PRAYER ROOMS

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• noon – Tuesday, for Sanctuary leaders

PRAYER GUIDE

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
    Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
    and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out;
    they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
    and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
    and seem eager for God to come near them.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
    ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
    and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
    and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
    and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
    and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

“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?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.

        - Isaiah 58:1-12

Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. These are the three core spiritual disciplines Jesus assumes his followers will practice in his Sermon on the Mount. As we learned last week, fasting is intrinsically connected with prayer. To fast without prayer is merely a diet. But fasting is also connected to almsgiving – to acts of mercy, generosity, and justice.

God’s heart has always been for the poor. In the Mosaic Law, so many of the commandments given to Israel were concerned with how to treat those on the underside of society – the foreigner, the widow, the orphan. God calls his people to practice mercy, generosity, and justice – and to care for the poor and the oppressed.

We may not immediately see the connection between fasting and almsgiving, yet God can’t ignore it. Here Isaiah delivers this word to people who are regularly practicing fasting, and yet somehow sense that it is not touching the heart or bending the ear of God. “Why have we fasted,” Israel asks, “and you have not noticed?” 

Through Isaiah, God responds to Israel’s question. Fasting is empty if merely a privatized religious activity, focused solely on our personal relationship with God. The God who made us and all of humanity in His image wants fasting to expand our hearts so they grow to resemble His own heart for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. It is not that God is displeased with mere privation from food…but rather He wants us to be like Him. He is looking for his people to abstain, not merely from food. He also wants our eyes to be opened to the relentless machineries of oppression that have plagued the human race since the fall, and by practice small acts of abstinence, create room for God’s Kingdom to enter our world.

This is the kind of fasting that most pleases God. And it is the kind of fasting he will surely respond to. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression (in the same way you do away with lunch)…then your light will rise in the darkness.” Augustine writes: “Do you wish your prayer to reach God? Give it two wings; fasting and almsgiving.” 

For Reflection and Prayer:

• Ask God to help you understand the deep connection he sees between fasting and our engagement in mercy, compassion, and justice.
• Ask God to make our hearts like his. To break our hearts for what breaks his. 
• Ask God to grow your heart and the heart of his people for the poor and the oppressed.
• Pray for God to feed the hungry in our city and to use his people to do it.
• Ask God to bring to mind broken or unjust systems in our city, and pray for his Kingdom to break in.
• Ask God for insight about small acts in our sphere of influence we can take to fast from participation in systems of injustice. 
• Ask God to give us opportunities to (in the words of Gregory of Nyssa) “give to the hungry what you deny your own appetites.”

PRAYER ROOMS

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• noon – Tuesday, for Sanctuary leaders

PRAYER GUIDE

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”       – Matthew 4:1-4 

Human beings are not merely physical beings, nor are we merely spiritual beings. We are what is known as a psychosomatic unity. We are body, soul, spirit all mingled together. So often in modern American protestant Christianity, we overemphasize the mind in our discipleship and underemphasize the role of our bodies. Fasting is a corrective for this. We tend to think our biggest issues and challenges can be solved by more information. I will read a book on that. I will listen to a podcast. I will hear a speaker. But less frequently do we say: “I will abstain from food to engage in this issue.” And yet there is great power in what we do with our stomachs. Often an untapped power.

What did Jesus do when he was baptized in the Jordan, and received the Father’s blessing, and knew that he was being called to step into a new and holy vocation – that of the Messiah, the Son of David, the world’s rightful King and the Lamb of God? Did he study or read about his calling to better understand how to engage in it? Did he seek out an expert to listen to about it? Did he look for more information? No. He fasted and prayed, seeking the LORD with his entire body (empty stomach included) by engaging in a forty day fast.

There are certain areas in our lives that we need to engage in the same way Jesus did – with our whole bodies. For thousands of years, this has been the pattern of spiritual engagement for the people of God. Before key moments in the story of redemption, God’s people fasted, emptying their stomachs in order to to engage their psychosomatic unities with God and his purposes.

Scientists, of course, study the effects of fasting on the body. In many cases, they are actually quite positive. It tends to reduce our insulin resistance. It can increase autophagy (the body’s cellular cleanup system). It increases the level of ketones in the blood and brain. It can contribute to a whole host of positive effects on the body. This is why many secular people have embraced fasting. But when we fast with spiritual purpose, contending for God’s Kingdom, the real power of fasting is what it can do in our spirits. 

Put simply, fasting deepens our level of engagement, with ourselves, with God, and even with the Enemy. Jesus’ ability to discern the weakness of his own flesh, and the specific temptations of the enemy were heightened through fasting. Fasting also can activate our spiritual hunger, by tethering it to our physical hunger. 

This January, we are entering a season of prayer and fasting. Our first key step, as it was for Jesus, is to identify what we are fasting FOR. What is the purpose of our fast? What aspect of God’s Kingdom are we desiring to see break into our reality in a new way? Jesus fasted into his calling to be Israel’s Messiah, the world’s true King and Savior. What is the purpose of your fasting? What are you contending for spiritually, as you engage your body and stomach through fasting? 

For Prayer/Reflection:

Ask for God’s heart and vision for your year? Ask for God to awaken you from slumber, apathy, and numbness and into a state of holy hunger, longing, and desire for God and his Kingdom.

Ask God to highlight specific Kingdom breakthroughs you are longing for in 2024, in your life, family, neighborhood, home church, church, workplace, city. 

Ask God to lead you into a state of holy resolve as you seek God in 2024.