Just blew my mind!
Deuteronomy 9:24”You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you. 25 "So I lay prostrate before the LORD for these forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you.”
This scripture just blew my mind! The mammoth crowd of around 6 lakh people taunted him, mocked at him, rebelled against him, disobeyed him, challenged him and envied him from the time Moses knew them; yet, here was Moses prostrating before the Lord interceding for their life! Moses did not give up on the assignment because his group did not obey him, he did not run away because the job was challenging, contrary to that – Moses fasted for another 40 days and 40 nights without food and water. He had just come down finishing his first set of 40 days fasting and here he is undertaking another course of fasting NOT for his family but for the people of God. Isn’t this mind-boggling? I titled this message aptly because I have still not recovered from the shock! Such an amazing character! Moses!
Subject of fasting remains an opaque subject for most of the Christians! Seldom people like to talk about it, lest they have to give up on their food treats! Today people live to eat! Why did God get angry with the Israelites when they wept for meat? Eventually why was there a great plague that killed the people while ‘the meat was yet between their teeth?’ Because it was a ‘strong craving’! (Numbers 11:4) We can call it gluttonous craving for meat! The word Christmas makes people think of: eating, dining, enjoying, baking and shopping; how many of you think of giving? Tell me. We have become mindless, unwise, insatiable and greedy spenders to gratify our gluttonous desire! My heart breaks as I write this piece! We are not taught anywhere about controlling our urge to overeat! People spend more time watching the TV commercials that talks about buying ‘this and that’ for nourishment and health of family, alas, they spend no time or less time reading the Bible that precisely gives us the recipe for peace and happiness : fasting and praying!
People have truck load of problems and yet they never think of fasting! We find the emphasis of fasting and its triumphant results everywhere in the Bible, then why are Christians unapprised on the subject? Fasting seems to be ‘not for me’ subject, we got to break the impasse on this! Please make a decision to fast! Unless you make a stern decision, you will never be able to do this.
As mentioned earlier, we are running our church in a rented premises in a residential colony who have come against our church and they brought local political leaders and police to confront and fight with us. The needs of the church are much, the only answer to our present predicament is prostrate before God with fasting and prayer. We are precisely doing that.
Some problems seem hard, huge, knotty, complex, unsolvable and demonic, Jesus said: "This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting." (Mark 9:29) Are you listening?
