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Good Morning Everyone, and today we are following up on what I had said last week by looking into the topic of prayer and fasting. Our focus today will be more on the why instead of the how because there are many forms of fasting and I don’t believe that any one form is more pious than the other.
Fasting in principle means that we deny ourselves the wants of our flesh for the sake of making the needs of the spirit take priority in our lives. Over the past few months I’ve been reading through the book “The Spiritual Man” by Watchman Nee who lived during the 1900s and was an influential church leader in China. This is pre-communist china during the British control period for your history references. For those of you reading the blog you’ll see the photos I’ve posted showing my bookmark for how long I’ve gotten in it. I’m still in the first quarter of the book so I know I have more to read but one thing that his book has helped me to understand is the way mankind exists as three persons.
Humans are spirit, soul, and body. This distinction is one that I have had a hard time understanding and I believe that there are many who do as well. Through Nee’s study of this subject and his experiences he explains these elements of our existence in a simple way. From God we’ve received the eternal spirit and it is the spirit which remains once we die. The body is what we are physically. The part which we interact with the world through. But the soul has confused many people and that’s because it is the merging point between spirit and body. It is in the soul we find our ability to think and feel.
Between these three things there is also a hierarchy that is meant to exist and which existed at the beginning. The spirit was meant to have authority over the soul deciding the directions of thoughts and thus influencing the actions of the body. The body would carry these things out in accordance to the will of God. When Satan came and tempted Eve he inverted this authority. First he appealed to the flesh as we read in Genesis 3(NKJV) “And he said to the woman “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree in the garden?” Through this question he gave the flesh a chance to supersede the authority of the Spirit of God which had been given to man. By the flesh the soul reasoned and rebelled against God putting to death their own spirit which was their source of life.
Now we live with our soul dominated by one of two things. The flesh which leads to death or the spirit which leads to life. It is what Jesus spoke about in Matthew 16: 21 through 25(NKJV). In this passage Jesus has just predicted that He will be betrayed and crucified only for Peter to say to Him let it not happen. It is here that Jesus says to Peter “Get behind me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God but the things of men.” Jesus was harsh in the rebuke because it was needed for the purpose of demonstrating the ignorance he had for God’s ways. It is afterwards that Jesus instructs the disciples with this teaching; “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” It’s also in this passage we find the teaching on needing to deny oneself daily.
A fact that Watchman Nee brings up in his book is that there are many who don’t realize that the power of salvation is to be fully freed from our sinful ways. For through our salvation the fleshly desires and the soul have been put to death and replaced through the restored spirit of the Lord’s power. The moment of salvation is when we are made new but each day we must choose to be submitted to the spirit instead of the flesh. Paul spoke much about this in his letter to the church in Rome. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:12 NKJV) And in sections of chapters 6 and 7 he explains how we have been made free from sin and corrupted flesh for the purpose of doing good.
The purpose of a fast must be to draw closer to God as is read in Isaiah 58. When God spoke to the prophet about the nation of Israel and why He has not recognized their fasting. Isaiah 58 verses 3 through 4 shows that when the people fasted they exploited their laborers, sought out their own pleasure, and stirred up strife. Coming closer to God wasn’t their personal goal when fasting.
Verses 5 and until the end of the segment contrast the actions of Israel to the right way to fast and how it is to be a time to seek to do good. Desiring to hear from God and know the will of Him. Asking for us to have our eyes opened to move in ways that exhibit His grace to others. But primarily the first thing listed is to “loose the bonds of wickedness” meaning to no longer be tied to sin. Watchman Nee is right when it comes to us being able to live life free of sin and not to be overcome by it anymore but that only comes when we have the power which comes from letting Holy Spirit live within us.
Last week I quoted John 15 about the importance of abiding in Christ and how without Him we can do nothing for the kingdom of God. That includes living the life of holiness that we are called to live. To fast is to starve the body of sinful desires and giving the spirit what it needs to grow strong and maintain its authority in the balance of spirit, soul, and body. Being nourished through the word of the Lord.
Until next time, abide in the Lord always, take courage and may God be with you.