Make It Personal: Prayer and Fasting

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. We're going to talk about real quick, fast and in prayer, what's to it, what of it, should we do it? Stay tuned, we'll find out. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying, amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's Word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. So one of the things that we, as believers, talk about and most often get wrong is this practice or this thing called fasting. Fasting of course connected to prayer, fasting is irrelevant without prayer and you do understand that I'm not talking about health fast or fasting for health reasons. That is fantastic and there are great reasons why you should fast for health reasons and that's not what I'm talking about. The sad thing about the Christian church today is that when God gives us something to do or gives us an opportunity or ability to pursue Him for answers or to have ourselves receive clarity, we often make it so difficult and we jumble it all up that we make it so for boating and terrifying that we won't even touch it. Fasting is one of those things. Fasting is a word that it's almost like don't mention it because it's so heavy. When we fast, we've got to talk like a monk, we've got to conduct ourselves in a spirit of sombreness. Jesus said, don't do that. Jesus said, when you fast, annoy your head, your, your, your, annoy your face, wash your face, put on a smile, look like unto others as though you're not fasting. Don't go around and tell people, hey, you know I'm fasting. Okay, just stop. Go get a burger because what you're doing is that's not it. Fasting is not something that should actually be routine. Now, I know I'm going to get mail and some of them from some good friends that they fast every Friday or Monday, they fast once a week to seek the Lord. That's awesome. That's great. God bless them. I don't know their heart. God does. And if it's that routine that works for them, that's between them and God and that's amazing. Then there's the fast where we know from Scripture when Jesus said it, for example, the disciples of, of John the Baptist and even the Pharisees asked, hey, Jesus, why don't your disciples fast? Jesus says, why should they fast? I'm with them right now. The time's going to come when I'm gone, but why would the children of the bridegroom fast when the bridegrooms with them? When I'm gone, then they'll fast. What a great answer. When we fast, the fast is to not change the mind of God. I'm going to repeat that because I just, a lot of people in the Pentecostal circles just turned this off. No, I thought when we fast and pray, we can change God's mind. Wrong. When we fast and pray, coupling those two disciplines together, it changes us and morphs us to receive the will of God. Fast and in prayer conforms us into the image of Jesus Christ regarding that thing, whatever that thing might be. So if you're fast and in praying because your child is sick, you're doing that not because somebody said, you know, to get your son healthy, you should fast and pray. They didn't tell you that. At least I hope they didn't tell you that. You're fasting and praying because you don't want to eat. You're so committed to prayer for your child in a sense, you're grieving over your child situation and you have given up on food to pray. Daniel gave up food to pray. I should say technically, Daniel gave up certain types of food to pray. Now Moses, for example, Jesus, for example, both of them fasted and prayed for 40 days, which is anatomically, physiologically, biologically, impossible. If somebody says, I'm going to fast for, I'm going to do it, Jesus, I'm going to fast for 40 days. I mean, Moses did it, I can do it. You're going to die. Don't do that. Moses and Jesus were supernaturally sustained by God. No water for 40 days. You can't live without water for, I think it's eight days. God sustained them supernaturally, okay, in their fast. So our zeal and our legalism can get so pumped up that we can say, I'm going to do this. But listen, wait a minute, just before you do this, why are you telling people you're going to do it? And why are you doing it? Well, because I need God to do something for me. Don't do it. But if you're grieved, moved, burdened, if you are prompted to intercede, to fast and pray, to hear God's heart and mind on something, like Daniel did in Daniel chapter 8, 9, 10, to prepare yourself to hear from God, that's the purpose of fasting and praying. But please know this, that you can pray, we are to pray always without ceasing. This is beautiful. It just means that you and I, as believers, are in a constant mindset of prayer every moment of the day. Are there times for people to, are there times for us to break away and spend alone time with God in prayer? Absolutely. But just know this. We should always be in an open dialogue with God, which is prayer 24, 7, 365. Isn't that what prayer is when you're talking to God? Isn't that prayer? Isn't that what it is? You see what I didn't even thought about that way, but when I pray, you know, I'm praying for my finances or for my wife or for our marriage or for my children or for my aunt or my uncle or world peace, of course you are. But that doesn't have to be where you pull over on the freeway and get on the side of the freeway and get on your knees and pray. When you're talking with God, you are expressing to Him, Lord, oh my goodness, I just heard about this, oh Lord, be with, be with that family, I just heard about on the news and the radio, oh Lord, and you, that's a genuine authentic prayer. You know, Jesus also said that to the man who stood with his head down, would not even look up to heaven and prayed this prayer and said, and smoked upon his chest, the Bible says, dear God, be merciful to me a sinner. And across the street, Jesus said, there was a Pharisee that said, God, I think you, I'm not like other people, he probably gestures over to this guy. I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all of my earnings. Jesus said, I tell you what, that guy, he has his reward, that's it, he's got it. This guy who beat upon his chest in self-loathing of his sinful nature, his prayer was heard. God looks at the heart. So when we fast, there's various fast in the Bible for you to read and study about, but notice none of the people in the Bible fasted to fast. They fasted because they had a purpose, they fasted because they had a reason. This doesn't happen in the United States anymore, frankly, because my opinion, which is probably true, I think it is, is we don't, our presidents don't call for a time for fasting and prayer anymore. Did you know that the United States and its founding and its presidents, all the way up to, I do believe it might have been George Bush, if you can believe that, called for a day of national prayer and repentance. We don't do that anymore, we don't need God anymore. We've got AI and we've got Teslas and we don't need God, right? So when we call out to God, there should be desperation behind that, even if it's the, even if it's the thinking for your meal, we can say, dear God in heaven, thank you for this meal, amen. Or we can actually be saying, Lord, thank you for this meal. And in that second, in that prayer, I'm really meaning this, Lord, I want to thank you that we had the money to buy this food, we had the gas or the electricity to cook it, and the remarkable ability to be together with friends and our family to eat it. You're safe right now, there's a roof over our head. And with this food, God that I'm going to take in, I pray that it gives me us energy and strength to do whatever you want us to do with these bodies in Jesus' name, amen. I can pray a prayer that's three seconds long and have all that meaning packed into it. It's not the length of your prayer that makes it acceptable. In fact, the Bible says in the Old Testament, when you come before God in prayer, let your words be fuel, isn't that powerful? Legalism says, take up the whole prayer meeting, man. Just pray it hour. Nope. And the other thing is to go without food without the right heart, you're just dieting. But if your heart is right, meaning God, and this is what I would look for in your life, in my life. What I want to see is God prompting you to pray. And the thought enters your mind, Lord, I am so grieved over this situation, or I so need to hear your voice on this, that I'm giving up on food to convert that time I would spend in preparing food, eating food, cleaning up afterwards, I don't want to do that. I'm going to go spend that hour with you, seeking you. And I kind of believe, that's not kind of. I do believe what I'm about to tell you, and yet this works for me, and I'm not imposing it upon you. The more my conversation with God is unstructured, the more personal it becomes. Does it make sense? I am not knocking prayer journals. Those are awesome because you can write down what you're concerned about, and then the other column is the answer that God gives you, and then you write down the answer when that time comes. I'm knocking that. That's really great. But I'm talking about, instead of prayers that are wrote, prayers, look, I don't mean to offend anybody, but instead of picking up, rather than picking up the common book of prayer and reciting this prayer for Tuesday, it's better for you to just talk to God about what's on your heart. And if that involves you fasting, because you want to get God's heart in mind on what's going on, fasting clears the webs. It clears the atmosphere, fasting, I don't know, I don't understand how this works. But physical fasting causes you to spiritually focus and to hear better, spiritually speaking. I can't explain how that works, but it does work. So be careful about that. In the moment you make it legalistic, it's not working. It's not going to work. The moment you make it a routine that this is what we do every Wednesday. Think about an intimate personal relationship with someone, and this is what we do every Wednesday. We have to have spaghetti and meatballs on Wednesday. It's like, really, all right, well, I think God is much more personal than that. Let Him prompt you, let Him call you to fasting. But just know this. In fact, I'm going to recommend you a book and please, you're going to have to search out the author. I forget his name, but the book is, in my opinion, the best book to read on fasting in prayer. And it is the book, God's chosen fast, God's chosen fast. That's the title of the book. I'm sorry, I just popped into my head. You'll have to Google who the author is. God's chosen fast, a fantastic book. Read it. You'll understand it much more better, and it's not something that you should make public, unless there's a public call for a fast and in prayer, like our Presidents used to do. That's different. That's national or state calls to repentance and prayer. They called them a proclamation of humiliation. But personally, privately, we should keep that personal and private before the Lord. And then finally, I'll say this. God says in His Word in the book of Isaiah, I would rather, with all of your new moons and your Sabbaths and your holy days that you guys do, and nothing ever changes, and all of your fasting, nothing changes, God says, this is the fast I would want from you. Fast from sin. Fast from wickedness. Fast from being rebellious, fast from doing what you think you should do, and do what I would have you to do. God, what a beautiful thing for Him to say. Fast from the wrong that you're doing. That's a fast. So grab your Bibles, do a word search on fast, fasting, fasted. Look at the answers that you're going to get. But look at the context in which that verse appears, and you're going to find a reason why they were fasting in the first place, and remember fasting without prayer is a diet. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about hearing from God, clearing the webs, focusing in so that His will will be conformed in us. That's the reason, that's the purpose for fasting and prayer. This Jack Kibb's podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listeners supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibb's.com to learn more and stay connected.