What Are You Hungry For?.

I'd encourage you to read Psalm 8 after today. It's really good.

We're in our second week of talking about fasting. Who likes fasting? Anybody? Okay, we got some sort-ofs, that's not bad actually. Last week we got into fasting, and we're doing three weeks total, last week, this week, and next week. And then Lent is happening, so we have about forty-six days of getting to practice fasting together corporately as a church, which is pretty great.

Let's start with some scripture. Everyone pull out your Bible to Luke, please. Luke chapter 4.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

Everybody say, he was hungry. No kidding.

The devil said to him, if you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone.

Luke 4:1-4

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for your example. Thank you for obeying the leading of the Spirit into the wilderness. Thank you for being our shepherd and our guide today, Lord. Thank you that you continue to lead us, you continue to speak to us. Thank you that you're not absent, but you're right here in the room with us right now. Help us to see you today, Jesus. Help us to know you today. Holy Spirit, we invite you to come. Your word is like a double-edged sword, and it can cut through lies, it can cut through deception, and it can get to the heart. And that's what we want today, Lord. So we ask you to come and change us, and speak. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Pastor Abbie last week talked about fasting as primarily a way of offering yourself to Jesus. As a church we talk a lot about rule of life, a lot about practices. Does anyone remember when John was here with his potter's wheel? I feel like practices are us putting ourselves in the opposite position of what Christy did, no offense, Christy. She took the clay and tried to form it herself, and it didn't go very well. Practices like fasting, or Sabbath, put our heart back into the hands of the potter. It doesn't automatically make you more righteous or holy. It's not, if you do it you're in, if you don't you're out. It's just opening our lives up, our schedules, our hearts, to the Lord, so he can mold us.

Fasting reveals our weakness

Fasting is primarily a way of offering ourselves to Jesus. One really cool thing about fasting, and it kind of stinks, but it's cool, is that it does a great job of revealing weakness. We realize how fragile and weak we are, because it's with the stomach, and we all actually need to eat food. If we don't, we feel it immediately, thinking, man, I didn't have my midday snack and I'm feeling a little upset right now. So it reveals weakness. And one thing I love about weakness is that it reminds us how dependent we are. Paul says it well, in 2 Corinthians.

But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

That's the Lord saying this to Paul. We're going to get more into that later, but a good way to summarize it is that weakness isn't always a problem to solve. Sometimes your weakness is a place where God wants to meet with you. We'll talk about that more later.

Another good thing to remember about practices like fasting is that in general, it's just really good wisdom. It's like working out. It's a really good thing to do, exercise your body, especially if you sit at a desk a lot, get the lymphatic system moving, put your body under some healthy stress. It makes you more resilient against disease, you live longer, it's just really good. But as of right now, you're not going to get arrested if you don't work out. You're not going to get thrown in jail, not going to get fined. It's just really good to do. That's kind of how fasting is. It's not a law, there's no mandate, you must fast, otherwise somehow you're out of the kingdom of God. It's an invitation, but it is really good wisdom. You see it all throughout the body of Christ, all throughout scripture: Moses, David, Elijah, Esther, Daniel, the early church, even after Jesus left. And in Matthew 6, Jesus has this famous line, when you fast, not if you fast. A lot of people fasted back then, so it was a bit different, but the idea is that a lot of the ancient church, the great ones, fasted twice a week, sunrise to sunset, believing there was significant power in fasting. Not in fasting itself, but in the actual act, with your body, of putting yourself back into the hands of the potter. Something happens, something that moves you in power that helps you resist and deny yourself sin and appetites that don't lead you to God.

So here's an interesting question. Raise your hand if you pray weekly. Okay, you guys pray. And how many of you read your Bible weekly? A lot of you. And how many of you fast weekly? A few people, that's great.

I guess the question I had, and for the record, I don't, I like the idea of fasting a lot, I actually think it's great, but I also like to be in a calorie surplus. Especially now, Abbie and I are going back to the gym, we're going to get absolutely shredded, so I've got to get gains. So I always thought fasting was a bad idea for me. But then I look around, and I don't know many people who fast. So the question is, did fasting stop working? I don't think fasting stopped working. I think what's happened, especially here in the West, looking at our lives today, is that we're some of the most privileged people who have ever lived, and this isn't to slam us, but we're so used to getting what we want when we want it. Fasting is the exact opposite of that. It's saying, no, you're not going to get what you want for a while, so you can go deeper into an unseen realm and get something you really desire. We're going to talk about that a little, about what we're up against when we fast.

Fasting helps us grow in holiness

There are two points today. It confronts what's going on inside of us, and what kind of life we're being trained to live. There's an inward thing happening, and the inward thing is going to move us outward. Point one: fasting helps us grow in holiness.

When I was a kid, I thought holiness meant perfection, never doing anything wrong. That's not biblically the best way to think about the word. It really means set apart, for a purpose. And it means wholeness, your mind, your body, your soul all on the same page, going in a direction, specifically toward love. That's the metric we're looking for, that's the end goal, to become people of love. The end goal after this isn't to fast, it's to become a person of greater love. Fasting might help you get there. An integrated life, a set-apart life, holiness, a life where our desires, our bodies, our loves, and our trust are all pointed in the same direction. I feel like deep down we all actually want holiness. It's weird to say, I want to be holy, but I think deep down we all want a closer relationship with the Lord, where we can hear him daily, where we can pray and feel like he moves, he shows up, people are impacted around us at a deep spiritual level, sometimes even a physical level. That's what it means to be holy, to be whole. I think we're all hungry for that.

Back in Luke 4, we're told that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit into the wilderness. That's really important, because fasting is always going to be an invitation from the Spirit. It's not you trying to hurt your body for the heck of it, not at all. Jesus loves your body. The Father loves your body. The Spirit loves your body. They don't want you to punish your body. But there's an invitation for you to move into a place of hunger, for a reason. After forty days Jesus was hungry, which shouldn't surprise us, hunger is very normal. And that's where the temptation comes. The devil says, if you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. It's interesting that he doesn't tell him to eat the bread. The temptation is not for him to just eat, it's to use his power apart from trust, to use his power to bypass his dependence. Jesus was out there, probably hungry for sure, but he was with his Father, living on bread that he later tells his disciples they don't know about, the same water he told the woman at the well about: if you drink from this water you'll never thirst again. He was out there in complete dependence and reliance on the Father, building his faith, his unseen hunger. The devil tried to get him from the unseen back into the seen, and that was the temptation. Jesus says, man shall not live on bread alone, quoting Deuteronomy, where God reminds Israel that hunger in the wilderness was meant to teach them something, that life doesn't come from supply alone, but from relationship.

So when you fast, it doesn't eliminate hunger, it reveals what you have an appetite for, and where you go to appease that appetite. It shows us what we reach for automatically. I fasted on Monday, hadn't fasted since Lent last year, and it was great, actually really good. I think fasting is interesting, because I can't say how it's going to go for you, I really can't. I wasn't sure what to expect, I was just excited to step into a new thing with the Lord, and I felt like he wanted me to do it, so I did. I also recently got back on Instagram, maybe poor timing, but I noticed throughout my day, when I was at work, it was good, I was hungry, but every time I felt the hunger pain, I was so excited to meet with God that he met with me every time. It was crazy, every time I had a hunger pain I was reminded of his presence and his care for me, and also the guests coming into the cafe. I had some of the best conversations that morning with people, I felt so sensitive to him. Then I got home, where I was more comfortable, not working, not distracted anymore, and I felt like it was easier to hop on my phone when I got a hunger pain, just to avoid the thought of food. I don't really get food recipes on Instagram, but it was an easy thing to distract myself from the pain. But then I decided to just put my phone away, which was a good idea. As we approached dinner, I remember being hungry, and Abbie asked, you excited to eat? And I said, kind of, but something in my heart, when I was experiencing that hunger pain, kept reminding me, this sounds so basic, but he is my bread. It got me so excited, I thought, oh my gosh, you are my bread, I don't even need to eat, I'm nourished, I have more than I need. And I did eat food, and had too much curry, and felt bad afterward, but it was really cool to have a great first day.

I really feel like he showed up and spoke to me, and I was able to remind myself in my heart that he's what I'm really hungry for. Richard Foster, do you know who he is? He wrote a book called Celebration of Discipline, a good book. He was one of the initial people who talked a lot about spiritual practices. He said that more than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. I didn't really experience this on my first day, but I think as I continue to do it, patterns will start showing up, I'll start noticing what I keep gravitating toward, if I start to feel bitter or angry or anxious or stressed. You might not get it on the first try, but I think if you do it enough, this will come up. This is not a bad thing. I don't want you to shy away from what is controlling you. It's important to remember your weakness and your fragility.

Going back to that scripture from Paul in 2 Corinthians, it's actually a good thing, in a way, to remember your weakness. That's what Paul is talking about, he's not celebrating his brokenness, he's celebrating his dependence. There's a kind of weakness that opens you up to grace, because it tells the truth you know but don't always want to believe, that you're not self-sufficient. When I read this line, I was reminded of John 15, where Jesus talks about abiding, remaining in the vine. I thought about my plants, how toward the end of the branches they get weaker and thinner. That's like us, we're just little branches, just little babies. Branches are pretty strong when they're healthy, when the tree is healthy, they're strong, but the part that brings life to the branches, that produces fruit, is the trunk and the root system, which is super strong. So we as branches can celebrate that we're just branches, not because we're happy that we're weak, but because he is strong, and we're in union together. If he's strong, then we're strong, because we're connected. That's why I think Paul is saying he's going to boast in his weakness. I think it's really cool, I like the abiding metaphor a lot.

And I'd say the other part of our weakness is that the Holy Spirit doesn't just leave us there, he's going to work with you to reorder your desires. We have a lot of good desire that gets turned against us, usually by some sort of lie from the enemy, that makes us fixate too much on one desire, and that becomes our god, the thing we're most after in life. Through fasting, you partner with the Lord, with the Spirit, bringing those desires to him, and he'll reorder them for you. That's the heart stuff we can't just change on our own, it's not behavior modification, it's heart change, that's his work. But we put ourselves in the position for him to actually change our heart, so it forms us into wholeness, brings our bodies back into discipleship, reunites our desire and our trust. I love the word trust with fasting, because in fasting you are growing an unseen appetite, growing your faith, which is great, because we need faith in this life.

Another interesting story about fasting is when Jesus came down from the Mount of Transfiguration with his disciples, and there was a demon-possessed boy, foaming at the mouth, pretty intense. The disciples there tried to cast him out and couldn't, which is pretty striking, because in scripture that seems to be the first time someone prayed in Jesus's name and a miracle didn't happen. Jesus gets there, and the father says his son has a demon, it's super intense, the demon tries to kill him. Jesus tells them they don't have faith, that if they just had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could say to a mountain, be moved, and it would be moved. Then he prays, and the demon is cast out. Later the disciples ask him, why couldn't we cast it out? And he says, this kind can only come out by prayer and fasting. But notice what Jesus didn't do when he cast out the demon. He didn't start fasting. He didn't even pray for that long, it was super simple. So he's not saying that if you have a big problem you need more faith, so you should fast. He's saying this kind of faith comes from a lifestyle where you're just hungry for God, more hungry for the unseen than for the seen. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So if you want to grow your faith, fasting is a great way to grow that evidence of things not seen. There's a mystery to fasting, you have to believe the Lord is going to change you. So fasting makes us whole by telling us the truth about what we hunger for, and who can actually satisfy it.

Fasting trains us to resist comfort

Part two. Point two: fasting trains us to resist the pursuit of comfort and walk the kingdom way with Jesus. The keywords here are resist and pursuit. We're designed for comfort, but our comfort is the Holy Spirit, our comfort is in our union with God. We're not supposed to live a life with no comfort, just not supposed to pursue earthly comfort, and I think pursuit is the big word there.

In our community group on Tuesday, our first one, we were talking, I don't remember the exact context, about the early church, and one of the biggest things that separated them from the church now is that they so clearly did not care about their earthly comfort whatsoever. They were some of the most generous people to ever live. They wouldn't submit to anyone except Jesus, even if it meant being killed in a colosseum. They did not care about their earthly comfort, and according to people who weren't following Jesus, they were turning the world upside down. So I think, if we could have an impact like that, what would need to change in the church? I think it's the resistance of, no shade to America, but the American dream is essentially the opposite of the heart of the kingdom. It's build a life here that makes you happy, stable, successful, and none of those things are necessarily wrong, but if that's what your whole life is about, you're missing the entire kingdom of God.

If fasting forms us into wholeness on the inside, it also trains us for a very different kind of life on the outside, a life that resists the constant pursuit of comfort and learns how to walk with Jesus in the way of the kingdom. Right after Jesus says, man shall not live on bread alone, the temptations continue, that wasn't the end of his time with the enemy. The enemy tried a few more times, though it probably didn't take too long before he realized he was getting nowhere. Each temptation has a pattern, each one offers Jesus a shortcut: power without suffering, glory without the cross, provision without trust. The enemy was trying to entice him into bringing the kingdom with no cost. And what do we know about cost? We sang about it a little today. The kingdom life does require a cost, and cost feels heavy, but in reality it's the most freeing thing we can do.

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Matthew 16:24

So there's a part of following Jesus, becoming like him, that looks like denying ourselves. But it's not about self-hatred, it's not withholding good things. Remember, the Father is only light, in him is no darkness at all, and he only gives good gifts to his kids. The Father wants us to have good things. It's not that he doesn't want us to have good things, it's that we're not made to live after good things, we're made to live after him, and then he gives us good things. So it's ultimately about freedom, because being a master to your own desire is a really bad master, and we can only have one master. You can serve God, or you can serve mammon, which is essentially just earthly pursuits. Fasting is an amazing way we practice that freedom, literally training our desire, working with the Holy Spirit to reorder our desire, because in this Western world, I work in coffee, and in coffee we do these things called palate trainings.

You do them collectively as a team. One goal is to expand your palate, so you can taste more things, you'll bring chocolates, berries, citruses, sometimes nuts, and score each one for sweetness, acidity, bitterness, opening up your brain to how different food is and how much you can taste in it. But the other goal is that you start to calibrate together as a team, so ideally your team scores everything the same, that way, if you're trying to dial in a coffee in the cafe, you have the same end result you're going for. I feel like we've had this insane palate training done on us as a people, by the world, for hundreds of years, but especially in the West over the last eighty years. The feeling that we need stuff we don't actually need is higher than ever, and our tastes have been refined much more by culture than by the Spirit. Fasting is a really amazing way to resist that. You're resisting the bodily appetite for food, which is actually necessary, but in it you're training your no muscle, there's a lot of stuff we just get to say no to, because it's not him. It builds that muscle.

It teaches us how to say no, but it also trains us how to say yes, which is really important. C.S. Lewis once said, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm assuming it's good, maybe like a cruise or something. We are far too easily pleased.

I think that's such a good picture. In my own life, about a year ago, I had this picture after falling back into an old sin pattern I've gone through healthy phases and less healthy phases with. My heart has been being healed in a really good way, which is awesome. But after falling back into it one time, I was spending time with Jesus right after, and I feel like he gave me this picture: you essentially went under the porch to go hang out in the mud, and I was right inside, drinking a coffee, and you could have just come in and hung out with me, but instead you wanted to go hang out in the mud. For some reason that really hit me, I thought, that's so true, it's kind of funny, because it's exactly what he's saying here.

We are invited to a table of soul-changing bread and water that Jesus says will never leave us dry. So fasting isn't as much about depriving yourself as it is about participation, participation in the way of Jesus, in the freedom of the kingdom, in a life where comfort no longer calls the shots. When fasting has done its work, we don't just go back to eating, we go back to living differently, more free, more awake, more available to God.

What are you hungry for

I think, worship team, if you want to come up, we can land this plane. The kingdom life with Jesus isn't built on comfort, it's built on trust. If you could sum up what it means to walk with God in one word, I think trust would be the word, and it's probably the hardest, it's the easiest thing to want and the hardest thing to have. It's like that initial temptation, or question, from the enemy back in the garden, taking a stab at their trust. Did God really say this? Do you really know his intention for you, his character, how good he is, that he's enough? Or maybe there's something else, something greater he's hiding from you, keeping from you. It's the oldest trick the enemy's ever played, but he keeps on playing it, saying, yeah, he says that you're his bread, he says he's water, but that's not really true, you need more than just him.

So for me, I'm excited to fast, I don't have a set timeline, but I'm just going to fast one day a week, sunrise to sunset, at the very least, that's the least I feel like I could do for training purposes. I want my trust to grow, because I do trust the Lord, but I still fall back sometimes, and I ask myself why. It's because somewhere in my heart I still don't trust, I still believe a lie sometimes. And if there's a way I can grow in dependence on God, that's what I want.

Fasting makes us whole enough to resist comfort, and frees us enough to live the kingdom life with joy. So today we just ask you, what are you hungry for? You might need to think about it for a little bit, you might not even get an answer right now. I really believe that all of us want the same thing, we all want to be loved, to know that we're loved, to know that we're secure. We have that, but how does the hunger show up in your life? What do you want right now that's not him? And maybe it is him. If it's him, that's amazing.