Why Fast? part 3
Why fast?
Nee said that once sin has secured control, the body exhibits its strength in self-defense. It opposes anything, which may interfere with its comfort and pleasure. Let me give you an example. The category is food. If food has secured control in our body, then when we are challenged in that area, the first thing we do is defend our current condition. Some people will say, “I can’t fast because I get headaches.” What they are really saying is, “When I don’t eat, I don’t feel good, and I like feeling good.” That is a defense your body is putting up. And in some cases, our defenses will not allow us to obey God.
I have had people assume that, when they fast, God should supernaturally zap them so that they don’t have any discomforts or any hunger pangs. What would the purpose of fasting be if that were the case? Others have said, “If God wanted me to fast I would not get headaches.” Can’t you just hear the defenses within your body at the very mention of a fast!
If you have studied fasting at all you will know that sugar and caffeine are the two greatest causes for headaches when you fast. Therefore, if you get headaches when you fast, that is probably God’s way of showing you why you need to fast. Your body is full of toxins. If you want to go on a three-day fast, I recommend that, three days before you begin your actual fast, cut out sugar and caffeine. This will diminish the withdrawal headaches you get, and you won’t fail in your fast and then defense won’t cause you to sin against God’s Will for your life.
That brings us to our primary question this week: Why Fast? Fasting, by definition, is a voluntary abstinence of food for one or more meals. Our flesh is probably the biggest problem we have in serving God. The flesh does not want to serve God, the Spirit does.
Proverbs 30:8-9 “Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. 9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” This passage is speaking to a great problem we have with the flesh. We are constantly trying to satisfy the flesh and yet when the needs of the flesh are met our tendency is to stop seeking God.
I have often found that, most of the time, our motives in prayer are off-base. We seek flesh-satisfying things from God rather than God Himself. Subsequently, once God gives us the things we are praying for, we stop praying. We often ask God to do for us the very thing that will cause us to stop spending time in His presence because we tend to seek things from Him rather than Him.
The primary objective of fasting is for us to come to a place where the spirit will have dominion over the flesh. By denying ourselves of our most basic needs we are expressing our desire to become what God wants us to be. We are showing God that He is what we are pursuing – not things.
Continued tomorrow
