Christian Living
Fast from Harmful Attitudes
Matt.15:11; I Pet.2:11
PROPHETIC WORD
I know of a few of My children who felt they were having a wonderful season of fasting and praying, not because hunger was cheerfully endured but because they forgot everything else to seek My face and listen to My voice in order to more clearly discern My will. Then, before they had reached the hour (or day) they had predetermined to end the time of abstinence, they absent-mindedly ate a tiny bit of something that was lying around the house. How crushed it made them feel! Just realizing that others in their assembly were denying themselves in prayer, and had eaten nothing at all. Immediately a feeling of failure and guilt would take over, and it is then I had to remind that one: It isn’t what goes into the mouth which defiles, but what comes out of it.
I see everything behind the scenes. Some Christians do their best to focus on me for several days, but they feel too hungry and listless to concentrate anymore. They get bored with pacing the floor, struggling to ignore their hunger so they can keep from nodding off and continue praying. When they run out of prayers to pray and get grumpy from low blood sugar, Satan makes them criticize other saints to fellow prayer warriors behind their backs. Oh, how clever old satan is, the way he disguises idle gossip as a prayer request! Or, certain ones might wearily express doubt that I am capable of meeting their prayer need. Others grumble that it’s a whole day and a half before the slow church fast will finally end.
If anyone attempts a two or three-day fast and talks like that, it’s a sure sign their fasting is proving more of a hindrance than a help to their attempts to pray. In their hearts, they’re already planning what they’ll feast on once the long fast ends. Some smile outwardly, hoping nobody else notices how much they resent the slow fast. These people might as well eat again. When fasting makes you so miserable you grumble and complain and get annoyed with others, it is then that you are being defiled by the bad things you say. Taking a break in the prayer time when I give a release and eating a snack wouldn’t do you any harm, but expressing bad attitudes toward another saint IS harmful and needs to be repented of. During a time of prayer, carnal conversation must be avoided in order to avoid discouraging your brother or sister, and grieving the Spirit within them. Your words ought to agree with what I have to say in My Word about your situation.
Even Moses grew weary during the time he resolved to keep his hands lifted up so the battle could be won. I didn’t deny Moses the victory just because his hands were strengthened by others (which many would call “cheating”). I won’t deny you the victory if you strengthen your depleted body with food, when abstinence proves more harmful than helpful.
Far better that you concern yourself with fasting from worry, doubt and loveless attitudes than to be able to boast that not a single calorie passed your lips in three days. If you fast from doubt and unbelief, and abstain from sinful enticements of the flesh which drown a soul in perdition, and keep focused on Me I will honor that kind of fasting.
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