Prayers of Hunger Mark 2:18-22 February 8, 2015 by Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the Series

Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.”

Introduction

It’s great to see you. Church, real quick… before we jump into the sermon… I need to tell you something. We’ve been having a great season as a church. Slowly, but surely, God has been growing our church; great things have been happening. You may or may not have noticed, but we’ve been sneaking some extra chairs in here, trying to create more room for people to sit. I want you to know that in the coming weeks, as it gets a little more crowded, we may ask you to scoot in. Let me tell you why that is. If you notice… everybody likes the end seat. It’s a good seat. Right? You know, you can go to the bathroom… you don’t have to climb over anybody. If I really make you angry, you can just get out of here really quick. Right? That kind of stuff… I understand that. Let me tell you why we’re going to ask you to scoot in. If you come in once worship has started, and we are standing… this room appears to be entirely full… even though, if you look, in the middle of many of our rows there’s room. So, in the coming weeks, we may ask you to do that. I just wanted to explain why we would be doing that because the seats that people would be able to see, if we’re standing as they come in, are end seats. We just want to make it very easy and comfortable for our guests. We’ve been getting our ushers organized as well to do that, but I just wanted to make you aware of that. Is everybody okay with that, if we do that? (Clapping) Okay… alright. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Now… on to other things. If you have your Bible, get it out with me. We’re going to be in Mark chapter 2. I’m excited to share this with you today. I’m going to pray over us and then we’re going to jump into Scripture together today. Mark 2:18 is where we’re going to be today.

“Lord, we love You. We are grateful for Your Word. We are thankful for all the things that You give us. God, we particularly are grateful for the fact that You have spoken to us through this Book… that You have illuminated it… that You have inspired it… that Your Holy Spirit encounters us through that. So God, we thank You for that and we are grateful for it. Lord, we pray and we ask that You would teach us today that we could encounter You freshly… that You would grow us. Lord, we pray this and we ask it in the Name of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.”

If you asked me to rank the things that I love the most, this is probably the way it would go down: Number One: Jesus. Number Two: My family. And then Number Three… slightly below my family but not probably as far away as it should be… Food. I’m just going to be really honest with you. I love to eat. My family was not an exceptionally wealthy family. We weren’t a “poor” family but we didn’t have a whole lot of extra. We weren’t an extravagant family but do you know what we did have? We liked to eat up in that place. We enjoyed cooking.

I just happened to bring a few pictures of some of the things I liked to eat, whenever I was a kid. I’m going to show these to you. First of all: biscuits. Does anybody remember biscuits? (Clapping) I love those things. I don’t get to eat those as much as I used to but… man… they were good. Fried chicken… how about fried chicken? Anybody enjoy fried chicken? Yeah… of course. I heard a kid over there, “Yes!” Good. I’m with you. My dad, a farmer, raised on a farm, always had a massive garden so we had a lot of vegetables. Is anybody in here a turnip green person? Let’s get an “Amen” for turnip greens right now. Then, my final favorite food which I personally believe Jesus Himself may be handing out at the head table at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb… perhaps the perfected form even of manna that was given in the desert… pan gravy! Can we get an “Amen” for pan gravy? Yeah! Pan gravy… that’s good stuff. I learned a lot about eating this kind of food as a kid because it wasn’t fancy food, but it was the sort of food that God provided and was very good to us to give. Food is very cultural and so in your family or in your culture or your upbringing, maybe these weren’t the dishes that you ate but you had other dishes that you enjoyed… even if your family didn’t have a lot of extra, you would make these things, and you would have memories associated with them. I eat these foods and mentally I am transported back to sitting around my parents’ table and eating with them… laughing with them. In my house, as a kid, did you know we only had one channel on our TV. I’m not even exaggerating… One channel. That explains a lot about me suddenly, doesn’t it? One channel. It was a fuzzy reception of the local CBS affiliate. We spent a lot of time around the table, and we spent a lot of time getting to know one another… laughing… cooking in the kitchen. I did not have this sort of language whenever I was a young man. I didn’t understand it but now I see that food was a gift that God gave, called common grace. It’s just

1 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.” something that’s good. It brings us together. We get to eat good food and enjoy good company because it’s a sign of the good things that God has given through Himself, through His Son Jesus Christ. The food points to Him. I understand that now. So my love for food is something that I hold very tightly to. I still enjoy cooking and eating and that sort of thing because it’s something that really helps me understand just how good of a gift it is that God has given to us. That is the crazy truth about how God also led me to an enjoyment of something that seems to be opposite of food... which is fasting. Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to preach on fasting today. You’re like, “Man… I should have gone to brunch! Why did I come here? What’s going on?” (Laughter) I know some of you right now are saying, “This has nothing to do with me.” I want to ask you to give me thirty minutes. I think thirty minutes from now you may be convinced that fasting is not only something that you may need to engage in, but it may actually be something that you will be convinced that God wants to use in your life to help you grow closer to Him. Let me tell you about that, because I believe that fasting is something that God uses so that we can actually learn how to feast and savor on His grace and on the faith that we have experienced in Jesus Christ.

The Practice of Fasting…

1. Can Be Dangerous (v. 18)

So let’s just jump in… Mark chapter 2, verses 18 through 22. “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’”

So this is where we’re going to start today. We’re going to start with this moment where Jesus is encountered and asked why He is not fasting. I think one of the first things that we need to do is just get out of the way the fact that fasting actually can be very dangerous. I’m not talking physically dangerous, although it could be that if you have a certain medical condition. I’m talking about spiritually dangerous. Look at verse 18: “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast but You don’t?“ In other words, “Hey, Jesus… we’re holy… we’re fasting. Why don’t You and your guys?” That’s really probably one of the very first things that we should learn about fasting. It is that fasting does not make you more spiritual. That’s actually one of the most common misconceptions out there: “If I fast, well then now I’m a more spiritual person. If I do that, I’m a holy person.” There’s no such thing as a holy person in Scripture; there’s only people who have been received in Christ. Right? You see, there’s no classification of holy people. I’m no more spiritual than you. I’m no more holy than you. I have the same access to the Father that you do. Even though I’m on this platform… I’m a pastor… there’s no distinction. Why? …Because God is no respecter of persons. Fasting does not make you holier. In fact, in Scripture, Paul really rales on this a whole lot. In I Timothy 4:1-3: Beware of those who “…require abstinence from food that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”

Colossians 2:20-21: “Why do you submit to regulations? Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch.”

I Corinthians 8:8: “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do.”

Luke 18:12-14 “There were once two men. One said, ‘I fast twice a week.’ The other said, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ Only one went down to his house justified.”

2 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.”

Acts 10: Peter has a vision. In the vision, the Lord tells him, “Rise, kill, and eat.” He says, “No Lord; I will not eat anything that is considered unclean.” And the Lord says, “Nothing that I have made is unclean.”

What’s the point? The point is that the Pharisees come and they say, “Why aren’t you fasting? Because you don’t look like you’re holy enough.” You see, that’s one of the key dangers and actually one of the things that Jesus immediately puts back on. In a lot of Christian traditions, that’s the way that’s it has gone. Right? Maybe it’s not even just fasting in general as a spiritual practice, but it’s, “Well, we don’t eat these things” or “We don’t drink these things.” And, “If we do that, then that makes me holier.” Right? “Yeah. We don’t eat that so therefore I’m holier.” Or “We don’t drink that… so therefore I’m holier.” Actually that’s what Paul is roundly discussing, debating, and then debunking. He is saying none of that is the case. Not eating something or eating something does not make you holier. You see, one of the problems with being a Christian, particularly in a place like Texas, is that you feel a temptation to keep up appearances of being “Christian enough.” There’s this temptation that I have to really look to other people like I am “Holy enough.” If you are praying so that other people will see you pray or hear you pray… if you are worshipping so that other people will watch you while you worship… if you are fasting so that other people will look at you while you fast… you are neither praying nor worshipping nor fasting in the Spirit of the Lord. … Because you are doing so to impress humanity and not to commune with the Father… and that’s a sin. So, therefore, we must be exceptionally careful that whenever we do these things what we are doing is we are attempting only to talk to God. So, fasting is not something that we do to demonstrate our holiness to someone else.

Do you guys ever watch the CrossFit Games on ESPN? These guys are amazing. Right? I watch the CrossFit people… even the ladies, I’m pretty sure, could bench-press me. Me… like just lay out and they would bench-press me while they were doing squats. I mean… they are incredible. They are massive beasts of humanity. I’m just so amazed by them. The problem is that sometimes people take that sort of logic and they apply it to their spiritual life. Right? So what they begin to think is, “Well, if I fast now I’m in ‘Jesus CrossFit.’” No. Now, maybe that will help you experience and know God at a different and deeper level, but it does not make you a better Christian. Does that make sense?

2. …Yet It Is All Through Scripture (v. 19)

Fasting is one of those things that, if we think about it, it is actually used to help us not be holier or not be set apart, but it’s actually something that God uses so that we can know Him more. That actually leads to the next thing. Look at verse 19 was “And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.’” So, Jesus does two things in this response: First of all, He recognizes and says “Yes. In the past, believers have fasted… so that’s a good thing and I recognize that.” But then He says, “As long as I’m here, My believers will not fast.” So what’s that about?

First of all, let’s talk about what’s happened in the past. So he says, “Fasting can be dangerous.” We talked about that. But the next thing… we’ve got to come to grips with the fact that even though it’s this thing that can really get us out of whack spiritually, it’s all throughout the Bible. Right? You want to just say, “Well, Steve… it sounds like fasting is pretty terrible; I guess we won’t be doing that.” No… actually what you want to say. Okay… so there’s a lot of danger involved with it, but why is it all through the pages of Scripture? Primarily in the Old Testament, fasting was associated with the notion of mourning. If you were fasting, you were typically mourning something. So, if you go and you look at Ezra, Ezra declares a fast… there by the river. If you look at the Nehemiah… they fast because they’re mourning the loss of their city. If you go and read from the Psalmist, over and over he talks about his tears being his food, and he recognizes the fact that he’s lost. I wrote this verse down here just because I thought it was a pretty good example of mourning and fasting tied together: Psalm 35:13… “As for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled my soul with fasting and my prayer returned to mine own bosom.” In other words, oftentimes if I had felt the loss of something I had done wrong or something that I had once experienced but didn’t have anymore, I would mourn that and I would accompany that with fasting.

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Now, there are a couple of different instances… the people of Israel get ready for battle… Moses before he writes down the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone in Exodus 34, he fasts… but the preponderance of the examples in the Old Testament is tied to this idea of mourning, and it’s all through Scripture. So you say, “Okay, so it’s an Old Testament thing and that’s why we don’t do it anymore.” No; actually that’s not it either because if you go and you look at the New Testament you will see Jesus Himself fasts for 40 days before He is tempted. Also, in Acts chapters 13 and 14, the Apostles get together and they fast so that they can hear from the Lord and get direction for the early Church. In Luke chapter 2 we read that Anna the prophetess who is in the temple, fasted until she finally got to see the Messiah face-to-face. In I Corinthians chapter 7, Paul says for couples that are struggling that they ought to set aside sexual intimacy and instead spend time in fasting and prayer so that they can draw closer together and then see if their intimacy has increased. On top of all of that, in Matthew chapter 6, whenever Jesus Himself is teaching about fasting, He does not say, “If you fast…” He says, “When you fast...” He assumes that we are going to actually engage in this sort of activity. I don’t know about you, but when I hear Jesus say, “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret and your Father who is in secret will reward you.” If Jesus is assuming that I am participating in this activity and it’s all through the Old Testament and all through the New Testament, then clearly I need to consider fasting as something that must be part of my regular spiritual rhythm and routine. But… there are all these dangers associated with it. What then is the point?

3. …To Teach Me To Feast On God (vv. 21-22)

Well… good news. The point is not about you. You see, the point is for us actually to discover more and more and more of the nature and the goodness and the grace of God, and that as we do that, guess what happens? It begins to open up to us.

If my wife and I are going out on a date, we basically have three options. Number One: Go out to eat. Number Two: Go to a movie. Number Three: If we’re feeling crazy… we’re going to go out to eat and then we’re going to go to a movie. Alright? These are basically the dates that we engage in whenever we do this. But every now and then, we’ll just say, “You know what? Forget all that. We’re going to do something we have never done before.” We are going to just be crazy, and we’ll go do something that we’ve never done. Do you know what’s funny? We very rarely remember the times when we’re just doing the same thing that we always do, but it’s whenever we do something totally different and we go, “Whoa! That was neat.” We have stories about that; we remember that. It’s kind of this fresh idea.

I want you to think about this: My friend Gaylen was saying, “Hey, Steve… whenever you fast… do you know what happens? It’s like you’re going on different kind of a date with God.” I know, that sounds kind of weird. Right? … Dating God. But it’s this idea that you’re having a new experience. Why? …Because it will show you a different facet of who God is. It will show you something about Him that you had not encountered or considered before. So this is the thing… It’s that fasting is not about me. It’s actually about the glory of God being more and more revealed so that then I can actually enjoy Him more so that then I can actually bring Him more praise and more glory. I can point back to Him. Here’s the thing: It’s that fasting then has all these dangers but it’s also a tool that God has given. What then is the point of fasting? I’m glad you asked… verse 21: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and that wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’” Jesus is saying, “Hey, look. Let Me teach you about fasting.” So they come to Him and they say, “Why don’t you guys fast?” And He says, “Well, right now, I’m with them. I’m the Bridegroom; I’m here. I am present. I am in this place.” So He’s saying that He’s here. ”But there will come a time,” He says, “When I will no longer be with them and then they will fast.” Friends, we are in that time. We are in the time when Jesus is not with us. One day He will return but He is not here yet. So He says, “Now, we will fast.” And He says, “Now look… this is not like the old form of fasting.” Some people try to separate out

4 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.” the unshrunk cloth and the wineskin to be something totally different. No. It’s His teaching on fasting. Why? … Because He says, “Consider the old way of fasting…” The fact that fasting used to be connected with mourning and grief… that’s the old way. That is not the new way. The new way now is Christian fasting, and Christian fasting is the opposite of mourning. Christian fasting is feasting on God. Christian fasting is feasting on God.

The more that you begin to discover what Scripture says about fasting in the New Testament, the more that you begin to discover that fasting, in Jesus’ name, is about the fact that I have now completely tasted the fullness of God. I was satisfied by that grace, and I want to experience it and know it more and more.

Pastor John Piper, in his book entitled “A Hunger For God”, writes this… I love this: “The newness of our fasting is this… its intensity comes not because we have never tasted of the wine of Christ’s presence but because we have tasted it so wonderfully, by His Spirit, and we cannot now be satisfied until the consummation of joy arrives.” Translation: We once have experienced Christ’s presence so fully and we won’t get to experience it any fuller until He returns, so we want to do something to help us replicate that experience again, to know His grace and to know His joy. The new fasting… Christian fasting… is a hunger for the fullness of God, aroused by the aroma of Jesus’ love and by the taste of God’s goodness and the Gospel of Christ. This is the kind of fasting that is designed to recreate… to get more of, to remember, to re-enter into… God’s goodness and God’s grace that He gave you when He gave you Jesus.

So this is what I think Christian fasting is. It’s a feasting on God. Let me tell you. I think there are two components to it. Number One: It’s an act of memory. Number Two: It’s an act of carving out space to experience that memory. Let me explain.

First… It’s an act of memory. Have you ever noticed how certain foods, when you smell them, you can taste them before you ever put them in your mouth… like your brain says, “Oh yeah… I remember that grease.” And it starts to do that. Do you know this? Anyone? Or am I the only one who does this? (Laughter) Okay… a few of you are, “Okay… I eat from time to time.” Alright, that’s good. So you’ve experienced this before. I want to show you how this works.

Every year on my birthday, my wife makes me an apple pie. I love her homemade apple pie. It’s like this great gift. I don’t need to eat it all the time. She makes me one of these a year. It’s great. I love it. But I went to her and I said, “Joy… I really want to explain to people how, if they think about food, they can kind of taste it. Would you be willing to make an apple pie and me take pictures of it?” And she said, “Yes.” So here we go. So, first of all, she takes the apples… she washes them. Okay. You guys can already feel that. Right? On your hands, you feel the water. Next, then she has this fun little Pampered Chef-type device, and she cuts the apples, cores them, right there. Next, she peels them. She takes off the peel, because you don’t want that in your apple pie. I am a proponent of peel but not in my pie. She takes those… she puts them in a bowl, and she pours sugar and cinnamon and other good things on top of it, and then she starts to stir it together, and the sugar and the cinnamon stick to the apples. Now, if you’re standing there taking pictures, as I happened to be, you can smell it. Right? You start to smell the cinnamon. You’re like, “Oh, baby! This is going to be good.” She then takes the piecrust and she stretches it out across the pie pan, and once she has done that, then she takes the filling that she’s made and she pours it in there. Now, you may not be able to tell what’s happening because the colors are similar. What she is doing there… she is now taking pats of butter and placing them on top of the filling of the pie. Can I get an “Amen” right now? Somebody? There you go; that’s good stuff. So then she comes along and she cuts vents in the crust to let the steam escape as the water leaves the fruit. If you look in that right vent… do you see a little bit of butter looking out at you right there? Yeah… that’s good stuff. Right? So she does that and then she bakes it and then… “Ba Bam!” There it is. Doesn’t that look good? How many of you can kind of taste apple pie in your mind right now? A few of you? Yeah… Guess what? I brought it with me. Here it is. (Laughter) I know… So the camera shot… where are we? Yeah. That’s good looking… Could I get a volunteer to come up here and eat pie with me right now? (Laughter) Too bad. This is my lunch. You cannot do that. So here’s the thing. You can taste that in your mind right now. You know that. Let me

5 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.” ask you a question. You can do that because God has created memory. He has created memory inside of you, and you can walk back to the place where you’ve tasted that. It doesn’t have to be pie… it can be whatever food.

Let me ask you a question. Why did God give you memory? Not just so that you could recreate food experiences in your mind. He gave you memory also so that you could remember the moments of grace and deliverance that He touched you with. In my Bible, God spoke to me. Back in July of 2013, I wrote something out in the margin of my Bible next to Genesis chapter 2; I ran across it this week as I was preparing this sermon. This is what it says. Right next to Genesis 2, right before Eve eats the fruit. I wrote down: “July 24, 2013: I suddenly saw, not Eve eating the fruit, but me; and I saw Jesus choosing to forgive and to save me. And in my known iniquity, His grace became even sweeter.” Do you know what happened as I read that? I was transported to a day when I remember that I felt very, very weak, and I read God’s word and God showed me: “Steve, even though you betrayed me and you ate of the fruit, I delivered you anyway.” I was taken right back to that moment. Fasting is feasting on God because what it is designed to do is to plunge you directly into God’s Word and another activity… because all through Scripture, fasting is not just something that we do away with, but it’s also a place where we fully and completely engage in prayer. Did you know that? Fasting is always connected with prayer. Why? …Because it’s a tool that God gives us to feast on Him. So we go and we dive into His Word. And we go and we dive into prayer, and what is the purpose there? I am savoring God’s grace and God’s goodness in my mind, and I’m going back to all the places where He delivered me and all the times that He healed me and all the times that He provided for me and all the times that He was there whenever I felt like He ought not to have been. I think of all of those things and the more that I think of those things, the sweeter He becomes, and I taste and I see that the Lord is indeed good. That is the way that fasting is designed to work. It is a carving out of memory so that I might know Him. Why do you think that Scripture says, “Your Word is sweeter than honey”? … Because He is saying, “It is better than actually eating of that.” Why does Scripture say, “Blessed is he who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night…” “He is like a tree planted by streams of water...” …Better than water …Better than honey …Better than grain. “Your Word, Your prayer, Your presence, Your grace in me… I want to feast on that.” That’s what fasting is designed to do: To carve out that memorial place.

Are you in a season or have you been in a season of spiritual dryness? Have you ever gone through that? God uses fasting to combat dryness. Why? …Because I carve out things that are distracting me and I delve into the memory and I savor the goodness and the grace of when God saved me, healed me, delivered me, rescued me, was my rock, was my strong tower… that’s what the gift is.

Now that’s the first piece. What’s the second piece? The second piece is then is that it forces me to carve out a space to do these things. I carve out a space to do these things. In the ancient world, the activity that took the majority of your time was hunting, gathering, cooking, preparing, and serving food. That’s what you did all day, every day. But we don’t live in that reality any longer. Even in just the last 30, 40, or 50 years, the preparation of food has changed so radically from all of the thousands of years of human history prior to that… that we sometimes forget. So a lot of us, when we talk about fasting, we think it’s really only about food. “Well, I stop eating these things.” Well, you know what? It’s a great tool if you want to do that, but it doesn’t have to be about food. What it’s really about is about creating space. Why? …Because you’re busy, you’re distracted, and you have a hundred things coming at you. Fasting says, “Lord, Your love is better than life.” Fasting says, “Jesus, You are the Bread of Life. Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” “Jesus, You are our Living Water. I can deal without a drink right now. What I want to do is I want to feast on You. I want to savor Your goodness. I want to know Your grace.” That’s what fasting is designed to do. So you carve out space so that you might experience and know and feast on God. So what would that be?

Well, it could be a lot of things. Maybe it is cooking for you. Maybe it is eating for you. It could be that. Do you know what else it could be? It could be television. You say, “You know what? I’m not going to watch television after this certain time on this certain day. The time that I would normally give to television, what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull out my Bible and I’m going to spend time feasting on God’s Word, and I’m going to let Him

6 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.” change me.” You could say, “I’m going to fast from social media or from surfing the internet after these hours and what I’m going to do is I’m going to take that attention that I normally give to my phone and instead I’m going to give it to the fullness of the Holy Spirit.” You see, what happens is that you carve out a space, and it could be anything.

Richard Foster, who probably wrote the classic work on fasting entitled “Celebration of Discipline,” says that fasting is a great opportunity for you to discover the things that actually rule your life. You find the things that are taking primary space… sometimes we call them idols… and you combat them and you say, “I would rather have the presence and the Spirit and the Word of God in my life than this thing.” That’s what it’s actually honestly about. It’s that you carve out a place to have the memory and then also a space where you can experience this. The point is not… The point is not to fast from food. The point is to feast on the presence of God, and in prayer and in His Word, I experience Him and I know Him on a new level.

Now most of you have not left yet, so that’s good. Alright. (Laughter) You say, “Okay, maybe I’m convinced. Maybe. What would I do about it?” Glad you asked. On February 18th, a Wednesday night one week from this Wednesday night, we are going to begin a season, as a church, of prayer and fasting. What’s going to happen on that night… We’re going to have a night of worship, and we’re going to ask everybody to come that night. We’re going to worship together. It’s going to be great. If you want to bring your kids, you can bring your kids. We will have kid’s activities that night, as well, if you want them to go to that. We’re going to worship together… We’re going to pray together. But also we’re putting together these prayer guides. In these prayer guides, we’re going to give them to you and say, “Pray over these things.” You might, as the Lord leads, feel called to join us in a season of fasting. Now, you say, “Well, what would that look like?” Does it have to be because we’re going to say, “We’re going to fast from that day until Easter.” That’s 40 days before Easter. You might say, “Well, I can’t fast for 40 days. You know, I’ve got to check my email…” or whatever. Okay. That’s fine. What you do is you say, “I am going to fast from _____” (whatever)… whatever the Lord leads you to. Okay? Maybe that is a certain activity at a certain time. I joked in the last service. I said, “Maybe some of you need to fast from working out.” I don’t need to fast from working out. Maybe some of you do. Maybe that’s an idol in your life. It’s more like an enemy in my life. But whatever it is… you find those things and you say, “I’m going to set that activity aside and I’m going to demonstrate to myself that being in God’s Word and in prayer is more important. So you could do it two hours one day a week… you could do it ten minutes every day. Whatever it is that God calls you to fast from, you just take that activity and you say, “Okay. I’m going to set aside that time and then I’m going to delve into God’s Word and I’m going to pray and in doing so, I am putting aside that activity, that food… whatever that is… and the time that I would normally give to preparing that or to doing that activity… watching TV, surfing the web, looking at social media… I’m instead going to give to the Lord. You do that so you feast on it. Now if you have medical issues, please do not put yourself in physical danger and all this kind of stuff. I think that goes without saying.

Let me explain to you why I think that this matters. What happens in Scripture if we fast? There’s this time when Jesus sends out His disciples and He says, “Okay. Go heal. Go cast out demons. Go preach the Gospel.” They go and they do it and they come back and they say, “Jesus. There’s this one demon we couldn’t cast out.” And Jesus looks at them and He says, “That kind can only be cast out by fasting and prayer.” Interesting, right? I don’t understand it exactly, but there is something in fasting that whenever we draw closer to God and we set aside other activities, whenever we do that, there is something within that that allows us an intimacy with God to know His power and to know who He is at a level and to call upon it. I don’t understand it. I do not claim to know the mind of God. I’m simply showing you what Scripture says, and God uses it. So what would happen if 1500 adults… for 40 days… decided that they would fast and feast on the presence and the Word of God? What would happen? Would we see our neighbors differently? Would we see our coworkers differently? Would we treat our family members differently? Would the Gospel become sweeter in our lives? Would we begin to understand grace at a deeper level? Would we begin to treat other people differently? Would we see things more clearly? Yes, we would… and God might just do something. So, I want to ask you to pray, starting today, and to ask the Lord, “Lord, would You have

7 | P a g e Prayers Of Hunger| Mark 2:18-22| February 8, 2015 By Dr. Steven Bezner. Part 3 in the series “House Of Prayer.” me be part of a season of fasting beginning February 18th? I believe that if He calls us together to do that, He can do great and mighty things. He wants to do great and mighty things. And He wants our city to know His Name. And it starts with the people in this room.

I want to call us together as a church, into a season of prayer and fasting, starting on February 18th, and I want to do so, letting you know that you pray and you ask the Lord to lead you, but then, once you come into it… it’s not a holy activity to make you superman or superwoman… it’s not an activity designed to set you apart to make you more special. It’s an activity set apart for us to feast on the grace that has been given in Jesus and see what God does with that. So let’s pursue Him together… let’s feast on Him and let’s give praise to His Name. Amen? Amen. Let’s pray together.

“Father, Your grace is beyond us. It’s something we could never comprehend, yet You have given it to us. Lord, You ought to have destroyed us, but instead You delivered us. God, You gave us love and we deserve to languish. Thank you for that, Lord. Thank you. Father, we pray right now, very simply, and we ask that You would show us how we might feast on Your presence. God, awaken to our hearts right now the idols… the thing we probably need to fast from is the thing that came to our mind when whenever we said, ‘There’s no way I could give that up.’ That’s probably it, isn’t it? God, show us how to be disciplined… how to pursue You, how to know You. And God we pray that this would not be something that we would use to show off how holy we are, but Lord instead we would use it simply to know You more, to awaken us to Your grace and to Your goodness. Lord, I love You… We love You. And we say ‘Yes’ to You in this place. We pray this in the Name of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.”

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