's talk about rewards if you know this guy anybody know who's this guy wave your hands good if none of you know this then you're not studying psychology or you're not a psychiatrist psychiatrist but if you know this is the guy that probably a lot of people kind of credit uh to the being the founder of modern day psycho psychology
00:29:13 it's ivan pavlov so basically uh let me tell you the story first all right off of pavlov basically he realized that if you condition and you you make uh you actually condition a dog all right so a dog when you feed eat food it will not naturally salivate right and what he did was he ring the bell together with the feeding time and so what happened is that the unconditional stimulus of salivating was associated over time as he kept doing that with the dog with the ringing of the bell such that that unconditioned response becomes
00:30:06 something that become a conditional response so when he ring the bell the dog salivate even when he is not presented with food because the reward central of his brain was already being stimulated by the ringing of the bell and it shows that we can be conditioned but we are beings that naturally are made to be conditioned by stimuli the stimulus and god created this entire world to be our reward but we've taken this reward and used it wrongly so let's see what mother modern day psychology talks about reward
00:30:49 certain new neural structures called reward systems are critical uh in involved in mediating the effects of what we call reinforcement so we hear positive reinforcement that's where it comes from a reward is an appetite stimulus given to a human or to some other animal to alter its behavior rewards typically serve as reinforcers a reinforcer is something that represented after a behavior causes the probability of that behavior behavior sorry why a behavioral behaviors occurrence to increase note that just because something is
00:31:25 labeled as a reward it does not necessarily imply that it is a reinforcer a reward can be defined as a reinforcer only if its delivery increases the probability of the behavior reward or reinforcement is an objective way to describe the positive value that an individual ascribes to an object behavior on internal physical state primary rewards include those that are necessary for survival of the species such as food and sexual contact secondary rewards derive their value from primary rewards such as money who
00:32:01 is a good example they can be produced experientially by pairing a neural stimulus with a known reward things such as pleasurable touch and beautiful music are often said to be secondary rewards but such claims are questionable for example there's a good deal of evidence that physical contact is as in cuddling and grooming is an unlearned or primary reward rewards are generally considered most desirable than punishment in modifying behavior when god created this entire world it was intended not
00:32:41 let's just use a different word not to modify our behavior but he created all these terms and created all these things so that we would become who we are purpose to be it would modify us to become the image of god yet what happens with understanding this in psychology is that we reinforce all the routing wrong things i was just reading in the newspaper article about our swimmer who talked about how the coaches were grooming right using ways to groom and physically abuse the swimmers as they grow up
00:33:27 putting these things as rewards and trying to make them and modify their behavior i felt so sick to the core to read that that our appetites for things are being used to modify in fact whether we realize it not today more than ever we are being forced into systems that actually uh have spent billions and upon billions to what to feed our appetites and they are not so being when we are not being fat though those epitaphs those appetites are not being fed in the right way we fed a lot of our appetites and our
00:34:15 cravings with what processed food sugar we fed a lot of our appetites with what shopping buying we fed a lot of appetites with what sitting on a tv and just watching it we fed a lot of our appetites with things that aren't actually what supposed to be natural and it scares me it scares me to think that today more than ever before people are fulfilling all their appetites with everything else but god fasting reminds us that what matters is where the source of fulfillment comes and here in this passage we see
00:35:05 who the reward supposed to come from it's supposed to come from our father not from anything else when we receive rewards for what we do from other sources other than god itself we are in danger of being addicts of being all those things that are developing those unnatural appetites and when we develop those natural appetites it becomes worse and worse and today more than ever before we are seeing the world justifying these appetites as natural i was so taken aback if you had seen some of the ted talks there was one ted talk
00:35:47 particularly i love a lot of the ted talks one ted talk where they were trying to say or they were trying to say that today people are trying to say that pedophilia or homosexuality are all just natural appetites they are just diverse and we need to accept them how have we moved from our appetites being filled with what is natural good food to all of us craving for more processed food than actually what god provides us when we see a bowl of oats it looks less appealing to us than our bts mcdonald's
00:36:37 that's crazy don't you think so our source of all our appetites has to be fulfilled through our father and fasting reminds us of that because when we fast we need to rely on our source second temptation is often times when we fast we face temptation and i i or or when when you fast even for me you know now even as i eat my meals you know i really crave for sugar and but that temptation i have to curb it by telling myself oh it's not good for me or this is not going to help me or i'm worried about the health or i'm thinking
00:37:25 about my children i'm thinking about the future but actually i think we have defined temptation to be something it is not temptation is not to do what is wrong i think temptation and in this case again the temptation was to choose who is our reward jesus said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the word every word that comes from the mouth of god he chose that god would be his sole source of his reward not brett not food not what seems even so called natural unless
00:38:10 it is god that is his source even unless it's god that provided the food for him he would not even partake it jesus chose god to be his soul reward and how about us today i know we are so good at rewarding ourselves in fact one of the key things that i think is so good in our society today is that they will tell you reward yourself you deserve this break you deserve buying this for yourself because you have worked so hard for it you deserve it and this is taking us further and further away from the true understanding
00:38:55 of where rewards come from and that's what happened to those pharisees who's fast or people who fast during time they were fasting but they were fasting it for what reward the reward of being prideful the reward of being what spiritual the reward of being something but they were not finding the reward in being with god in recognizing that god is their source the prayer the lord's prayer it says that your will be done that you not lead me into temptation that you will be my daily bread all this points back to saying remember
00:39:37 god should be your source of life brothers and sisters who is your source of life fasting help us to rema align that i remember when i had my first fast first full fasa i was going on a full fast uh and uh all i was uh was taking liquids and i was going to fast for one month and i felt god lead me too fast because there were areas in my life that i did not fully commit to him i had answered my call to full time just about that time and i was struggling because i still wanted to do it my own way
00:40:23 i still wanted to provide my family by trying to get good grades and doing this and so that they my parents do not have to suffer as ministers anymore justifying in my head that if i can do a good career at the same time maybe be like dr peter who has a whole medical career but still can serve god and you know in some ways that that is what god wants but god told me that i needed to rely on him as my source and so i decided that i needed to fast and boy was it tough fasting because for two weeks
00:40:58 the first two weeks was really difficult but the amazing story and i wanted to share with you is that when i really lean on god as my source i remember after that two weeks i was not eating any solid food at all and i was just on water but yet i still had the strength to go to school come back from school go play badminton go play badminton go and swim swim already then after that i'll go and play tennis with my friend after tennis we'll go to the gym and then we will uh exercise and then after that i'll go to
00:41:31 church and then surf through the night and then the next day that cycles still continue and i would never feel tired and that was amazing i don't know where you know nutritionists will say that you need all your what and i wasn't losing weight i was not anything for one whole month i i i was able to fast and god provided strength supernatural strength until today i remember that that i cannot deny that somehow without eating god had provided me the source and strength of life how about you brothers and sisters who
00:42:15 is your source who do you remember every day as you're feeding and rewarding yourselves daily who is your reward now let us come to the next point and we take it we take it from this portion when the devil the devil then the devil took him out to the holy city and stand on the highest point said if you are the son of god throw yourself down for this written he will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in his their hand so that you will not strike your foot against the stone and jesus
00:42:52 answered him it is also written do not put your god to the test fasting reliance us to god's way to the way which is jesus christ he is the way truth and the life see he stood at that time at the top of the mountain and the devil was saying why don't you try it this way anyway if you use it this way the worst part of it uh this temptation and this this temptation in his face was that what the devil is so smart right what does he do he justifies what he asks jesus to do with the word of god himself
00:43:33 or you say just now you know the word right now here you see the word says nothing will come you would if you jump down you will be safe but the thing is fasting helps us to remember that when we do things we do not do it our way and so jesus said i will not put god to the test i will not do it my way although i can do it my way and there's no doubt about it if he were called the angels to come and has saved him he would have been saved yet it was god's will for him to go through this fast to tr for him to go through
00:44:13 all these things actually i don't even understand why jesus himself needed to fast because he himself has nothing there's no what you know we do fasting because of spiritual benefit we do it because all these good things but jesus did it because he was doing it for others he was doing to it to prepare himself to minister to us he was doing it as a symbol of his commitment that would be right unto the cross and he was going to say i would choose no other way but to do it god's way and because of that
00:44:47 fasting should remind us of the one and only way which is jesus christ in the new testament the word fasting actually really means emptying or to empty yourself or to how do i say it uh it's really to to become empty uh we're not talking about buddhism nothingness and all those kind of things but it is an emptying of ourselves but the difference between uh fasting that be in other religions or whatsoever is that we do not consider emptying ourselves just so that we become empty we empty ourselves so that the way the
00:45:27 truth and life jesus christ will be everything and central in our lives again we empty ourselves to recognize that we need god to be everything we are and our source of life i don't know how many times i find myself in a position where i realize that i am too important in my life or my kids are too important in my life or my phone is too important in my life or maybe results are too important in my life and fasting has always helped me remember that my true appetite should be to hunger for christ
00:46:21 i think more than ever today the symptoms that we are facing or the problems we are facing in the church or we say that people do not come on time or go off when they want to or do what they want uh they don't log on to our online services they are living their lives it's because we do not truly hunger for god anymore we live very comfortable lives and i'm saying this in the context of sbfbc in particular because i'm not talking about people who are really among us who are suffering and those that suffer who go
00:46:59 through the sickness or illness and all those kinds those are times when we realize again that we need god but why must it take those times to remind us that we need god it's because i honestly think we do not go through seasons of remembering christ as what we hunger the church the ancient church for thousands of years had particular times where they would set apart to remember this for example the season of lent was a season of remembrance of fasting so we no longer practice that at least in our church i'm not talking
00:47:42 about some other teachers that still do it but even if we are to do it why do we do it as some way so that our prayers can be answered as some ways so that uh we can look more spiritual than others if so jesus is speaking against that particularly fasting is about going back to our source and recognizing that without our source without the way the truth and our life jesus christ we have no life and the most important part about the way jesus fast is that he did it for others kingdom fasting is not fasting
00:48:27 for yourselves yes fasting may be beneficial for you spiritually by yourselves to do but i can remember after that time when i fasted for myself i realized every time i fasted ever since then that has been maybe 20 30 20 years ago and ever since then 20 years every time i have been called to fast or i i know that god was leading me to fast for something it was always for someone else it was to pray for our nation for example for the election it was to pray for a brother whose sister who is sick
00:49:09 it was to to pray together to recognize that we need to repent and sin it was always for others rather than myself i can't remember out of the many times i fast there was only this one time in the beginning that i fasted that was really for my spiritual growth maybe we do not love each other the way god wants is because we never really fasted for each other in the first place when you hear your brother and sisters sick if you ever think god was leading you to fast for them pray for them recently
00:49:55 one of the brothers in in our church came to me with a struggle and that struggle was paralyzing him and he he wanted to be rid of it and i encourage him to take a fast from social media because he realized that social media itself was causing him to commit certain things that he sins that he didn't want present in his life anymore and so i said why don't you fast social media and i would do that fast with you so the whole entire season of land became a season of fasting from social media for me and i was just
00:50:41 felt i felt led by the spirit at the time to say okay i'm going to do it with you to encourage you and uh sure it's just social media is no big deal boy did i not realize the moment i chose to fast from social media how much actually social media had on my life the first thing i picked up my phone was i was going to open a social media app i was going to open facebook or something just to catch up the first thing i reach out to my phone most of the time i realized when i was around at home watching tv or playing
00:51:16 with my kids when i reached for my phone was to open social media and there it was i did this times of fasting i realized myself that i was addicted to something and rewarded by something other than god himself and i repented and i said god forgive me for i have not realized that i have put other things as the way in my life and trust me after that entire fast i have totally felt set free from social media it is i never realized how it had a hold on me but i've been set free so i encourage you brothers and sisters fasting
00:52:06 for others while it is also to pray for others and help others i really thank god that it is not something that we do not receive or benefit from and perhaps we learn much more when we go back to saying god i want you to be the way the truth and the life in my life and then also fasting if you read in a lot of articles if you go around and talk about fasting is that fasting also because we right just now fasting reminds us that jesus is not with us right now and what we hunger and thirst for that
00:52:41 fulfillment that appetite that we want to see and we realize and with the questions we have how come things are like that the doubts we heard in the last semen or that we might have in our struggle and all the things that we really are looking for will find its fulfillment when christ comes again see when we come to the fulfillment of the kingdom uh we do not need to fast anymore we'll be feasting in the presence of god but at its time as the world it is now where christ is not completely present
00:53:20 we fast to remind ourselves that we are waiting to see that happen last but not least in again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms in the world and responded and says i will give this to you if you would bow down and worship me jesus said to him away from me satan for it is written worship the lord your god and serve him only then the devil left him and the angels came and attended to him i think i from these passages i really think that fasting like in the story that is
00:54:04 just now helps us to regain control regain control of our lives regain control of our perspective regain control of so many things so here it is in the passage that we read in matthew 6 16 jesus was telling that you when you fast do it but what put all on your head and wash your face so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting but only to your father who is unseen or is in secret and he will reward this in secret so do it unseen this was something obviously the pharisees couldn't do you
00:54:48 can see so many stories when they fast and when they pray they make sure that other people are watching them do it to make sure it was obvious most people don't realize this that that but a lot of us live in a world where we are totally not in control the world tries to gives us or the devil tries to tempt us with the illusion of control and in this case he was trying to tempt jesus and said if you would just bow down before me then you would have control over everything and this illusion of control is a
00:55:29 powerful thing it tells you that you are in control that you can do it but actually if you realize ever since eden we are we have lost control because of sin we have never been in control i learned this from my father as i was growing up he said this you are only truly in control if you're able to choose not to do it even if it seems like it is okay to do it paul says everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial you are only in control if you can choose to say no and most of us realize that isn't it or
00:56:29 realize that in most of our lives we lose control we can't say no to things we know we're supposed to say no to we have this illusion of control you know i i used to when i was growing up and i'm using these examples because this is personal and it means a lot to me it used to be that i grew up and uh you know when we were watching tv my parents would teach me and i'm trying to teach my son right now how to watch certain shows shouldn't watch certain shows and that you should be able to control and
00:56:58 have self-control in that and i was always pride myself younger uh when i i was able to control that then in my teenage years i realized i am not in control the media companies everything seems to be controlling my choices and this stuck reality really sank in the day i realized of the world of online shopping through amazon it's crazy how now even if you go and shop in la zada or shoppi my dear friends we've been doing it more during this mcu right you would realize right based on your choices right
00:57:42 a lot of things are appearing on the list of what comes up and amazon has this algorithm that is so crazy that it can predict what you want and it's just crazy i just don't know how and some of us know also that facebook and all the schedules are listening to you even as you're talking right now and they have algorithms to pick up certain keywords and advertisements will be tailored to that specific thing and whether we realize it or not we're being triggered we're bringing condition in our behavior it's modified
00:58:18 us to believe that oh i need this new phone i need this in my life i need to see this show i need to do this my friends do we really need it are we really in control to say no i don't want to see this particularly show because of how it portrays nudity in the wrong way i don't want to buy this product because i know that i don't need it and i'd rather give this money to the poor trust me more often than not i find myself in a position too that i think i'm in control what about you today how much time have you invested
00:59:17 and how much effort have you practiced to make sure that you have true control and fasting does that for us fasting reminds us that we're not in control and that we need the holy spirit to control i remember those cravings i remember those things and how those cravings disappeared when i prayed and said god help me to be in control fasting reminds us who is in control more often than not who is in control we think who is in control is us it is not an accident that right after this this fasting passages right uh
01:00:02 jesus talks about where our treasure is where our treasure lies because if you fast and if you pray the way god has asked you to pray you would realize that it reveals our true appetites what do you really want are you fasting because you want your healing are you fasting because you want things to go your way you really fasting to say your will be done what matters most to us most of the time may not be what matters most to god and i can tell you that if you would give yourself into season's fastings it
01:00:47 will always remind you what matters most in this time where we have been forced into a point where we are not having this physical relationship we have this physical distancing we were just lamenting just right here before we uh uh while we are while we're doing this about how we've only seen half of people's face most of the time over this past year what mattered to us what what mattered to us so little about seeing the person's facial expression about meeting people suddenly matters more isn't it
01:01:27 when we had to we were kind of forced into this point where our natural our natural needs are lost and when you fast you are brought into a place to recognize those needs once again and fasting does this to you and it shows you who actually is in the driver's seat when you fast when you commit yourself into times of this you would realize that hey am i really in control or is my appetite under con the one that is in control or is there some evil that is in control of my life or is there some sin that is
01:02:14 truly in control like i mentioned just now in the story i didn't realize how much how much facebook was in control of my life or instagram was in control of my life now i realized that and i said lord i want you to be in control and so let me tell you this we are only truly in control if the spirit is in full control of our lives is the spirit in full control if the spirit is not in full control let me ask you to consider times of fasting so what is biblical fasting biblical fasting is a spiritual act of response
01:03:00 to god's revelation for seasons of abstinence in devotion to what god's purposes are that means it is an act to respond to god when he leads us just like how he let jesus too fast and jesus abstained from eating in that one so i i i some define it or some places will define it as abstinence from food i think fasting can go beyond food right like in the scenario i told you about fasting from social media but the thing is it is not just abstinence it's to substitute those abstinence with devotion
01:03:42 so when i fast i fast and i replace it with times of seeking who god is and who god's per what god purposes are all i substitute it with doing particularly what god asked me to do commit how can we commit to fasting we can do this to regular seasons of fasting and i would encourage you at least fast once a year i've committed myself to fast every season of lent especially from good friday to to to to to easter on good friday i remember when i first fasted the first fast i did on good friday before i reached easter and on
01:04:26 good friday the last thing i think is that the lord's supper and then i i was i didn't eat and of course i was very hungry but the first thing that i ate on sunday morning was the body of christ and the blood of christ and i remember how sweet that was and how i remember it just it just brought me to a different dimension of understanding who god is and what he has done for me and how much his resurrection has brought me life it tasted good once again i've been doing it all my life and i never remembered until
01:05:07 that moment so commit yourself think of regular seasons of fasting fast for your country fast for whatever but these fasts should become should come at times of need when you hear someone is not feeling well when you do when when when there's a need to pray for for justice in our situation those are times we need to fast and then fast also when god leads you through times of spiritual growth when you know that you need to grow deeper in your faith and walk with god those are good times to fast and lastly
01:05:47 fast for others not for yourself don't do it just for self-benefit even if you're supposed to go through spiritual growth you would realize that when you go through that spiritual growth it was it was it will be so that he will equip you to be a better person for others that's what kingdom fasting is about and when we stop fasting and we start rewarding ourselves with things that we want it becomes something easy fasting is an emptying rewarding is a fullness correct and if we are so full of ourselves it
01:06:30 will lead us down a path that is so disgusting in fact i just want to bring up this story because i'm just so mad over these past few days over our lrt incident and how there was someone who was so full of himself who spoke things that shouldn't be said he wasn't even a decent human and then he just hand out money and think the money is the solution my friends more than giving money more than being full of yourself we are called to offer ourselves as living sacrifices for the sake of others if you have not committed to fast
01:07:14 because you say you don't mean it i encourage you to start the commit too fast because others need it fast for india fast for myanmar fast for your relatives fast for the salvation of your loved ones it's time to come back to say lord we want you to be our source we want you to be our way and we want you to be in control how can you fast there's three simple ways you can do an absolute fast which is a usual fast where you have nothing but just no water no food of course please church members i think you're wise
01:07:57 enough right if you're going on a foo absolute faster don't do it for more than three days because you're gonna kill if you've dropped it the church is gonna come after me an absolute fast must be done very carefully if you only let by god then you do it because you need god to sustain you with no water no food and don't do it more than three days and this absolute fast for most of them they go to the absolute fast also void of work and they commit themselves into prayer entirely it is not an accident that the lord's prayer
01:08:31 preceded this area of what we call this part of this portion on fasting because every time we are to abstain from something we need to devote ourselves to something and most of the time this is done through prayer devote yourself to prayer there's a second time fast which is a full fast you can just take water or maybe liquid for some people who cannot do just water for medical reasons but a full fast abstains from food in that way but you can also do fast or what we call partial fuss which is some kind of
01:09:11 exclusion of something so like in my case i excluded facebook from my life uh social media from my life i act sometimes i go through fastest where i fast tv or i don't see tv much now so that i realize that i'm doing something and i'm spending a lot of time there uh i i fast from that maybe some of you is too far from lazada or shopee at this season but some kind of exclusion after you choose to commit these times to fasting a season of fasting it means that you need to substitute this time with prayer and devotion
01:09:47 so don't tell me i'm fasting out i'm choosing to fast i'm not going to eat and then you're you're you're just basically dieting you're trying to lose weight because if you do not commit those times to prayer you see when jesus was in the desert you see that he was led there to be tempted he was what fasting and he was praying he was in communion with god this time for prayer and devotion must not be substituted for anything else so when i fast for example i said i'm going to fast lunch i'm not going to
01:10:20 fast every meal in a day i'm going to fast lunch that one hour that i'm supposed to spend on lunch i spend that one hour praying for someone for something or the need that led me to fast in the first place my friends you don't it doesn't really skipping one meal for example is not going to be difficult for some of you and so sometimes it's very simple i don't even do fast like for long periods of time if i hear of a need that is severe enough i just decide okay this lunch i'm not going to eat i'm going to spend those times in
01:10:55 prayer for that need for that person or for that issue that i read or for that thing that is burning in my heart simple right anyone can do this the first two is harder and the first two like i said it depends on how severe the need is or how the things is most of us actually do most uh we we actually do a full fast or absolute fast if that matter is something that we know is of utmost importance and need perhaps it's a sin in your life perhaps it's someone you love perhaps you're crying for the life of someone
01:11:33 i i can't institute a season of us for the church that's not something we can do just yet but i hope that you would also take part in things that the necf does where we have seasons of fasting and asking you to come together too fast as a church we need to fast so that we would again remember that jesus is our source our way and that we need the spirit to help us to be back in control brothers and sisters can i ask you even as we come to a close even as we come to remember that we need god once again as this song
01:12:18 that is we sang and i've used it before in one of the responses but i think it's really apt when the music fades all is stripped away and i simply come this song is about a realignment where the songwriter itself had to realize that they had to fast from music because music had become an idol in their worship all of us have idols and if we are not willing to lay them at the feet of jesus and say we want you father to be our soul source and reward we want you to be the way truth and our life we need your spirit to help us be
01:13:00 in control then i think we have no hope but brothers and sisters we have that hope because when we sing this song when we come before his feet we will be set free we will be able to choose to be back to where we are that is people that is chosen by god to be full of life our appetites will be restored our appetites will be fulfilled through god and god alone so when we sing this song i pray you sing it and rely on yourself back to the heart of worship and say god it is all about you i pray that god will speak to you
01:13:47 through his spirit too two seasons of fasting we have talked about all the things we have said we pray with you and all those kind of things but maybe it is time for us as a church to not just talk but put actions into words if these people mean a lot to you set seasons of fasting in prayer for them and if you are at this end of this service and you are coming into a point where you realize god i have so many things that i fulfilled my appetites with or i have certain appetites that i can't control lord and i want you back in
01:14:24 control you don't have to do this alone remember fasting is not just about a personal thing it's a kingdom thing we do it together more often than not fasting should be done as a corporate act of worship let us come and pray with you let us come to be with you and maybe fast for you if you would just send the the the two fbce pray we will come and pray with you because we know that god is going to help you true
