1. Fasting What Do We Hunger For? Matthew 4:1-4 January 17, 2010
1 John The Abiding Life
Fasting
What Do We Hunger For?
Matthew 4:1-4
January 17, 2010

2. Change in Service Times…
DON’T FORGET!
Next week - January 24
Change in Service Times…
1st Service 9am…
2nd Service 10:45am

3. Haiti Disaster
“I am amazed at the number of news articles that refer to this as a "disaster of Biblical proportions". Why do Biblical proportions and acts of God always refer to disaster and destruction? How about we respond with some acts of sacrifice...kindness...mercy of Biblical proportions?” -Greg Gilbaugh

4. John 14:12 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 1 John 2:5-6 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

5. Discipline of Fasting Introduction to Fasting – What do we hunger for?
Question of Fasting – Should we fast and if so, how?
Practice of Fasting – What is the strategic role of fasting in the church today?

6. Fasting
Spiritual fasting entails setting aside activities as well as reducing the intake of food and replacing these activities with the exercise of prayer and preoccupation with spiritual concerns. The NT word that is translated “fasting” literally means one who has not eaten, one who is empty. -Tyndale Bible dictionary.

7. Matthew 4:1-4
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

8. Deuteronomy 8:2
Fasting shows us what is in us… 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

9. Deuteronomy 8:3
Fasting allows us to feed on what truly strengthens. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

10. John 6:48–51
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”