Rock Solid: Fasting Builds Foundations
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Rock Solid: Fasting Builds Foundations
January 14th, 2024
Luke 6:46-49 (NLT) 46 “So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say? 47 I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. 48 It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against that house, it stands firm because it is well built. 49 But anyone who hears and doesn’t obey is like a person who builds a house right on the ground, without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it will collapse into a heap of ruins.”
5 Foundational Truths
Jesus defines relationship by actions. “Lord, Lord” = Hearing & Doing
Rock Solid foundations take deep digging. Top Soil, Rocky Soil, Spoiled Soil
Floods happen to everyone and cause real damage.
Lives rise and fall based on foundations.
Foundations are built with actions not words.
Top Soil Clearing
Our enemies most basic tactic to keep us from digging deep is to satisfy us with surface level stuff.
Rock Blasting
When lies sit in our lives long enough they petrify.
There is no place, no behavior, no addiction, no abuse, no thought pattern, no hurt and no disappointment that can’t be broken up by Truth of God, Grace of Christ, Power of the Holy Spirit and our obedience.
Spoiled Soil
Compromised soil does not have the capacity to carry the weight of our life much less the shaking we will experience in this calendar year.
2 Peter 1:1-11 (The Message) 1-2 I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. I write this to you whose experience with God is as life-changing as ours, all due to our God’s straight dealing and the intervention of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master. 3-4 Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
5-9 So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
10-11 So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. 12-15 Because the stakes are so high, even though you’re up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I’m not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before it. This is the post to which I’ve been assigned—keeping you alert with frequent reminders—and I’m sticking to it as long as I live. I know that I’m to die soon; the Master has made that quite clear to me. And so I am especially eager that you have all this down in black and white so that after I die, you’ll have it for ready reference.
Matthew 6:33,34 (NIV) “33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness [His ways], and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Standing on the rock-solid foundation of Jesus turns worriers into warriors!
Matthew 6 outlines 3 places to dig first:
Giving
Praying
Fasting
Matthew 6:16-18 (NIV) 16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
3 Observations:
Fasting is a normative spiritual practice: “When you fast…”
A simple definition of fasting is putting aside food for a specific time and for a spiritual purpose.
Matthew 5:6 (Amplified) 6 “Blessed [joyful, nourished by God’s goodness] are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness [those who actively seek right standing with God], for they will be [completely] satisfied
Prioritizing God doesn’t shortchange us, it full-fills us!
“Snacking today is pervasive. It’s a lifestyle.” Sally Lyons Wyatt, executive vice president at the market research company IRI Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Published 6:59 AM EDT, Sat September 3, 2022”
Fasting is the anti-snacking approach to developing a rock-solid foundation! Fasting reintroduces whole foods back into our spiritual snacking habits. Spiritual foundations can’t be built on spiritual snacks.
3 Observations:
2. Fasting is for foundation building not attention getting.
3 Observations:
3. Fasting is rewarded.
3 Rewards of Presence
1. Clarity of Identity & Vision
2. Clear-ity of Obstacles & Opposition
Fasting appropriates a level of spiritual power that exceeds the obstacles and opposition in front of me.
3. Courage for Movement & Advancing
Matthew 6:18b and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
If you want something different in your life this year – start your year off differently. Fasting is a digging down process that God rewards.
Removing the barriers to Rock-Solid.
1. Confess it.
2. Repent of it.
3. Accept…
the forgiveness of God.
the hand of God.
the strength of God.