Practice | Week 4

SERIES: Practice
MESSAGE: Fasting
DATE: June 27, 2020 

What if the difference between the life you have and the life God has for you is the difference between trying and training?

…practice your righteousness…”  Matthew 6:1

“Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”   Matthew 6:16-18 

Fasting is the practice of denying yourself of normal things so that you can pursue spiritual things.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
After he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  Then the tempter approached him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Matthew 4:2-4 

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry..” John 6:35

“When what we consume is consuming us, and what we possess is possessing us, the only way back to health and balance is to refrain from using those things that have control over us.“  (Marjorie Thompson, “Soul Feast”)