By Bob Vaughn - uca@uncommonanswers.com
"Contending for the faith once delivered to the saints"
Uncommon Answers Home Page

IF YOU ARE NOT THE MASTER OF YOUR
APPETITE YOU ARE ITS SLAVE!

LEARN PHYSICAL CONTROL -
When the body rules, then spirit rule is impossible.
Fasting helps bring the flesh into subjection in all areas.
Learn to fast and you will learn the way to lay off all sin.

FASTING IS the voluntary missing of a life need -- food, drink, fellowship, rest, etc., for physical or spiritual benefit.

FASTING IS profitable in three ways.
   A). It rests and cleans the system. In long-food-fasts body poisons, derived by wrong health habits, are "burned away" cleaning the "temple of the Holy Spirit".
   B). It teaches self-control.
   C). With prayer and separation and Bible study it brings spiritual growth and revelation.

FASTING IS NOT starvation -- appetite and hunger are two different things. Appetite is habit craving of food. Hunger takes place after the body has used up all the excess stored in the body. This takes weeks, not hours.

FASTING IS NOT impossibly difficult -- most of the discomforts of even a long fast are over in a few days.

graph img

1) Appetite pains for a few days.

2) Weakness due to burning up waste in system (fever, headache, dizziness). Drink much water, it helps to eliminate waste in system. Sleep and rest more than usual.

3) Physical fitness and well being -- a time to seek God.

4) True hunger -- to continue on after this can bring body destruction and death. BREAK A LONG FAST SLOWLY!

When you start looking for reasons to "fast", look at yourself. You are the reason you fast. It is your lack of faith, wisdom, and power to minister to particular needs, not the needs themselves, that should motivate you to fast. Fasting will not make your prayer be answered, but fasting will make you more able to pray an answerable prayer, more able to minister in wisdom and power.

Bob Vaughn