 Today is day three. I am excited to spend some moments with you. Let me know in the comments below How your day three is going? Let me know in the comments below where you are tuning in from How those of you are who are doing a water fast how that is going for you right now. How are you feeling physically? It's going amazing from Uganda people watching from Nebraska Rigo good morning from Italy Kentucky Philippines Good going strong from Atlanta. God bless you and as well as people tuning in from other areas as well Washington DC Doing good today. My mind. Sorry the chat is going too fast It was my mind is negative. Okay, so we're gonna address that today This is gonna be actually really powerful stream for those of you that are hitting that on day three Gilbert. Good morning Good morning from Romania, Yon, Tennessee. God bless you guys Very emotional some people are saying I was weak could hardly walk Okay Day three not doing super well. Okay Day two of 21 feeling hungry today, but I've been feeding on God's word a man. God bless you Hedwig has subsided praise the Lord. Okay. Okay That's good. Thank you guys for sharing your experiences and for logging in today is going to be I believe a wonderful time Where we're gonna be talking about something that is Very important in the area of fasting that I believe every person who is fasting does experience And the scripture talks about it. But before we go into that, we just wanted to get a few announcements out one of them if you are just tuning in and You have no idea what this is. What is day three and affliction of the soul? We are doing a 21 day fasting challenge and we want to invite you to take part of it It's not too late to jump in and to take part in this whether you can fast all 21 days on water or and The fast every day, you know from six to six or six to five or maybe fast one day and they're not fast another day So like however the Lord leads you there's really no right way or the wrong way the biblical way is to abstain from food for spiritual reasons and so Welcome to just jump on the train. Let's do it. I do believe it's not too late And for those of you who may be like you tripped up in the fast you can resume that you can restart that there is you know God God is on your side. And so let me know in the challenge So go to past of lab that org forward slash challenge if you have not signed up yet If you're just signing up, this will kind of help us to send you some daily emails of encouragement Also share with you for some other resources so that you don't have to do it alone For a lot of people the issue of fasting, especially in the Western world Is a little bit overwhelming and they get discouraged along the way and most of the people that I've talked to who want to Practice fasting. They quit too fast. They Stop because things get hard. And so one of the reasons that I am live streaming and one of the reasons that I released a book unfast forward is So that you can find encouragement To keep going and so that you can actually hear other people's Experiences and realize you're not alone. And so if you haven't got the book, you know, go to Amazon get the book we have a paperback hardcover electronic and audible and If you can't afford it or if you're like, hey, this is taking too long to ship You can go to my website and download it free of charge now. No strings Attached for those of you who did get the book How many of you already got the book either download it or you bought the book drop number one in the chat if you already got the book Drop number one in the chat If you already got the book, I want to ask you for a huge favor if you can Go today or honestly, you can do that right now go on Amazon and leave a review For the book maybe take a photo of some of the things you highlighted I saw some people doing that or take a photo with the book and just just share your experience How was it like for you to read it? This will really help us to reach more people with this message on Biblical fasting through Amazon and through books. This is very like personal down to earth. Nothing super complicated I really try to take that mystery and the complexity of fasting out So that every day believer could honestly feel encouraged and feel motivated to do that And so and I've read a lot of reviews already people saying, hey, this is really helped me I read it in one setting This was so easy to understand. I thought, you know, it was personal I felt convicted and motivated. So let me know in the reviews as well. This will really help us to Reach other people. I mentioned this yesterday If you have children and you want your children to participate in this devotional prayer, we have this information on the YouTube channel right now We're gonna drop a link where you can download a prayer devotional For your children to take a part of as well as your fasting I discourage people from fasting children from fasting, but they can still participate in prayer They can they can color certain things and and learn more about seeking the Lord along with you and so That is the announcements that I have for today We are live streaming every single day at 9 a.m And if you are watching me on YouTube, could you help and just hit thumbs up right now will cost you nothing If you are on Facebook, would you just share? Share share this broadcast and I'm gonna share the the word for today in just a second But before we can do that if we can just up Help with the algorithm and just hit thumbs up. It just cost you nothing But it will help with the algorithm This will mean a lot to me and will help us to reach more people and share this with somebody I believe that today's encouragement is going to come in Right in time for people that are battling specifically usually on day three of this fast Amen Day three of the 21-day fast challenge What you're about to experience or what you're experiencing is normal not only on day three, but sometimes it's experienced throughout the fast and It's what I call affliction of the soul Somebody dropped it in the chat Fasting is the affliction of the soul Now what I get this idea from is from Leviticus chapter 16 verses 29 through 31 God tells Israel to fast once a year on the day of atonement and How he describes this is he says this shall be a statue for you in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month You shall afflict your soul and Do not work at all whether a native of your land country or a stranger who dwells among you And so then he talks about the atonement and all of this stuff and then he repeats it again He says you shall afflict your souls And so something that we must understand is that fasting is not just an affliction of your flesh most of us think that you know fasting isn't affliction of the flesh and First few days you kind of experience that affliction of the flesh you know detoxing happens a lot of the caffeine Residue and a lot of other things are taking place in your body. You feel you know fatigue You feel tired you feel maybe you have a headache and and and that's normal That's part of the affliction also of the flesh and part of the your body actually Getting rid of the toxins and so this is not a punishment or Nor is this God giving you a red a green light to stop the fast This is more of like your body is doing a spring cleaning It's just cleansing itself from all of these stuff that you've been putting into it before you were fasting But sometimes around the third day fourth day even second day What begins to happen is you begin to experience What I call and what the Bible calls? affliction of the soul Where it's not only in your body, but actually in your mood things just go a little bit crazy Your mood your negative emotions feeling down Feeling just like not wanting to do anything feeling like what's the point of all this? Just just these like even dark cloud It seems like begins to settle on you and and some people get really discouraged and there they just quit and give up And so I am here to encourage you today to let you know that some of that is actually normal And I want to share with you a little bit of why this is happening This will not apply to every person's situation, but it will apply to most of our situations We must understand is that fasting exposes The unhealthy relationship we have with food Food is good. It's a gift from God it makes people happy and It often quenches our negative emotion or boredom We actually numb boredom with eating and So when you fast you are forced to deal with toxic emotions like boredom Unhappiness fear, you know and other things, but you have to deal with them now in a new way Not by going to the fridge but by going to the word of God and So instead of going to food as your comfort now you're going to the comforter the Holy Spirit And so that's where the transition happens and during this transition we get like these You know cranky feelings we get this moodiness and some of us just kind of honestly Get lost a little bit because we're not used to our Negative feelings being met with food Now we have to satisfy we have to deal with those feelings with something else and if we don't take the shift Into going to God's word and into prayer and dealing with those emotions by taking them to the Lord Then we will fall back into going back into food and treating our food as a medicine for our toxic Emotions so I always encourage people that Fasting trains us to share our feelings with the father instead of with the fridge or The pantry most of us don't realize how much the food has become an idol in our life until you start fasting Write this down or drop this in the comments that food is not your friend food is your fuel Fuel and friend are two different things You put fuel into your car regularly But that fuel that gasoline is not your friend. You're not in love with that fuel You don't have a jar of gasoline, you know next to you. You don't smell it every single day. Why because it's not your friend It is your fuel and we have to what fasting allows us is to put food back where it belongs our fuel Not our friend while a lot of people eat junk food where a lot of people drink junk drink Is because they made their food a friend and when you make a food your friend Guess what begins to happen? You begin to depend on food to fix your emotional problems and Food cannot do that food is a great fuel, but it's a terrible comforter. It's a terrible Consular it's a terrible friend It can't be your friend no matter how much you try to make it your friend And so when you comfort yourself when you you know feel or feed fix your loneliness and your boredom and all of those feelings with food you can fall into the sin of gluttony and Gluttony is an ongoing act of overeating and drinking it abuses God's natural order for hunger Which is intended to cause you to seek necessary nourishment for your body and as Ezekiel says that Sodom had this issue And they were arrogant overfed and unconcerned is Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 49 And Solomon says in Proverbs 23 verse 21 He says that drunken and the glutton will come to poverty So not only the gluttony is the sin of idolatry and it brings poverty But it also has a potential of bringing a person into obesity which can result in many physical elements But how does it start? When we make food into an idol when we make food into a comfort when we make food into a friend when we make food to replace the Holy Spirit in our life and we deal with our negative toxic emotions with Feeding ourselves and so what fasting does is that it throws this whole mechanism that you and I have in Dealing with our negative emotions out of the water and now we're forced to develop new ways to deal with old problems and these new ways is to go into God's word and Prayer and into the word of God and don't feed those negative feelings don't dwell on them too long But take them to the Lord. So Israel is commanded to afflict their souls. See your soul Can become a Master in your life your soul your mind your will and your emotions can become a dominant force a decision-making who Ultimately rules your life for a Christian our soul is supposed to follow the dictates of our spirit And our spirit is supposed to be the one to dictate our soul and our soul has to follow the dictates of the spirit We are spiritual beings who have a soul and live in the body And what fasting does is it pretty much brings the realignment of Taking the keys of authority of your soul Which is the mood the feelings and your emotions and giving it back to your spirit and Your spirit is the one that's connected to God and your spirit is not afflicted by fasting because your spirit finally gets back all the keys that your spirit needed to have to dominate and to Dictate your soul and so that's why those fears first few days can come in really difficult for some people and I experienced that as well and Having more practice now I just learned to really not give too much attention to my feelings not to give to my too much attention to my mood Not give too much attention to my thoughts During the first few days of fasting, especially like maybe this down thoughts the this kind of a you know feeling down feeling negative feeling just kind of not physically but just mentally and emotionally Not focus not Motivated and and sometimes these lies will even come in like what's the point of even doing all this when you're not feeling good And so in that moment I kind of pull back a little bit and I look look I examine my emotions. I examine my feelings and I said wait That's not me number one. That's not my spirit And I pulled to the Holy Spirit I pulled to the word of God and in these feelings they kind of get stabilized and they quiet down and my soul Becomes like a weaned child within me after a while and it quiets down and then you start hearing the Dictates of the Holy Spirit the directions of the Holy Spirit clear and something changes because something changes because of that it Weakens write this down or drop this in the comments fasting weakens your soul's control Your mind's control your emotions control and even your wills control over your life Some of us we suffer because we are too emotional We suffer because our mind is just all over the place It's not your servant. It's your master Your your will seems to kind of dictate your life instead of instead of God's will And so to weaken the grip of the soul fasting helps with that fasting is not just to To help you to conquer the appetites of the flesh fasting also helps you to weaken the control of your soul if you don't experience this and You yield to the control of your soul you yield to your fear you yield to those feelings Now you can feel them. You just don't have to follow them Somebody drop that in the comments. You can feel the negative feelings. Just don't follow them and don't feed them These negative feelings don't need to be fed and they don't need to be followed Let him rage. Let him just let him do their thing Just ignore them because they will quiet down and Just go to God now if they're really strong present those feelings to God and Combat them with God's word But sometimes you just need to honestly distract yourself by picking up a book Taking up worship song and just completely let your soul be like a spoiled brat child Just kind of throwing a fit and a tantrum over there and stuff So it will come down and then just focus on your spirit's connection to the Holy Spirit Why is this very important? Because Christians are in danger of Living carnal lives Now worldly people live fleshly lives as Christians we can live soulish lives carnal lives and what's the danger of the soulish carnal life is that it jams it hinders Spiritual life it almost like blocks the spiritual life within you and the spiritual life is there. It just can't come out Because guess who's blocking it? It's the soul because there's your spirit There's your soul and there's your body the spiritual life cannot flow out if the soul blocks it And so you can't live a spiritual life until you honestly Crucify the soulish life That's why Jesus kept saying to his disciples if you want to follow me deny yourself. What is the self? It's the soul. He's not saying to deny You know your personality or you know deny your ability to speak or communicate. It's the selfish realm It's that it's that soulish realm that blocks the spirit realm. And so the culture focuses so much on discovering yourself Jesus has a total different approach. He says I want the spirit to flow out. I want the spirit to break through But for that to happen your soul has to get out of the way and so that's what fasting Helps to afflict the soul weaken the soul so that the soul can come down and that the spiritual life can flow out through the soul into the body and into the world And so if you don't live a Spiritual life There's just one simple reason usually either you're not born again and you're living in the flesh But if you are born again Most likely your biggest hindrance is your soul Soul is blocking everything Your mind your emotions your will all of this stuff It's you that's blocking everything and the solution to that is sell soul denial self denial and fasting really helps with that because it throws your soul and soul into this Thing where it's no longer in control and that's why you get all of these like feelings and moods and reactions where Your soul really throws a fit. It's an affliction of the soul And so because fasting doesn't just deal with your flesh I really believe it deals a blow to the soul by letting the soul know You're not in control anymore You don't get to do what you want We're gonna do the body the soul the spirit all of us are gonna do what God is telling us to do And so of course the soul has an opinion and the soul raises the hand and says, uh, I don't like this That's we're not supposed to be doing this and all of the soul has a lot of arguments And so that's where you tell the soul Quiet down. I'm gonna still praise God. You speak to your soul sometimes and you say fear anxiety doubt Shut up Zip it zip your lip muzzle your mouth and Just I don't want to hear from you Your opinion is not needed so and so just just be quiet and be still Because I'm yet to praise God. I am good. I'm gonna continue to worship my God I'm gonna continue to follow him and everything is gonna be okay Amen, amen. If this was a blessing to you was this an encouragement to somebody drop number one in the chat I want to read to you today's health tip Today is day three and again want to encourage you that To get the book as well Because in the book you're able to get these like really nice Graphics and as well as reminders of what's happening to your body So that the fasting tip on day three is if you feel occasional hunger drink drink a glass of water and the rest You should also replace your usual mealtimes with scripture reading to help your spirit overcome your flesh in the moments of weakness We encourage to read the verses in here on page 19 Where you can just read the verse Psalm 27 verse 8 meditate on them song of Solomon 1 4 Matthew 4 1 and Isaiah 58 5 and So meditate on these verses as you are praying and fasting today And so let me just read this prayer today from the the fasting book You can make your own prayer and then I'm gonna pray for you and then I will stay for just few minutes to answer any questions Holy Spirit as I dedicate these days to you in fasting and prayer. I Ask that you will break off every limitation in my mind take me as Deep and as far as you want Help me to not limit you in what you desire to do in me Strengthen me as I learn to follow you through this fast Lord, I pray for every person right now that is watching this Broadcast I pray for those that are re going to be rewatching maybe down the road Lord, I pray that for those that are maybe in that time right now of fasting where their soul throws a fit Where they're experiencing affliction Not just in their body, but in their soul in their mind I pray that you will help them to find new ways to deal with their negative emotions and To go to your word God help them to become spiritual Christians not just Solish carnal Christians Lord help us to make our mind our servant not our master help us to take our emotions to the cross instead of Bowing to our emotions as though they are the Lord of our life Help us to rise above our mood Help us to rise above our negative toxic emotions today Lord in Jesus name I pray that you will conform us and that you would transform us that we will look more like your son Jesus Christ Lord that there will be more of you flowing through our soul From our spirit Lord, there will be more of your grace more of your power and more of your anointing In Jesus name. Amen. Amen drop. Amen, and a prayer emoji In the chat for those of you that are just tuning in we are a part of a Fasting challenge. It's day three Each day at nine o'clock. I share a short encouragement For that day many people in the chat are doing a water fast Some people are doing different types of fastings and we are in the community of sharing our experience and also encouraging one another For those of you who may be like, oh man, this whole fasting thing. You shouldn't be talking about it You know the Bible says Paul says to Timothy He's like, you know flee lust pursue righteousness peace Joy with those who call upon the name of the Lord and so we pursue purity We pursue righteousness in a community a Christianity Christians are part of the body and so we're together in this and this is not us blowing a horn to Who's fasting what and so this is just our sharing our experience Encouraging one another so that we can persevere in our faith and so if You have enjoyed this broadcast hit thumbs up to this also if you can help us and Download the book or you can get it for free of charge on my website as well as leave a review It would just really help us with that. You can continue discussion on this topic with your group by reading a you version Bible app that we created for 21 days or Joining our Facebook group after you sign up for our challenge as I've mentioned and I'm repeating repeating that again We have a 21-day devotional for the children as well We don't encourage children to fast, but you can take them through a prayer devotional as well And so we will I will stay just for a few minutes and answer any Questions that we have now we're not gathering questions from Instagram or from tiktok We are mainly gathering them from YouTube and from Facebook So if you want to leave a question just go there and I will be streaming every day So if I didn't answer your question, you can review the previous streams. They're not very long I would encourage you that every day you kind of listen to those streams because they would really help you and I'm also Fasting so I'm not just you know speaking this from a book or something else. I'm participating with you so I'm right in the trenches with you and And so yeah, it will really I believe like there will be an importation There will be an importation that would be released as you follow these streams Everything I take a drink a water and the empty stomach my stomach hurts. Does anyone else experience this? So if your stomach hurts because you're drinking a water, I'm not sure which how many days you already are a fasting But I would just check make sure that you know, you have good water purified water Sometimes drinking from a faucet might not be the best way to do it especially if you live in an area where Your water is not being purified. So you're not drinking anything With your water that's poisonous. So that's what I would just check If you continue to have this problem, then you probably need to see the doctor But typically drinking water actually helps to quiet your stomach and it's very important that you stay hydrated as you fast Why is my urine pink and Brown so a lot of times in the first few days you actually the water is flushes out a lot of toxins In your body and it will be reflected in the color of your urine your urine How many OS of water is suggested to drink daily? So I would just encourage you to just Google and what's the recommended amount of water to drink for your weight And your age and to stick with that. I know it will be different for different people But don't drink too much water so that you don't flush out all of your vitamins But also find that healthy balance of drinking a plenty so that you stay hydrated and And also it really helps you to quiet the king's stomach from making a lot of complaints Where can I get the book besides Amazon you can download the fast-forward book on my website past of lad.org and It's available in Russian and it's available in English for a free PDF download Starting day three my mood is not cranky Then in any fast I've done but I feel demotivated and my joints ache every time I wake up is that normal. Yeah, that could be Pretty normal. I would encourage you to go to Amazon and maybe buy a mineral salt Fasting mineral salt and you can add a little bit of it to your water. So it will help Maybe alleviate some of the joint ache And part of that demotivation is honestly emotional. It's because motivation You know feeling motivated feeling excited is part of our soul. It's part of our You know emotions. So that's what I would encourage is to be Not give too much attention to that so that you don't necessarily let your Mood which still motivation is part of that mood dictate your life Have you been to Nigeria? Yes. I have been to Nigeria three times. How are you feeling? Oh, that's I hear you're clearing your throat a lot So I'm feeling very good. Thank you for asking. I honestly feel today better than I have felt in the last two weeks I have still that I sometimes clear my throat partially is because I did a lot of speaking yesterday and very of very little rest and We had a prayer this morning. So I came straight from there here, but I actually feel really really good this morning I mean even last night My fast I feel like started earlier because I was sick last week And so I barely ate when I was sick and because of that I feel like I prepared my body already so when we started fasting I didn't necessarily feel a lot of ache or even hunger pains and last two days I also didn't necessarily feel my normal hunger pains and like headaches and everything and I've been weaning off myself of caffeine before already and so so it feels actually very good and all of my Like even my lips some of you guys who joined me at first live you prop first live stream three days ago You saw my lips were like blown and it was really uncomfortable. It was really painful actually and so the viral infection that I had Was on its final stages of coming out, but it was causing me pain had rashes in my skin But I persevered the doctor just encouraged me. He said hey, this is or she just said hey this is normal and Because of some infection that I got and she's like just just don't give up persevere everything will be fine And so now I feel so much better. I'm still not a hundred percent recovered, but I would say 95 percent I'm already done. So I feel very good. So that's why I still sometimes clear my throat mainly because You know when you're on the empty stomach and you've done speaking for some time like I did yesterday you get a little bit tired Throughout my fast. I get a cold. Should I should I continue my fast? So it's up to you. I would continue I feel like it would actually help you to recover from a cold faster In some cases that I watched when I had fever and when I had cold Some doctors actually recommend it to Come cut back on eating and that's one of the reasons why a lot of times when you when you have those issues You actually don't have an appetite and so because your body is trying to put all of its energy to fight the illness Instead of today just food. So but again, that's your decision and I would probably consult with your doctor Why do I keep dreaming of accidentally breaking my fast? Don't give attention to those dreams when you wake up maybe rebuke them if they keep on repeating and Maybe you keep thinking about breaking your fast. So Don't allow those thoughts and so I just encourage honestly don't do aimless scrolling on social media And other stuff maybe even cut back social media completely during this season Because you're gonna start seeing a lot of food and you know and don't also go You know cook book shopping or stop preparing meals for like after you finish fasting Just don't occupy your mind with food I can my up occupy your mind with your work with your worship with the word of God and so that you give The least amount of attention to your mind concerning food And just focus it on the Lord so that because whatever you think about during the day a lot of times It can show up during your sleep in the form of dreams All right guys I'm gonna wrap this up because we want to keep this shorter each day about 35 minutes Not super long and I appreciate you joining us today tomorrow We're gonna be live streaming again at 9 o'clock. So set we're gonna set the Livestream right after this one make sure you click, you know remind so that you don't miss it And then we're gonna talk just take you a little bit deeper share our experiences you will share your experience as well in the chat with other people and Appreciate you. Thank you. I am praying for you every single day. The God will give you the strength To finish what he started in you and the God will also do his supernatural deep work in your heart and in your soul as you obey him in this area of Fasting and I pray that you will experience the breakthroughs that even you're not even praying for that God will bring that into your life. And so I am believing every day God is peeling layers and God is bringing you deeper and closer to him in Jesus name. And so just persevere. Don't give up stay strong You're not alone. There's many thousands of people that are doing this with you and we are on the winning side and And if you get super tired and you can't take it anymore, you need to you know, take some juice or something, you know Don't feel bad about it. You know God doesn't God is not Nervous or I'm gonna punish you. Okay, so just just just relax have a Mental attitude of grace instead of legalism We're not forced to do this. It's a it's a volunteer decision that we do and yeah God bless you. I will see you again tomorrow