How to fast. To fast, I mean to abstain from food
for spiritual reasons. How do you practically fast. Let me share with you seven practical steps
for those of you who are planning to go on a fast. First and foremost, start with a clear goal.
Why are you fasting? What is the purpose of your fasting? Is it to come closer to the Lord? To seek
for His help, for His direction? Maybe you are in a time right now where you really feel like
you need to, you know, recalibrate spiritually. But what is the reason? What is the purpose? What
do you feel is the Lord leading you? Why is He leading you into this fast? Number two. Prepare
spiritually for the fast. During the fast confess your sin. Ask God to open anything in your life
that needs to be removed, you need to be delivered from, to open your spiritual eyes. Forgive anybody
who has offended you and surrender to God. Please understand fasting is not to corner God. It's not
a hunger strike. This is not you trying to move, squeeze something out of God. It's on the
opposite. God trying to move us. So when we come with a humble attitude, not, God I'm gonna go come
down and get you, God I demand this, God I strike. You know, yeah this might work with politics
this might work with other people. This is not gonna work with almighty God. God looks for the
humble and part of fasting is humbling yourself, repenting of your sin, seeking His face and
turning from your evil ways and that is how you spiritually prepare for the fast. So don't just
kind of do whatever you want and then, you know, in a month from now I'm gonna fast so then I'm
gonna really repent of my sin, then I'm gonna really pursue God, then I'm gonna really turn
away from my wicked ways. But until then, yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want. That's not how
that works. Number three. Deciding what to fast. So there's, you can fast food, you can fast food
and water. I know some people fast just sweets, dairy and meats. Daniel's fast. Some people who
have a medical problem or they're pregnant or they need to take medication where they can't fast food
so they have to fast something else, maybe I don't know, tv, movies or some kind of a relationships.
I mean there are different things you can give up for the sake of getting closer to God and taking
temporary time of drawing nearer to the Lord. So decide what you're gonna fast. The common way
that people fast is they choose to fast from food. In fact fasting is simply absence of food for
spiritual reasons. And so you can still, you know fast social media or other things, but what really
fasting is, is to turn away from the food for spiritual reasons. It's highly discouraged to go
on complete fast where you stay away from water and food. More than three days can kill you. I
know some people who did it. We see people did it in the Bible supernaturally like Moses, like
Elijah. People like Paul, city of Nineveh, they fasted for three days without food and without
water. But anything above three days is really bad for your health. actually you're gonna die
and so if the Lord didn't lead you in to do that, use discretion and be extremely careful with
your body, so that in doing some of these radical things you don't damage your stomach and
you don't damage your body. Decide, number four, how long you're gonna fast? Now there's no
magic really to one day, three days, seven days, twenty one days or fourty days. But these are
the usually the fast that people take. The Lord will put on your heart. Now if you're doing
that personally, you know whatever the Lord leads you. If you're doing that corporately, then
honestly whatever the Lord leads the corporate body. Whatever the Lord leads your local church,
your pastor. Just join that and do that. I want to really encourage you to take it slow you know.
If you've never done long fast start with one day, three days and then build yourself up but at the
same time I want to encourage you to obey God. I've never finished a 21 day fast, before I went
on a 40-day fast. We were planning to do a 21-day fast. It was actually this year that this video
is being recorded. And six day into it I felt the Lord just prompting to go for 40 days. And so the
formula of, you know, kind of work yourself slowly fasting is not like a physical exercise. It's
really sustained by the Holy Spirit. The best fast you will ever do are the ones that are led by the
Lord as Jesus was led by the Spirit into a fast. I can tell you one thing is that when it's you
leading yourself into a prolonged fast versus the Lord leading you into a prolonged fast. When the
Lord leads you into prolonged fast it's easier. It's still hard but it's easier. Now when your
pastor is leading the church into a prolonged fast there's a grace on that, always jump on that. You
don't have to feel the Lord leading you if you're part of a local church where God put authority,
where God with pastors. He's given these pastors, apostles, teachers and evangelists to us to
spiritually guide us and so if they declare that, like Esther. Esther declared a three-day fast.
God didn't have to speak to every Jewish person in Babylon to fast okay, the king of Nineveh declared
a three-day fast. Not every person in Nineveh had to hear God, the king just led them. And so when
there's that corporate fast there's a corporate grace for that. But I want to encourage you to
be obedient to the Holy Spirit when it comes to how long you should fast and what you should fast
from. Number five. What to expect during your fasting. So a few things to keep in mind. You can
get attacked during fasting. Jesus got attacked during fasting okay, so don't be surprised if your
first few nights you don't get angels visiting you but you get nightmares okay. You can come under
attack. It's actually a sign that the fast is working, it's provoking the enemy. Being attacked
doesn't mean you have a demon, being attacked means you have a destiny and so it's okay.
It's spiritual warfare. Sometimes you have common things that people experience is persistent
hunger. Hunger is one of the common sides of any fast and that's why avoiding water can make
you feel even more hungry since water helps to decrease your hunger. You can feel tired. If
you don't eat food and drink water your body will not have fuel and you will feel fatigued, dizzy
and weak. In fact in Psalm 103:24 David says: You know I experience this, where it's one
thing to you know be fatigued and tired, it's another thing when your knees physically
hurt. The last time that I was on a prolonged fast had excruciating pain on my knees. For a moment I
thought like that I got arthritis or something and and this verse clarified that. It wasn't
throughout the whole fast but especially during the night. And so and David says, my knees
are weak through fasting. So you can experience that. It's not a sign you need to quit. It's
just a sign that you're fasting .Another thing is when you get a little bit moody and cranky, yeah,
I call it hangry. You know when your hunger, gets a little bit of anger in it, a little spice
and it's actually kind of scriptural. The Bible talks about fasting in Leviticus 16:29 as a day
to afflict your souls. So the day of atonement was a day of fasting but God describes it as a day
to afflict your soul. Like at first I read it, I was like I don't get it. I know fasting
is a way to afflict your body, your flesh. My soul, afflicting my soul through fasting?
What does that mean? And until you fast you don't know what that means you know. What
happens when fasting, your soul who sometimes takes orders from your body instead of your
spirit, gets kind of confused and cranky during fasting because now the body is dying, the
spirit is fully alert and the soul is not used to getting all the direction from the spirit. And
so there's that little affliction of the soul that happens. So fasting is not just good for
your body, it's not just subduing your flesh, fasting is also helping your soul to figure out
that the soul is not in charge, the spirit man is. The Holy Spirit is. And another thing that
sometimes fasting does that some people don't realize why they get so cranky and moody is
because they develop unhealthy relationship to food. Food for some people is a crutch. It's
something that they depend on to solve their toxic negative emotions. Some people go to the bottle
but a lot of Christians go to the fridge. They don't drink, they eat. They over eat and they
emotionally eat, meaning they eat when they're emotionally bored, they're emotionally not doing
good, they gain weight. But most importantly they gain dependence, unhealthy dependence on
food. The consequences of that becomes obesity, being overweight, feeling not good about yourself
and etc But the root cause is food has become a spiritual cure for emotional problems and fasting
expose that right on. During fasting you will have to face that and you will have to rewire your
brain to teach yourself the fridge is not your solution, the Holy Spirit is. Your comfort is
not in your food. It's in the Holy Spirit. He is the great comforter. Another thing that happens
during fasting. What to expect during fasting is headaches. It's one of the things that you
know, nobody likes. Especially if you're drinking a lot of coffee or caffeine you're gonna have
headaches. It's normal okay. Headaches are not a sign the demon is attacking you. It's just
simply a sign that you have probably had a lot of soda and a lot of caffeine in your body.
It's a body cleaning itself from toxins. So it's normal. Drink a lot of water. The best way that
I recommend is that before you even start fasting start decreasing your caffeine intake before the
fasting, so that when you are fasting you're not hit with all of the headaches all at once. Another
thing that could help that most likely will happen is lack of focus during fasting. When you're tired
and hungry it becomes difficult to concentrate at school and at work. And so I really want to
encourage you to try long fast because that's when you see the benefits. You know the three
day fast and I did them for many, many years but, it's good but it's the one that you go longer
like after about three days, four days where the cravings shut down, where your mental alertness
goes like sharp, your spiritual sensitivity is through the roof. It's just beautiful. It's like
you feel light as a feather. Even the hunger is just kind of gone. The only hunger is like mental,
like your mind is just plain tricks, telling you you need to eat but your body is actually doing
just fine. Your body eats off of its own fat and and it's a really really beautiful, beautiful and
wonderful experience. Number six. We're talking about how to fast. Is replace eating with reading
and prayer. So fasting is not everyone is able to stop everything they're doing okay and go to the
mountains and spend 40 days. Actually I wouldn't even recommend you to do that. Why? Because the
Bible says as you fast anoint your face with oil. Meaning God's like do normal stuff, go about your
normal day because it's not possible for many of us to completely withdraw from everything that
we're supposed to do for fasting. What I would encourage you is the time that you would normally
eat, set that time for the Lord. And the time that you would normally relax, set the time to be with
Him. The time that you would normally you know, browse through the phone or maybe watch something
in television or just kind of aimlessly chill out or unwind, that you get into the secret room.
Pretty much replace the food and the other free time that you have had, with time with
reading God's Word, reading maybe other books, watching sermons and fasting and just being in
prayer. And number seven. How to end. Remember to enter into a fast slowly and to exit the fast
even slower. If you exit the fast quickly. Now it depends of course on what kind of fast. If
you fasted only one meal and you exit, you know eating the full meal after that, that's fine. If
you fasted for three days and you have a full meal afterwards probably not gonna die but you're
gonna get hurt. So it's best to exit the fast slowly with like a chicken broth or you know the
water that you cook rice with or cooked rice or something that is very slow so that you don't
upset your stomach and hurt yourself. If you fasted for seven days or ten days on water only
you have to be extremely careful to exit slowly. In fact God is watching at how you exiting
the fast way more than he's looking at you during the fast because that gluttony, that
obsession with food, that impatience, really, really surfaces on exiting the fast than during
the fast. Be very careful. There are people who died after the fast. Not because God took him but
because they ate a chicken. Yeah one pastor fasted 40 days and died. Like physically died because he
ate a chicken. I know people, some of my friends who just ate a little bit of meat you know, almost
a day after that and they ended up in a hospital. Some who developed ulcers in their stomach
because of that and because of also they did prolonged fast not properly and so be very careful
you know. Do with wisdom if you are on the medical condition or something don't attempt fasting
without consulting a doctor. If you're a pregnant mom don't do fasting without consulting a doctor.
You're discouraged from doing that. There will be other times to fast but at this season you might
need to do some other things to abstain from so you can focus more on the Lord. Drop it in
the comment below. I want to hear from you, your experience with fasting. I know it's a
private matter but to encourage other believers, what's the longest that you did and how was it?
What are the benefits that you experienced from fasting? As always don't forget to hit like
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