I. BENEFITS OF FASTING ARE SUPERIOR TO THE STRUGGLE
A. Rewards or benefits are superior to the perils but they do not nullify the negative. They are just greater than the
negative and are superior to them.
1. Don’t minimize the struggles or the perils because if we understand them soundly then we will be equipped for
perseverance.
2. A lot of people get excited about the benefits of fasting and they kind of launch out there for a while and go real
strong for a few weeks or months and run into the downside. They become disillusioned and quit.
B. There is a call for people to the fasted lifestyle – not for a year or a few months of renewed vigor, but for a
marathon pace in which we understand that the rewards and benefits are superior to the downside. They are superior
to the struggle and difficulties that do exist.
C. You will conclude that the benefits are superior to the struggles.
D. To be forewarned is to be forearmed:
1. You may ask: “Why would anyone want to do this?”
2. To be forewarned is to be forearmed and to be forearmed is to enter into being equipped for perseverance for this
marathon pace.
II. THE CALL TO VOLUNTARY WEAKNESS
A. The basic essence of fasting is a call to voluntary weakness, in terms of our natural strength. (Our natural life in our
humanity.)
1. The very essence of fasting is a call to voluntary weakness in regards to our natural life and strength of our flesh.
2. Fasting is a call to voluntary weakness. That is the very essence of it.
B. We receive divine strength in the Spirit.
1. The reason God calls us to voluntary weakness related to natural strength is so that we could receive divine
strength in the Spirit.
2. When we experience this weakness we are not disillusioned or confused or surprised. It is a call to weakness in the
natural.
C. Paradoxes in fasting:
1. There are many paradoxes in fasting
2. There are many paradoxes to the way God runs His Kingdom and fasting highlights so many of them but there is
no paradox greater than the paradox of weakness and strength.
D. God’s strength in Paul’s weakness
1. Jesus said it directly to Paul when he was struggling with involuntary weakness.
2. Paul had a thorn in the flesh.
a. He was suffering under a thorn in the flesh, which probably is a combination of demonically inspired circumstance
related to people persecuting him and demonic spirits harassing him along side of that.
b. It was probably some combination of people
c. This was not something Paul the apostle asked for but in the midst of this Jesus stands before him and speaks
to him directly.
“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’
Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
3. The Lord looks at Paul and says, “My grace (My enabling power) is sufficient for you in this situation”.
a. “The release of power on you is sufficient. I am empowering you to stand against this attack against your flesh.”
b. Then He gives him one of the most dynamic sentences to help us to understand how the Kingdom of God works
operates in this age.
c. He tells him that this is how His Kingdom operates in this fallen world: His strength is made perfect when we
experience weakness in the flesh.
d. He is saying He wants us to know that His strength is perfected in our experience. Now God’s strength is
always perfect so it is not perfected in the sense of the essence of His own being but He means our experience of
His power is brought to maturity.
E. Perfected power
1. Perfected power is your experience. Now imagine human beings operating in mature or perfected power. That is
really what we want isn’t it?
a. We want to enter into this realm called perfected power and the Lord tells Paul that His power is perfected in him.
b. His power is manifest in an extraordinary way in the context of weakness.
2. He is talking about voluntary weakness, like fasting. Involuntary weakness is the attack of the enemy, persecution, etc.
a. Whether voluntary or involuntary or a combination of the two they always go together when we respond right in
the Kingdom of God.
b. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? When we begin to enter into the voluntary weakness, the fasted
lifestyle, it provokes an attack against us by the enemy. The enemy’s attack on us is the involuntary part that we did
not ask for. The enemy comes and attacks us. The way we enter into it is by voluntarily entering into the fasting
realm again.
3. Voluntary and involuntary weakness go together in the heart of a devout believer.
a. They understand the scripture and so the Lord puts them together and says the realm of human weakness
is when the enemy is attacking and things are going wrong and you are answering it in this fasted lifestyle.
b. There is that two-fold weakness, where His power is perfected and strengthened in your experiences.
4. That is one of the most dynamic explanations of how the Kingdom of God operates in the whole Word of God.
a. Possibly when Jesus appeared to Paul and was speaking to him directly, He might have said, “Paul I am going
to tell you something that you do not know. The realm of perfected power only operates where you have engaged in
the two-fold weakness in a proper way before Me.”
b. That is why Paul rejoiced in the weakness. He rejoiced in the weakness that came against his will and he
rejoiced in the weakness of how he approached the Lord.
c. Prayer and fasting and the different types (fasting is more than food). Paul said he rejoiced in that because
he knew it ushered him into the experience of perfected power.
5. A lot of believers want perfected power but they do not like this realm of weakness they enter into. We try to come
up with how to enter into perfected power by staying as far away from weakness as possible.
6. Perfected power is only released in context to weakness when we settle that something deep within our spirits.
7. You could say perfected power will only be manifest in the two-fold experience of the involuntary weakness as we
respond to it by the voluntary weakness of the fasted lifestyle.
F. The fasted lifestyle brings on the attack and the attack is answered by the fasted lifestyle. It is altogether the grace
of God in this bridegroom fast.
“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
1. Infirmities – involuntary weakness
2. Reproaches – involuntary weakness
3. Persecutions and needs – involuntary weakness
4. Distresses – involuntary weakness
5. “For I know when I am weak”, and he has made it very clear that he lived a lifestyle of voluntary weakness
which is the life of prayer and fasting.
G. He experienced divine power and was strong. He said he experienced the power of God he longed for.
1. The end-time church will only be strong in the manifest power of God when they understand weakness and
do not despise it. We need to understand how necessary it is.
2. The call to fasting is the call to enter voluntarily into a realm of weakness that we do not have to enter into if
we do not want to. It is a choice.
III. FOUR TYPES OF FASTING
A. Fasting from food
1. This is typically what we call fasting.
2. Our physical strength is weakened. Fasting from food is about our physical man being weakened.
3. It is not about hunger but weakness. It really is.
B. Prayer
1. Prayer is a powerful form of fasting in itself because we fast our time.
2. Instead of using time to enhance our world we are taking that time we could be building our life with and we
are talking to an invisible God.
3. It weakens our life if God does not intervene because there are lots of time we are not investing in building
the things that are on our hearts.
4. Time is life. When we give our time to God in prayer there are a whole lot of things we cannot do because
we are spending time in prayer and it is a form of fasting. It is a form of weakness.
5. Prayer is a powerful type of weakness.
C. Giving
1. When you give your finances you are giving your power away.
2. You are diminishing your power, your resources.
D. Silence
1. Remaining silent when the attack comes against us. When we choose to let the Lord answer for us.
2. That tortures us even more than the food and the sleep and the time.
E. RECAP OF FASTING:
Food – physical body
Time – physical life
Money – physical resources
Talk – physical reactions
IV. FASTING IS AN INTERRUPTION OF OUR NATURAL STRENGTH
A. Fasting is an interruption of natural strength. Whether it is money, time, physical strength, or even your reputation,
where you do not answer – silence!
B. Strength is diminished
1. Fasting is an interruption of natural strength and is designed that way by God and is meant to be that way to our
natural strength. That is why it chaffs us.
2. When we give money away to an invisible God we give strength away. There are many ways to do that and our
strength is diminished financially.
3. A lot of things are related to that and it creates strange feelings on the inside because it makes us weak
except God would intervene.
4. This paradigm of fasting we are talking about has many weaknesses involved in it.
C. The manifold weakness of fasting.
1. The watch of the Lord that sometimes is related to some of the monastic movements who would fast sleep
like they would fast food.
2. Fasting sleep is a form of fasting that was embraced in some of the monasteries as a physical discipline
V. THE WILDERNESS – THE PLACE OF TESTING AND ENCOUNTER
A. Wilderness and weakness
1. The wilderness is a very powerful subject in the Word of God. The wilderness and weakness are near
synonymous.
2. When God calls us to the wilderness or to weakness those are actually synonymous concepts.
3. Wilderness:
a. Place of testing – involuntary (props removed)
b. Place of divine encounter – voluntary (allow so can receive)
B. The two main applications of the wilderness.
1. The wilderness was the place of testing. That is the involuntary testing.
a. David was tested. He did not want to be tested but was tested anyway for seven or eight years as Saul chased
him around the wilderness.
b. Joseph was in the dungeon for some seven or eight years. He did not want to be in the dungeon.
c. Moses was in the wilderness for 40 years. He did not want to be tested for 40 years. He wanted to enter into the
promises of God.
2. The place of divine encounter
a. The wilderness is a place of testing but it is not only a place of testing. The wilderness is a place of divine
encounter as well.
b. The wilderness is the place where the servants of the Lord went. It is opposite from the involuntary weakness
of testing. This was voluntary weakness. The spiritual wilderness is the place of divine encounter.
c. John the Baptist was trained by God in the geographic wilderness. Jesus went into the wilderness. Paul the
apostle went into the Arabian desert for three years.
d. The wilderness is the place where all the props are removed and you enter into voluntary weakness with the
idea of encountering God.
e. One of the great principles of the Kingdom of God is that when we enter into weakness, the voluntary and
involuntary always join together in the heart of the devout. It is not like it is one or the other because when we have
one it always relates to the other.
C. The wilderness was the place that was embraced for the sake of encountering God and entering into the manifest
power of God.
“Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I awakened you under the apple tree. There
your mother brought you forth; there she who bore you brought you forth.” (Song of Solomon 8:5)
1. The Beloved is coming up out of the wilderness leaning and loving.
2. She is leaning on the one she loves. She comes out of the wilderness. That is both voluntary and the involuntary
weakness.
3. Deuteronomy 8, Hosea 2:14 (I will allure her to the wilderness – troubling to bring hope and expectation), an end-time
prophecy. God will romance and allure His people in the wilderness and give them songs of love. Wilderness is: to humble, to
prove, to know what is in the heart.
D. The spiritual wilderness is a fasted lifestyle.
1. God is going to call some of His people into the wilderness geographically, but He is going to call His people into the
wilderness spiritually which I believe is a place of voluntary weakness. It is a fasted lifestyle.
2. He is going to woo them and allure them and give them the songs of romance and they will call Him, ‘My Husband’.
“And it shall be, in that day,” says the Lord, “that you will call Me ‘My Husband’, and no longer call Me ‘My Master’,”
(Hosea 2:16)
3. The bridal revelation is related to the people of God being allured and wooed by God in the wilderness.
4. The western world hates the wilderness!
a. We hate weakness and do everything to put props in place to protect us from the weakness that is our only way
into the power of God.
b. We will do anything but embrace raw weakness with God as our only deliverer. Yet that is what Jesus told
Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9. That is the place where power is perfected.
c. If you avoid the wilderness you will avoid the power of God.
d. The church in the western world is absolutely inundated with the spirit of this culture that is very anti-wilderness.
We hate the voluntary weakness in place of divine encounter and yet we long for the encounter but our lifestyles
argue against it.
5. The Lord told Paul, “My power is perfected, (there is one place where it comes in an unusual manifestation) in a
place of weakness.”
6. You could say the wilderness, or you could say voluntary or involuntary weakness. The involuntary is the trials and
the voluntary is the fasted lifestyle. Whether it is money, prayer, time or food it is the fasted lifestyle.
E. The Sermon on the Mount
1. Incidentally, money, time (prayer) and food are the three things that make the centerpiece of the Sermon
on the Mount.
a. Righteousness = giving, prayer, fasting
2. Those are the three main issues He addresses in Matthew 6.
3. It is also interesting if you do a study on the life of John the Baptist – he only taught three subjects in terms of
personal application.
a. He taught prayer, fasting and giving.
b. John the Baptist only taught those three types of fasting.
4. Jesus taught on the Sermon on the Mount, and Isaiah 58 and those are the three main subjects and they
appear a number of times clustered together.
5. You could also add silence in as a very important dimension of fasting. Remaining silent instead of
complaining, accusing and attacking. It is the heart that entrusts itself to God and God answers on our behalf.
This is perhaps the most difficult form of fasting there is.
“Who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to
Him who judges righteously.” (1 Peter 2:23)
VI. #1 PERIL OF FASTING – PHYSICAL WEAKNESS
A. Fasting is primarily a call to weakness not to hunger.
1. Hunger is really only an issue the first couple of times you fast, or the first couple of days of a fast.
2. Fasting is a weakness/strength issue.
a. When your flesh rises up against fasting it is not because you just want to go stuff yourself but because you
are tired of weakness and do not like the feeling of weakness.
b. It is a real automatic reality if you have done it a year or two.
3. Hunger becomes very much a secondary issue to weakness and this is for everyone who fasts with any
regularity.
B. Physical symptoms of fasting:
1. Headaches:
a. Headaches are only temporary. You only experience them on the front end of a fasted lifestyle, in the first
month or two or three.
b. Headaches are not a part of a fasted lifestyle. They are related to the release of toxins on the front end and
then your body adjusts.
c. Headaches happen sooner or later for most people.
d. Some in colleges won’t like hearing this; but sugar, caffeine, cokes, tacos – these will cause you headaches if
that is your lifestyle but you will not make it very long on that kind of stuff if you end up fasting.
e. You need to know this so when headaches occur, you don’t bind the devil or think something unusual is
happening. It is part of voluntary weakness of the flesh.
2. Change of Diet
a. Anybody who embraces a fasted lifestyle inevitably changes their diet. Perhaps on the front end of it you do
not change your diet for the first two or three months.
b. You fast for a couple of days and then you just gorge yourself. If you just fast a few times a year that is a
very normal and logical thing to do.
c. Once you enter into a fasted lifestyle and not just eat and binge but you know that you are going to be doing
this as a lifestyle the most automatic thing that happens is you change your diet.
d. You do not even have to be told to it just becomes an automatic logic that takes care of itself and the toxin
issue becomes a none-issue. It is only on the front end.
3. Dizziness
a. If you fast a day or two or three a week with any kind of regularity you will have some dizziness if you rise too
fast.
b. it will not hurt you. You just get used to it but it is something you do not have to be afraid of.
4. Inner trembling
a. You will feel some inner trembling where there is just a weakness and sometimes this trembling will touch you.
b. Do not worry about it. It will just come and go.
5. Weak legs – In Psalm 109:24, David said his knees were weak from fasting.
“My knees are weak through fasting, and my flesh is feeble from lack of fatness.” (Psalm 109:24)
6. Weak grip.
a. A loss of energy. Sometimes you will feel like your hands are weak, your legs are wobbly and a little trembly
and you’re a bit dizzy.
b. You may say, “No wonder you look a little spacey!”
7. Numbness. As a regular lifestyle of fasting you may feel a little bit of numbness in your fingertips and toes
and actually around your lips.
8. Noise. It can be a real irritation.
C. Accumulated weakness
1. There is a difference between fasting three days once and fasting regularly week in and week out. There is an
accumulated weakness that begins to build and the dynamics begin to change.
2. When the dynamics change the spirit begins to move more but the weakness that begins is just a part of every
day life. Even on the days you eat you still have these dimensions on you.
3. There will be an accumulation of weakness but a build up of the release of the Spirit too. You get addicted
to that and it is superior than the downside of the physical weakness.
D. Metabolic change is another side of the physical change.
1. The first few months that you fast you will find you lose weight. Then a strange thing will happen even if you
intensity the fasting: you will gain weight even though you think you are eating less.
2. Your metabolism changes and it is a tricky thing.
a. It is a protective mechanism for your body.
b. Some people have fasted intensely for a year or two and their metabolism gets shut down (their code is really
rewritten inside of them) and when they decide to quit fasting they will gain tremendous amounts of weight right
away. They will eat like they used to eat but they will gain tons of weight but they will be surprised because their
metabolism is so slow and so shut down t will take them a year or two to get back to eating like they did before
without gaining weight.
3. It is not a weight loss program.
a. You will not lose weight by fasting over the long haul.
4. Metabolism gets so slow and that is a divine thing, God set up our body that way because you have been
on a starvation mode so many times in fasting.
5. You can eat so much less than you imagine you can eat. We eat so much more than we have idea than we
really need to.
E. Digestion will be disrupted, especially in the first couple of months as your body adjusts to the diet.
1. One of the first things you will do if you enter into a fasted lifestyle is change your diet.
2. No one will have to tell you. It will be an automatic thing that will take place as your desires change.
3. The change in the amount of foods you eat and the change in the kinds of food you eat will cause disruptions
in your digestive tract for a season but it will all adjust and you will be fine.
a. You must know your body. You cannot just decide to go eat a giant amount of spicy food and a bunch of
desserts.
b. Sugar is another item that will be hard on the body.
c. You have to learn what you can do and what you cannot do. Learn to submit to how your body works and try
not to beat the system. The allurement of food really weakens it’s hold on you with time.
F. Sleeping patterns
1. Another negative is sleeping patterns are disrupted. You may have irregular sleep.
2. The amount of energy digestion takes is an astounding amount. With regular fasting, not expending energy for
digestion, means a tremendous amount of less sleep.
3. You need less sleep yet your sleep is not as sound and is more irregular.
G. So here is what you have: metabolism changes, disrupted digestion, irregular sleeping patterns, dizziness, wobbly
legs, loss of energy, weak knees, and headaches at first.
H. Number one is physical weakness. You need to know what you are getting into.
1. The downside is there but it is not nearly as powerful as the upside. It really is not but they do go together.
2. This is a paradox.
I. Some do only water or coffee fasts.
1. Some find they experience more if they do only water or non-caloric beverages
2. There is more ‘bang for the buck’ so to speak.
3. It is dynamically more intense. If you have calories it takes a little of the edge off.
VII. #2 PERIL OF FASTING – MENTAL WEAKNESS
A. Difficult to communicate, hard to focus, hard to concentrate, memory loss.
1. It is humiliating and embarrassing. It happens with regular fasting.
B. Memory loss
1. You will be in situations where you cannot remember important facts about your life.
2. You might compensate by writing things down and then forget where you put the notes.
3. You may forget people’s names
C. It is hard to focus.
1. It is a paradox because there is a lessened ability to concentrate. It sharpens your mind in revelation but
weakens your mind in the natural. You cannot seem to talk about it; you are just stuck there.
D. Difficult to communicate
1. You may be in an important conversation where a lot of things matter and you cannot come up with the things
you were thinking or you will wix your mords all up!
2. The people who do not fast do not really BELIEVE it or they do not really understand it. It is not a three-day
fast or a five-day fast. It is the accumulation of month after month after month, several years.
E. Anointing in the Spirit is far richer in the continual fasting.
1. There is an accumulation of it. The anointing and the experience in the spirit are far richer in the continual
fasting
than it is in the intense ones here and there.
2. People might tell you that you look really tired, dazed, and a little disconnected and ask if you are all right.
3. You can’t explain it to them and they get offended.
F. Weakness is a burden.
1. The weakness part is a burden.
2. This is a different way to live and a lot less sure way to live than in the natural.
3. You feel trembly, wobbly, a little dizzy, kind of trembly on the inside. Your grip is kind of weak, kind of dizzy
and spacey and all that.
4. There is a spiritual dynamic to this and there is a natural dynamic. They are in collusion with one another.
5. Your friends, family members, and staff get annoyed after awhile. The first couple of months are cute.
A couple of years later it is annoying.
VIII. #3 PERIL OF FASTING – EMOTIONAL STRESS
A. Paradox One: easily irritated yet deep spiritual feelings
1. You will find that as you fast you are so easily annoyed and yet you have the deepest spiritual feelings.
2. You may be sitting in prayer and feel totally bugged and yet anointed. You may just want to slap someone even
though the issue isn’t with them.
3. You will get annoyed for no reason because your emotions are right on the edge. The paradox is that you
have the deepest spiritual feelings ever in your life of tenderizing in the word, of weeping and prayer.
4. Noise and touch may really bother you.
5. You may be hypersensitive and think that is negative not positive. All kinds of activity may bother you.
6. you may find yourself overly moved in a negative way. It may not be that you are angry but more a feeling of
oppression or annoyance – this along with the deep spiritual feelings.
B. Paradox two: feeling oppressed yet feelings of intimacy and tenderness with God suddenly come upon you.
C. Paradox Three: emotionally you feel a weakened resolve to get up and go accomplish things but a deeper resolve
for the Kingdom of God than ever before. It is a paradox of resolve.
D. There are real opposites happening at the same time and one of the reasons is that fasting removes our natural
emotional strength.
E. By nature we hide and cover up our emotional weaknesses.
1. We live by the strength of our personalities. Our weaknesses in our personalities are like hidden fault lines
beneath the surface.
2. The cracks are still there and the fault lines. This means the issues of the human personality like fear, anger,
rejection.
3. This is not talking about demonized character traits.
4. It is talking about the oversensitive feelings to things of rejection, fear, annoyance, or anger or whatever.
5. In the strength of our personalities we compensate for them and cover them up and we can hold ourselves
at bay and we can act properly.
F. Fasting removes the props that cover up those weak spots
1. The Lord does it on purpose.
2. The props that distract us and hide our weakness from us are moved and our weaknesses come right before us.
3. The painkillers that deaden the pain, that anaesthetize the pain are removed and the raw weakness of our
character and our spiritual life stare us in the face. We do not have the power to psyche up and cover it up like
we can when we have energy.
4. The net result is we feel like hypocrites.
5. The truth is we are deeper in God than ever before. The truth is those character flaws were always there
but the fault lines are beneath the surface and they needed big circumstances to bring them out. Fasting removes
the strength to cover them.
6. That does not give us an excuse to act in wrong ways it just makes us have to face things that we never
wanted to face before.
a. Our hidden weaknesses are glaring at us and the people close to us. They are glaring at us but they have
always been there.
b. The trick is sometimes we think they are new weaknesses but they were always there. We have had that
power in our personality and strength and all our rules and manners to hide them.
c. Fasting exposes our fault lines. It really causes a humility and humiliation to happen.
IX. #4 PERIL OF FASTING – SPIRITUAL PRIDE
A. Pride is fierce in the subject of fasting. Isaiah 58:3-5
1. Paul the apostle spoke in 2 Corinthians 7:1 a very profound passage:
“Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1)
2. Paul said to get rid of the defilement of spirit that we may perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.
a. We have to get free of the defilement in our spirits we are born in
b. Elitism: everyone of us has a strength of elitism if only we could come up with a set of facts that would feed it.
c. It is a part of our broken human nature … all of us.
3. A hidden feeling of superiority to others … fasting will feed that in a powerful way.
a. Like the little baby … they think they are the center of the house.
b. They always think they are the main person in the universe. That is a part of our sin nature.
4. All of us have a hidden feeling of superiority and when it is really broken it is just graphic inferiority but it is all
the same thing.
5. Fasting fees this part of our brokenness and if we are not aware of it, it is a real peril. There is a fierce
temptation of spiritual pride.
B. The defilement of spirit is elitism.
C. The second defilement of spirit is confidence in the flesh.
1. Paul the apostle said that in Philippians 3:3, I put no confidence in the flesh. That was a massive statement,
not a small statement.
2. We by nature put confidence in the strength of our flesh.
3. This confidence in our flesh is strengthened by fasting when we are not fasting before the bridegroom God,
or the God of love.
4. Fasting strengthens our confidence in our flesh. (this is bad)
5. That is why the Pharisees were out of control in their spiritual arrogance.
6. The essence of religion: wrong spiritual equations saying that we are more desirable to God because of
self-denial and asceticism. That is the essence of dead religion.
7. God likes me more if I deny myself more. So we deny ourselves more and it bolsters our confidence to be
liked by God. That is a lie, lie, lie!
8. It gives us confidence in our flesh even when we stand before the Lord. Paul said that it had to be rooted out
of his life. Our confidence before the Lord is only in who He is and what He has done.
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ‘The Pharisee stood
and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or
even as this tax collector I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’” (Luke 18:10-12)
9. The Pharisees fasted twice a week and they stood before God and said, “I thank God I am not like the
others”. Their confidence was in their self-denial and asceticism before God. They had confidence in the flesh
before God and that brought a horrendous religious arrogance upon them.
10. Religious arrogance … this is part of the defilement of spirit. It is an unholy confidence to judge.
a. The Pharisees killed the Messiah because they had such unsanctified confidence emboldened by spiritual
pride to judge others with a religious deception to kill Jesus. They were emboldened by their fasting in it.
b. It gives a tremendous open door for religious arrogance … the boldness to write off and to judge.
c. The paradox is that there is a righteous judgment but this thing is tricky.
11. Paul warned against the false teaching of abstaining from food, as this asceticism would magnify self by
self-denial.
a. We would magnify ourselves by denying ourselves.
b. We would have so much confidence by denying ourselves.
c. We would have so much confidence and so much arrogance related to ourselves because we denied
ourselves.
X. THE BRIDEGROOM FAST LEADS US INTO CONFIDENCE INTO HIS BURNING HEART NOT CONFIDENCE IN
OUR FLESH.
A. Paul had a passion about having confidence in the grace of God not confidence in the flesh.
B. Yes, there are more perils in indulgence than in abstinence but there are perils in abstinence as well when our focus
is not on a God of burning love.
C. When our focus is on a God with a burning heart of love that focus pulls us out of this peril.
D. These are two enemies of the grace of God. The destructiveness of self-indulgence, but that is not the only
enemy of grace. The destructiveness of religious self-denial when it magnifies our self in our own hearts.
E. We do not stand before the God of burning desire for us because we fast.
F. His heart is set on fire for us; therefore we fast. We want to feel this and have our capacity enlarged.
G. The focus of the bridegroom God in the first commandment is an essential deliverance from this fourth peril of
religious deception.
XI. PERIL #5 – AN INCREASE OF DEMONIC ACTIVITY
A. There is an increase of demonic activity especially with extreme amounts of fasting, although this does not apply to
everybody.
1. The Lord has called several servants throughout history to intensive, long-term fasted lifestyles.
a. This does not mean one long fast, but when have gone years in a certain rhythm of a fasted lifestyle.
b. It is not just that they go for one period, but they embrace this in a quite intense way.
2. This fifth peril is not applicable to everyone but it is good to know it exists in case you enter into that
dimension for a season.
3. Some of you will be called to the intensive grace of fasting. Others of you will not, but you will know of others
who fall into this and it is just good to know about.
4. The subject of extreme fasting is a very vast subject. It can be called shark infested waters.
5. It is glorious but the enemy is lurking at every angle, the things that bring power to the kingdom of God, the
devil typically has a counterfeit of power in the kingdom of darkness.
B. The things that bring power to the kingdom of God; are uniquely targeted by the enemy in order to undermine
those that embrace them.
1. We approach these areas with a certain amount of fear and trembling so that we are cautious.
2. We are not simplistic or naïve as we enter into intensive lifestyles of fasting; various ones for long periods of
times and seasons.
3. When you do that it is not business as usual. You need to be on red alert; these are really shark-infested
waters.
4. People who are new to this just kind of assume that it will be neat, but there are perils too.
5. When you enter into this you want to be more careful that you are committed to other believers. You do not
want to fall into some kind of strange isolationism, and you do not want to get out of the word.
6. Where the Holy Spirit increases His activity so the devil increases his activity related to fasting, especially
extensive, extreme, intensified fasting.
C. The first sphere we are going to look at is focused on unbelievers.
1. We are going to focus first on unbelievers who receive “false revelations”. They receive experiences in the
demonic realm related to fasting and it is intensified.
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to
deceiving spirits and doctrine of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot
iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving
by those who believe and know the truth.” (1 Timothy 4:1-3)
2. In 1 Timothy 4:3, the arena of asceticism is what is linked to this area of false doctrines. It is a religious
asceticism, a denying of the flesh.
a. There is a godly asceticism; a godly denial of the flesh called the fasted lifestyle.
b. There is an ungodly, false asceticism; we looked at it last week in Colossians 2, where people want to exalt
themselves. They have confidence in their asceticism rather than the Holy Spirit.
D. At the end of the age people will pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.
1. Deceitful spirits are real beings and they have real ideas and their ideas are called doctrines of demons.
2. All of their ideas are not overtly wicked – some are subtlety wicked.
3. In 1 Timothy 4:2 they end up speaking lies and having their consciences seared.
4. Groups operating in false doctrines of asceticism often forbid people to marry and exalt religious rules
regarding foods.
a. They forbid marriage. Some of these ascetic groups make rules against marriage. They undermine the
marriage covenant and they almost always fall into immorality. The forbidding and dishonoring of the marriage
covenant is what is going on here.
b. Now, celibacy is a gift from God when the Holy Spirit offers it and the individual willingly receives it. That is
different from forbidding people to marry.
c. The second thing they do is have all these strange concoctions and rules commanding them to abstain from
foods that God created.
d. It is not just that they are doing extreme fasts, but they have all kinds of divine rules about different groups
that they exalt in a way that preoccupies them.
e. They get into self-denial with all these religious rules about this kind of food and that kind of food.
f. They are totally being preoccupied with rules instead of Jesus.
5. Men and women started all the major religions of the earth in extreme seasons of fasting.
a. This was not an accident. Major religions started by unbelievers in intense seasons of fasting.
b. This is especially true in the eastern religions. These are unbelievers who do not care at all about Jesus and
they are more committed to fasting than the western church is.
c. We are far more willing to embrace religious fasting when we have the grace of bridegroom fasting, but by
and large the western church is not so interested in it, but they are going to be.
d. Remember Zechariah 8 tells us that God is going to release joyful fasting with gladness.
e. In 2 Corinthians 11;14, satan appears to these world religious leaders.
f. Mohammed, the one who started Islam, went up on the mountain with intensive fasting and prayer and a
supernatural being appeared to him as an angel of light. Muslims are those who believe the doctrine of Islam.
(1) It was a demon that appeared to him and gave him all these rules, but he encountered a real being with
light.
(2) He came off a mountain of prayer and fasting and created a whole religious system called Islam.
g. Islam was started by a man committed to fasting, a lot of the eastern religions were. “Enlightened” in seasons
of fasting.
E. The second sphere of demonic activity is to unstable believers
1. Mormonism which was started by Joseph Smith and he claimed to have had angelic visitors.
a. Many say that he was actually a churchman, a clergyman, possibly a born again believer.
b. He began to separate himself for long times of prayer and fasting and an angel of light appears to him and
gives him new information.
c. He was an unstable believer. He went on these long times of fasting and received these visitations with false
ideas.
2. Believers can receive these false visitations.
3. Sometimes young people who go on extremely long fasts come back with real bizarre delusional ideas and
they really did love Jesus.
4. Delusional ideas of grandeur that no mature believer would ever confirm.
5. One guy came back, higher than a kite, buzzing, no food, no sleep and a lot of coffee and he was completely
convinced of what he thought God showed him. He thought he was single-handedly going to stop abortion in
America. He thought he was the main man.
6. Unstable believers can be deceived with delusional ideas of grandeur and imagine the most bizarre extreme
things like going to meet the antichrist and punch him.
7. The one thing these people had in common was that they gave themselves to extensive fasting and
separated themselves from the body.
8. They entered into these shark infested waters with pride and no caution.
9. The caution we should take when we go into intensive fasting is to be doubly connected to one another, doubly
reading the word of God, and doubly open to correction from those in spiritual authority.
10. These people were known as believers who loved the Lord so I put them in the unstable believer category.
11. Typically people get separated. They separate themselves, they do not read the word of God, and they lost
their focus of intimacy in their fast and begin to focus on their own personal grandeur.
12. We have to keep them in the body, and focused on the bridegroom fast where they want to be lovesick and
not famous in the world.
13. We must be committed to authentic Christianity and down to earth realism. We have to be people who do
the Sermon on the Mount type of living, who are grounded in the word where the higher they go in God, the more
submissive, tender, and meek they get with other people and not the other way around. This is real fruit.
F. The third sphere in increased demonic activity is with mature believers.
1. It is not the unbeliever with a false doctrine or the unstable believer with delusional ideas of grandeur, but a
mature believer with a demonic visitation in seasons of fasting.
2. They are not being deceived; they are having demonic, tormenting encounters.
3. Some see an angel of light appear, whether the devil or a principality of some sort, and it gives them an offer.
4. Sadu Sundar Sing was a man who lived in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He decided he was going to follow Jesus
and the Lord appeared to him when he was 16 years old. They say he was the most dedicated man of God who
ever walked the land of India.
a. His deal was he would never ask for food or money and would walk through the land preaching Jesus. If
somebody gave him food he ate it and if no one gave him any he never asked for it. If anybody asked him if he were
hungry he never answered, he just walked through the land. He went days and days without food because he would
never ask and he would just sleep where he slept.
b. He had open visions and preached with signs and wonders.
c. It is told that he once had a angel of light appear to him and offered to make him one of the great religions of
the world. He said, “Wait, in the name of Jesus”, and the demon was exposed as a demon.
d. It was because of the intensity of his fasting and the way he lived that this demonic offer came to him. It is
serious business.
5. Paul Cain had a full-on encounter in the natural. One night a demonic being appeared to him and offered to
give him tremendous honor and promotion. He said, “In the name of Jesus’ and tested the spirit and the demon left.
It shook him to the core of his being.
6. Saint Anthony of Egypt about 250 AD and lived to be 106. When he was about 25 years old the Lord spoke
to him in a dream and told him to separate himself.
a. he was the first monk in history and the Lord tells him to separate himself through intensive fasting.
b. He goes out a couple of miles into the wilderness of Egypt to an old abandoned fort when he was 25 or 28
years old and he stayed there for 20 years.
c. They brought him bread twice a year. Hello! I mean bugs and all and all he would eat was bread and water
for 20 years.
d. Everyone was concerned about what was going on, but he locked himself in, doing intensive prayer and
fasting. Of course he broke the rule with the total isolation but he ends up okay.
e. He goes on to live to be 106. So much for fasting ruining your health.
f. He comes back 20 years later at 45 years of age and in the power of God. He did tremendous signs and
wonders from age 45 to 105.
7. There are many of these monastic men and women that went on to live to great ages who were committed to
fasting.
G. It is an interesting paradox. The very bridegroom fast we are talking about provokes a demonic attack and yet it is
the very thing the Holy Spirit uses to equip us to overcome the demonic attack it provokes.
1. Moving into these intense realms of the spirit and the western church has hardly paid attention to it.
2. Men and women throughout history have ventured into these deep regions in the heart of God.
3. God is going to raise up men and women, the Anna’s and the Mary’s of the western church, it will not be just
the people of the middle ages or the eastern or the Asian church, but good old fashioned, Protestant, mid-westerners
who are going to go deep in God in a way that will shake the western church.
4. We need to enter into these realms. If we do not enter into them ourselves we might be related to someone
who is and we need to go in with caution and understanding of the pros and cons.
XII. PERIL #6 – THE LOSS OF EFFECTIVENESS IN THE SHORT TERM
A. There is an inability to accomplish as much in the short term or to produce as much fruit in the short run in fasting.
1. Ministry effectiveness, business effectiveness, effectiveness in the world or your secular job is lessened in the
short-term.
2. If the Lord calls you to an intensive lifestyle of fasting, you cannot do heavy work either mentally or physically.
3. If the Lord calls you into an intensive fasted lifestyle and you do not have Anna or Mary of Bethany type of
circumstances you cannot do work that requires heavy mental of physical expectations.
a. If you are an accountant, you are going to get those numbers dyslexic.
b. If you have a job where you have to pay attention, say an RN in an ICU unit, your effectiveness will go down.
c. You cannot have a mentally or physically taxing job and enter into the realm of fasting in an intensive way.
4. Either the Lord has to keep you at a certain level with this fasted lifestyle or He has to change your occupation.
a. This will be for the person who fasts three days a week. You cannot focus because you are blurry.
b. You cannot work as long because you have physical energy loss.
c. You cannot work as well because you have lost your resolve. Your resolve to accomplish things is weakened.
5. Your resolve in God is going to be strengthened, but your resolve in the natural is going to be weakened.
6. You are going to have a tremendous loss of desire to go out and create the new opportunity in ministry or
business.
B. God has strategic time delays that He has built into the plan for our lives in order to produce humility with spiritual
depth in our lives. There are two types of time delays related to weakness:
1. There is voluntary weakness found in the fasted lifestyle.
a. Through voluntary weakness we cannot produce near as much in the here and now and our fruit is delayed
down the road.
b. There is a time delay built into the fasted lifestyle. If you want effectiveness in your ministry you won’t see it
for a while.
c. What could have been done in three years you won’t see for ten.
2. There are involuntary weaknesses called trials.
a. David running around in the wilderness for seven years chased by Saul and having a bunch of spears
thrown at him. Those are trials and time delays.
b. Joseph hanging out in the dungeon for thirteen years with a prison sentence is a serious time delay.
3. Whether it is an involuntary time delay called a trial, or a voluntary time delay called fasting, God strategically
uses the time delays to produce humility with profound spiritual depth in our lives.
4. With these time delays we do not lose time. We only appear to lose time.
C. There is a tremendous paradox related to ministry effectiveness in the fasted lifestyle.
1. In the short term of the first five years you are relatively ineffective, but in the long term your effectiveness is
significantly greater, in ministry and probably business if you are called into this.
a. You do not have to be in ministry to do the fasted lifestyle, but you cannot do heavy work and do the intensive
fasted lifestyle.
b. Your effectiveness is significantly minimized and you are thrust into a time delay where the Lord is working
great humility with spiritual depth, but in the long term your effectiveness will be so much greater.
2. Suggested ministry goals:
a. To call forth thousands of intercessory missionaries across the earth
b. Raise up thousands of forerunners committed to the forerunner ministry and the fasted lifestyle.
3. Approaches to goals:
a. You can accomplish far more if quit fasting and start working harder. You could organize better, have far more
energized work, and get more people and do it with strength.
b. Or you can do it in the weakness of fasting. There will be less ability to do it energized, far less ability to
organize it to the measure of whatever your abilities are. In the short term you will have far less intercessory
missionaries and forerunners being trained.
4. The weakness approach in 25 years from now if stay with it in the grace of God – the numbers will be far
greater having lived in weakness for the whole 25 years.
5. The Lord puts these time delays into the system and fasting is a voluntary one.
6. There will be a far greater number of people doing this in five years if you do it the slower method of doing
it in weakness related to fasting. You could train singers and produce materials better with more energy and put
the vision before more people in five years but in 25 years it will be far less.
7. There is a divine economy that is loosed in the long-term thing called fasting.
D. One cannot do the contemplative lifestyle and be in a governmental ministry.
1. Guy Chevreau is a theologian based in Toronto who did his PhD and his Master’s dissertation on Thomas
Merton.
a. Thomas Merton died about 1963 and was the most renowned contemplative man in the 20th century.
b. He wrote profoundly on the subject in a monastery down in Kentucky called Gethsemane and his presence
caused that seminary to explode. A couple thousand men joined it.
2. You cannot have the same measure of results in effectiveness in the short term, whether in ministry or in
business in the fasted lifestyle, but in the long run you will have far more fruit.
3. Take the same principal up a notch. Let’s look at our earthly life verses our eternal life; the same principal
taken up a notch. It is intensifying when you contrast time and eternity instead of five years versus 25 years.
4. The western mind measures productivity totally different than God measures productivity. The judgment seat
is the day of our glory when we stand before the Lord. The judgment seat is the great equalizer; we all stand before
the Lord and it does not mater how well, how many gifts you had, how much talent, how much money or how much
natural ability. Everyone stands on the same level. It is about how much we grew as lovers of God. Period.
E. Only one thing matters and that is the movement of the heart towards God in voluntary love.
1. God reasons from eternity. Some of the ones who have done the greatest amount of fasting are the opposite
of skinny because their metabolisms are messed up even in seasons of intense fasting.
2. Let’s call Anna a skinny old lady. Let’s look at the true greatness, the true effectiveness of this woman.
a. She walks through the temple and people would say, “There she is again. What is she doing? She never
has lunch and she just mumbles all day long and goes home.”
b. She did this for 60 years. She did not have a big bank account or a big ministry. Nobody really cared.
c. When we stand next to Anna on the day of eternity we will be shocked by how this little Jewish woman
measures up in the grace of God.
d. To have the crown given to Anna who is famous in history after she died, but in her day she was not.
e. In Anna’s day everyone was not trying to have her sign their book. They just thought she was a funny woman
who kept showing up. She was consistent but odd. She just mumbled over in the corner, did not have a lot of friends.
3. We will never know the true effectiveness of Mary of Bethany until the last day. To have the crown given that
woman, rejected by leaders, oh to have the crown that will be upon her head.
4. Consider John the Baptist; 18 years of a fasted lifestyle for 18 months of a ministry preaching out in the
wilderness.
a. He was never invited to the Sanhedrin conference. He always preached in the wilderness. They had to walk
five miles just to hear him. He really made it hard to show up for his meetings.
b. This guy out in the wilderness 18 years. He only preaches 18 months and dies. That’s it.
c. Jesus will say again to john the Baptist:
“The greatest man ever born of a woman” (Matthew 11:11)
d. God measures life so differently than we do!
XIII. PERIL #7 – RELATIONAL DISRUPTIONS AND SOCIAL PRESSURES
A. To be a person of only one thing in the midst of a society that is not a society of one thing is trouble. This is one of the
downsides to the fasted lifestyle.
1. In Matthew 11:11 Jesus called john the greatest man ever born of a woman and seven verses later in
Matthew 11:18 they called him demonized in his generation.
a. That is unthinkable that the greatest man who ever walked the face of the earth besides Jesus was called
demonized by the multitudes of his day.
b. A lot of multitudes rejoiced in him and then did not follow him anymore. They went out and heard him a time
or two, bought the t-shirt, told everyone they went to the conference and then did not do anything he said. That is
social pressure.
c. It will disrupt your life, your status quo, your social life.
d. People want you happy with what makes them happy. When you are not happy with that and are happy with
something else that bugs them. That bugs them and they feel rejected, they feel judged, and all their energy gets
aroused. They come up with bible verses and get on the phone and figure out a theory on why you are off.
e. It is trouble! They want you happy with what makes them happy.
B. This society does not know how to relate to a person of one thing.
1. Take Mary, Jesus looked at her and said, “this one thing Mary has done.”
“But this one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:42
2. Paul said, “this one thing I do, I forget the good and the bad of the past and I press into Jesus.” He said even
his good stuff he forgot as well as his bad stuff. I am living in the present and am pressing into the heart of God, the
prize of Jesus.
“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that which
Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” Philippians 3:12
3. David said, “This one thing I have desired; that I gaze upon His beauty.”
“One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the
days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple”. Psalm 27:4
a. David’s zeal got him into trouble. He is complaining to God in a righteous way. He says that shame covers
his face because of God and that he has become a stranger to his comrades. His friends think he is weird. They
look at him and say, “David you have gone over the edge.”
b. David says he is an alien to his literal brothers and sisters. They look at him and they tell him, “David you have
lost it”. I am a stranger and an alien to my familiar friends. Zeal for his cause has eaten David up and they had no
zeal and that troubles them. The reproach of those who reproach God has fallen on David.
c. Interestingly when Jesus shows up at the temple during the very first Passover of His ministry and cleanses it
He quotes King David out of this verse (Psalm 69).
d. David said the reproach is the people that say they love God but secretly in their heart do not love God’s
ways and get mad at me when I do God’s ways. They are really mad at God for having ways like that.
e. He wept and chastised his soul with intense fasting and when he did it, it became his reproach. He made
sackcloth his garment and became a by-word to those who sat at the gate. We are talking about the elders, the
church leaders, the cool guys in the community. They spoke against him with things like, “Watch out for that young
man.”
f. He said even the drunkards sang mockery songs against him as a religious fanatic. This is King David. We
do not think about this part of His life. He would walk past drunkards and hear them say, “There is that kid who fasts
all the time”. The elders say, “Young people stay away from him.”
g. His brothers say, “You are like an alien, we do not know you.” His comrades were strangers to him. He said,
“God I am reproached with the reproach that they have against You because I have given myself to You with zeal.”
“Because for your sake I have born reproach; shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger
to my brothers, and an alien to my mother’s children. Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up. And the reproaches
of those who reproach You have fallen on me. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that became my reproach.
I also made sackcloth my garment; I became a by-word to them.” Psalm 69:7-12
C. The problem with fasting is that it makes us fearless in our spirits.
1. let’s look at Matthew 9:16-17. It is interesting that Jesus introduces the bridegroom fast and then He talks
about old and new wineskins.
2. Men and women who do the bridegroom fast find that it produces fearlessness and boldness in your spirits.
3. This fast produces worshippers and such men and women have not an ounce of political spirit. These are
worshippers that cannot be controlled by old wineskin structures.
4. The old wineskin structures motivated by politics restrain people by subtle threats, by demoting them in the
structures. A lovesick young man or woman, or old man or woman says, “I do not care if I am demoted.”
5. My definition of the old wineskin structure is one led by governmental ministries who have no regard for
regular prayer or fasting. They become rigid and lose their flexibility and become possessive about the wine that is
under them.
6. They begin to imagine that their position of power can be used to promote their own honor and they always
put the fire out and drive away these fearless people because the fearless people usually lack a bit of wisdom. They
are a little untempered and these old wineskin structures are absolutely paranoid because they cannot control them.
7. They are used to control people by threats and warnings and maneuverings and demotions. You cannot
control a bridegroom fasting person because they do not care about promotion within the structure.
8. Jesus warned about the inevitability of the tension when he said these are fearless, anointed, lovesick
worshippers who do not care about being demoted in the system. These systems will break if the fasting people get
in the bottom of them and are led by non-fasting leaders. They are going to start to collide because the leaders are
used to ruling by intimidation and fear, but these people cannot be bought or sold. They do not care!
“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is
made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins
are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:16-17