Our church’s shepherds have commissioned me to teach/preach on fasting the first half of this month. Our church’s prayer task force is challenging the church family as a whole to give serious consideration to coupling some form of fasting with their prayers during the month of August. In yesterday’s post I noted ten reasons why fasting would be a very good thing for us to be engaged with these days.

Knowing that the first thing Jesus ever said regarding fasting had to deal with one’s motives (Matthew 6:16-18), be it known to all that this concerted effort as a church family with fasting is not an attempt to:

(1) simply fill, or kill, time,

(2) be mysterious, novel, or sensational,

(3) introduce something unBiblical or anti-Scriptural,

(4) take away any of our individual or collective freedom in Christ,

(5) speak where the Bible has not spoken and make rules that God has not given,

(6) merely mimic the teachings or practices of other religious groups, past or present,

(7) deliberately arouse uneasiness among any in our church family,

(8) accrue “points” with God by doing something with a salvation-by-works mentality,

(9) curry the favor of, or bow the knee to, any individual or segment of our church family,

(10) divide the congregation into self-righteous camps (i.e. – “those who fast” and those who do not”).”