“Wake up, brethren; wake up from your peace and safety attitude and seek the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is now nigh, in every church, with fasting, with confession and true repentance of heart.” Ellen G. White, Letter 301, 1903.5.
In this session we will consider what the Bible says about the various things that go on during the course of a fast.
1. It often results from an acute awareness of a significant spiritual deficit or defeat, or the potential of something life-altering taking place.
2. This new awareness results in sorrowing for sin and other spiritual deficits.
3. It includes humbling oneself.
4. It often initially begins as a private fast.
5. Often includes finding an undistracted location.
A. Christ’s habits of communing with Father.
B. In the closet, in nature
6. It often includes an alteration of diet.
7. It can impact dress. In OT times, fasting often included wearing sackcloth, ashes, and torn clothing as signs of mourning and distress.
8. It includes prayer.
9. It sometimes includes praying with others.
10. It includes praying for others.
11. It includes opening oneself to God.
12. It is a time of sacred nearness to God.
13. It includes careful self-examination, confession, restitution and repentance.
14. It includes an intense desire to die to self and fully surrender.
15. It can be of varying lengths of times.
16. It can include a call to a solemn assembly.
17. It will include reformation.
18. It includes a time of believing and claiming God’s promises of pardon.
19. It perseveres through.
“A wonderful blessing was represented to me as falling upon a congregation who seeking the Lord with fasting and prayer. Their countenances were lighted up with the glory of God, and angels were passing from one to another, ministering to them.” Ellen G. White, Manuscript 73, 1906.
This Discussion Guide was created for the 2022 GYC Conference in Phoenix, AZ, by Dan Augsburger of Path2Prayer Ministries.
Count the Ways Fasting GYC Pt2