Ok…I know it’s late, but believe it or not, this is the first time that I am able to sit behind your computer.
I left fasting for last, because I know how difficult it would be to absorb this weapon for battle.
Many people fast for something. But I have yet to see in the bible, an event where someone fasted to receive something e.g. a relationship, or a car, or a husband. This is not to say that it is wrong, or that it is not in the bible, I just haven’t come across any.
I take my definition of fasting from Isaiah 58:6-9
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
Our bodies like food. Really. We eat when we’re not even hungry. But just as our bodies like food, so do our spirits. Just as how what you feed your body makes it happy or sad, what you feed your spirit man will make it happy or sad. Fasting from food is a time that you set aside to tell your body to starve so that your spirit can be nurtured. When you fast therefore, your fleshly taste buds become hungry, and your spiritual taste buds become satisfied by the Word of God.
Fasting is a weapon for a number of reasons.
1. Every soldier needs to be able to be swift in the spirit. If you’re constantly feeding your flesh (through TV, Music, Food, Clothing, and other material things) you become carnally fat, and your spirit starves. In a spiritual battle, you need to be swift and able to move across territory. If your spirit is weak, then you will faint in the time of battle.
2. To detoxify your flesh and your spirit man. Look, face it! Sometimes we need a good cleaning out naturally and spiritually from all the toxins.
3. To increase your faith. Once detoxified, you are able to increase in faith, because your temple is not blocked with wastes of worry and anxiety, fear, anger, etc. In fact, when you are truly fasting, your only focus is on God. So having this constant, continual communion with Him increases your faith.
4. Every soldier needs to be able to think clearly. I like to think of fasting as a binoculars. You don’t go into battle without binoculars to see what’s going on ahead of you. When you fast, you open your mind to think clearly about what God wants you to think. Think about it this way. If you eat a lot of carbs, you are likely to experience what I called “ethnic fatigue”, where you are prone to sleep or experience a siesta at leisure. It’s at that time that you are likely to miss the signals that your Commander in Chief is giving you. When you fast, it’s the reverse. your mind is alert and able to hear God clearly about his direction of how to operate in battle. Fasting therefore enables you to have direction, and clear understanding.
For me, fasting is about opening your frequency channels for crisp transmission to hear God more. It’s not so much about fasting to receive something, but when your frequency channels open up, you can see and hear in the spirit more than you can on a regular basis.
Now it’s important to know that the enemy will try very hard to deprive you of this weapon, because it enables you to see what he’s up to. And so he will give us temptations for foods and things that will hinder us from focusing on the spirit.
But if you can take this weapon by force, you will be surprise of all the benefits such as:
1. it lifts heavy burdens.
2. breaks yokes,
3. breaks spiritual attacks
4. brings healing.
Note you don’t need to fast to receive these things. Rather, WHEN you fast, your spirit is opened to increase your faith to receive these things.
So ask yourself… when was the last time you fasted for your growth.
