 I got sick with fever and like every person who hates any discomfort, I quickly went to my favorite doctor which is Google and tried to find my symptoms and as well as my remedies on how to get myself fixed and I discovered a very interesting truth and revelation. So what I found out is that fever is a temporary increase in the body's temperature in response to disease. So I thought that fever was the disease, turns out that fever was just trying to kill a disease. See your body has in the brain it has a thermostat. Anytime your body gets a disease it sends a signal to your thermostat right here where the thermostat increases the temperature, your body starts feeling hotter and the purpose for that is to actually help your immune system fight off that disease and the purpose of that is also some viruses and germs cannot live in hotter environments. So I actually instead of trying to pray off the fever I said Lord bless the fever. The fever is working. The fever is actually helping me. It's not trying to hurt me. It's just trying to spot that virus and that germ, that little foreign entity entered my body somewhere and it's trying to drive that out. So as I was thinking about it it's kind of how fasting works. See your body is wired in the way that it will fight against something that is not supposed to be there by increasing temperature. Same thing is spiritually. When your spiritual life is under attack one of the ways that God wants you to fight it off is by increasing spiritual temperature. In Acts chapter 28 verse 3 it says, but when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out. Somebody say came out, came out, but why did the viper came out? Because of the heat. See not only germs come out because fever forces them out, vipers come out because heat forces them out. So I want to encourage you, one of the things that we are doing during this 21 day of prayer and fasting is we're simply increasing the heat in our spiritual life. And that's why there's little discomfort sometimes you can feel, but ultimately God wants to force everything that is not of Him out of our life. Sometimes when we live complacent, cold or warm Christian life, a lot of these germs, a lot of these vipers can live comfortable. But the moment you increase the heat, you start reading the scriptures, you start praying, you start going to church, you start fasting, you start giving, something begins to happen. Your life sometimes people say, man ever since I started getting closer to God things got worse. It's that the germs, it's that the vipers, it's that the bacteria, it's the viruses that are being now forced out. So they can no longer claim your life because now Jesus is laying claim not only positionally but also practically in our life, amen. Now the reading that I would like to take today, which is one of the foundations for this fast is in Matthew chapter 17 verse 21. Now if you have my kind of a Bible, you have this verse. If you have a different Bible, you don't have this verse. I remember a few weeks ago, one of the members of our church ran to me and he says, you read today Matthew 17, 21. My Bible didn't have it. I knew I had a wrong Bible. And so I'm going to explain why your Bible doesn't have it in the second. But first let me read it from mine. And mine is New King James. I'm not saying in any way that King James is better than other translations, but I'm just, since I have a King James, I'm just going to promote New King James. Matthew 17, 21. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. Similar purpose of increasing heat through prayer and fasting, this kind that are particular kinds of problems that will not leave until you crank up the heat. Now, to explain why certain Bibles don't have this verse. There's two versions or two main ideas of how the Bible was translated. Some of the modern translations use the oldest manuscript as the most accurate manuscript and the oldest manuscripts do not have this verse. Not all of them, few of them, as well as Mark chapter 16. That part of the Mark chapter 16 where, you know, in my name you shall cast out demons and everything. So some of them, the oldest ones don't have it. Therefore, some of the modern translations do not have Matthew 17, 21. But it's still in the Bible for a few reasons. One, it's recorded in Gospel of Mark chapter nine, verse 29. And majority of the manuscripts do have it. So New King James version, along with some other versions, they don't follow the oldest manuscript, they follow, they call it the majority rule. So if the majority manuscripts, and the New Testament has like over 20 something thousand manuscripts, so a lot of manuscripts. So they just saw that in most of the manuscripts it had this verse. That's why this verse is included in most of our Bibles. But the idea of prayer and fasting is all over the Bible. Therefore, this does not in any way contradict the power or the scriptures. In Mark chapter nine and verse 29, it says the similar words, but he said to them, and he said to them, this kind can come out but nothing but prayer and fasting. In fact, some translations, actually two Greek manuscripts do not have the word fasting, just prayer. But words might have been added by some scribes to support the strong practice of fasting in the early church. You must understand, when Jesus was with his disciples, he lived a very feastive, festive life. In fact, one of accusations against Jesus is he was eating a lot and drinking a lot. Okay, so Jesus is a happy guy. If you think that Jesus is always fasted, or we're gonna fast in heaven, we're not gonna do the praise God. So it's just the earth problem thing. But in heaven, in Old Testament, God only gave Israel one fasting day a year, but I think seven feast days a year. So if you think that God is for fasting, no, God is for feasting and we love food, God loves food, amen. So just make this clear, okay? So amen, deliverance from that fear of fasting. But Jesus, when he was accused why he doesn't fast with his disciples, though Jesus did fast, but he says because I'm with them and they don't need to fast. The same way as you typically don't want to fast on your wedding. And if you do, you're just slightly either too spiritual or a little bit weird. You don't fast on your wedding. And Jesus used that example. But he said this, when the bridegroom is taken, then they will fast. You must understand, the early church took that so seriously. The early church fasted two days a week, every Wednesday and every Friday, from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. So it's like a half day fast. This was so part of the culture of the church to fast that you will require to fast before communion and before your water baptism. The lifestyle of fasting in the early church was pretty intense. No wonder why the results were also intense. The reason why, as at Hungry Jen, we're speaking about this topic is we live in a culture where most of us will not die out of fasting. We will die out of overeating. Our food industry has become a money industry. And most of us, the problems we have physically today are not due to fasting. It's due to not fasting. And so we, as a Christian church, we believe in this practice and it's not just physical. Fasting is a spiritual practice abstaining from food for spiritual reasons. Now I want to share with you concerning how fasting increases the heat in your life to drive out certain problems that otherwise you cannot overcome in your own human way. I'm going to share with you three simple thoughts and I want you to take notes. We're note-takers so pull out your phone, pull out the notes on your phone. You can tweet it afterwards and so that you can stay engaged with that. The first thing that I would like to share is this, is that personal transformation precedes power demonstration. Personal transformation precedes power demonstration. Now the context of the verse of this kind shall not leave by prayer and fasting comes from the story of Jesus being on the mountain and his disciples being not on the mountain, nine of them, they were casting out a demon of a little boy who had epilepsy and they couldn't cast out that demon and so they started to argue with scribes and then Jesus comes down, deals with the demonized boy and delivers him. Now when Jesus was on the mountain, I want you to see what Jesus did in Luke chapter 9 verses 28 through 29. Now it came to pass about eight days after these sayings that he took Peter, John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. So he didn't go there for photos, he didn't go there to meditate, he didn't go there to you know just kind of clear his mind but to pray, meaning to communicate with the Father. As he prayed, somebody say as he prayed, as he prayed. So as he prayed, the appearance of his face was altered, some translation says transfigured and his robe became white and glistening. I want you to see this, before Jesus moved to the valley from the mountain and delivered the boy, he was on the top of the mountain and he was praying to the Father. As he was praying, I want you to notice what God changed. His face changed. Personal transformation precedes power demonstration. Many of us, we need to reclaim our mountaintop experiences because while they empower us for our valley problems, what mountaintop experiences do first and foremost is they change us. Before prayer changes your husband, it will change you. Before prayer saves your children, it will first sanctify you. The Bible says as he prayed, his face changed. One of the best benefits of prayer is personal transformation. Now getting a personal trainer, eating your broccoli and going seeing your therapist, eating your vitamins, that has its place, nothing wrong with that. We need to do that, that's part of the package. But nothing changes a person's inner being and spending time with the one who made it. And you will think if there is any person in this world and planet who did not need to pray, it would be God, right? If anybody who would be busy, it would be Jesus. Yet he had time to pray. But I want you to notice within the Trinity, as Christians, we believe in one God in three persons. God is not bored. Some people say, oh, you know, God had nobody, so he created humans because God needed somebody to hang out. I don't know where you got that idea from, but it's not in the Bible. God for eternity was always three persons. That means there was always a relationship. There was always a communion, love and understanding. That's why God made you and I relational craving for a relationship because you came out of a relational being who was relational for eternity. That's why when Jesus came on this earth, this relationship continued with the Father, with the Spirit. That's one of the reasons God doesn't want a religion. He wants a relationship. That's one of the reasons until you are in a relationship with Trinity and seeing how they relate to each other, you'll never know how to relate to your spouse. Why? Because in the marriage relationship, we are equal but different. In the Trinity, they're all equal, but they have different roles. And yet you never see Father and the Son fighting. You never see the Spirit of God having an issue with the Son of God. There's always a harmony, one promoting one another, one submitting to one another, one always acknowledging one another, one honoring one another. And so you look in your marriage, you look in your family, that is supposed to be a reflection of what is happening there. But we cannot live out in our family if we're not part of this communion with this relational being called God who reveals himself in three persons. Prayer is the bedrock of personal transformation. I'm not talking about just saying prayers before meal and when you get pulled over because you were speeding and you're crying out for help. I'm not talking about before the exam or because you're facing a trouble. I'm talking about prayer as a lifestyle intentionally pursuing the Lord. I want us to reclaim our prayer life. See prayer doesn't only have the power for personal transformation, because on the mountain Jesus not only his face was altered, the Bible says his rope was shining, and Elijah and Elijah and Moses showed up. The glory of God came. I believe as you begin to press into God daily, five times a week, three, four times, whatever your rhythm is to spend time uninterrupted, quality time with your Creator. Not only personally, you become a different person. Your face gets altered. Your relationships change because when you're relating to a divine being, it will affect how you relate to other human beings. But I believe also that God will do things through you that you couldn't do otherwise do through yourself. I read this story this week that touched me. It was about George Washington Carver. He is the most brilliant scientific mind of the 20th century. He introduced the crop rotation and encouraged farmers to plant peanuts instead of cotton. He had a habit of waking up at 4 a.m. in the morning to go for prayer. He would go in the woods and talk to God. In one of his lectures, he mentioned a conversation he had with God that not only changed his life, but honestly changed the economy of the United States. And he said this. He says, I asked, Dear Creator, please tell me what the universe was made for. The great Creator answered, you want to know too much for that little mind of yours. Ask something more your size. Then I asked Dear Creator, tell me what a man was made for. Again, the Creator replied, Little man, you still ask too much. Cut down the extent of your request and improve your intent. Then I asked, please, Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made? And he said, then the Creator taught me how to take a peanut apart and put it back together. Again, something happened. He actually revolutionized from that prayer encounter the idea he got from God. He revolutionized the Southern agriculture economy by showing that 300 products could be derived from a peanut. A lot of you guys or us who use today shampoo, face powder, shaving cream, hand lotions, some even caramel, chili sauce, peanut, lemon punch, peanut sausage, mayonnaise, and coffee, a lot of that stuff came as a result of him breaking down a peanut. By 1938, the peanut had become 200 million industry and the chief product of Alabama through one man's encounter with God. Mark Bederson said this as prayer is the difference between the best you can do and the best God can do. Personal transformation through prayer precedes the powerful demonstrations that you experience through your life. While maybe your initial going into this prayer season and fasting is for your family, I want to tell you something. You can stop praying for your family, but sooner or later, God's going to get to you. God's going to work on you. God wants to change you and then he will change our situation. Amen. Number two, if you're taking notes, I want you to write down point number two, and that is prayer enables you to overcome, but arguing disables you from winning. So Jesus is praying on the mountain and his face is transfigured, but he comes down from the mountain and I want you to notice in Mark chapter 9 verse 14, and when he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. So Jesus is praying, his face is shining. He comes down from the mountain. He's noticing that his disciples who just failed delivering a boy, and instead of attempting to do deliverance again, maybe try to look for some open doors or break soul ties, remove cursed objects. I mean, I don't know, there's a lot of, you know, content out there. And so instead of helping the family, maybe consulting the father and the mother again, finding out what's happening really with the family, what disciples started to do is they started to fight with scribes. They got into a battle with religious leaders who have absolutely no experience, desire, or passion to cast out demons. When you abandon your prayer life, you will always start developing other weird habits that absolutely have no bearing on the effectiveness of your life. You're not going to be empty. You're going to argue. You're going to fight. You're going to be negative. You're going to be maybe toxic. Maybe you're going to become very good at becoming a combative, a defensive, always defending, always fighting. But in reality, you know, you can always beat a skunk. But you have to ask yourself a question. Is the smell worth the fight? Your goal is not to be engaged in every battle that you're invited to. Your goal is always to be only involved in battles that have a spoil at the end, meaning they have victory at the end. Disciples, instead of winning this battle in the valley, by casting out a boy and delivering this boy, instead of trying maybe harder, maybe they should have had few disciples praying, few disciples over there interceding, maybe some talking to the father, somebody maybe running up to Jesus, getting some... So let's put all the tension on this. They spent time arguing. And so I want to ask you a question today. If you have abandoned your prayer life this year, I am pretty sure that you have somewhere in your life right now, in your schedule, where you're spinning your wheels, doing stuff that honestly is only disarming you, disabling you, draining you, and is giving you anxiety. And for that reason, you're seeing a therapist. God didn't call us to win arguments. He called us to win people. We're not great debaters. We're great witnesses. Lawyers debate. Witnesses just share what they saw and witnessed. We're witnesses. We're not lawyers. That means that we must live our lives so anchored in Jesus, that we have victory in the valley. And if we don't have victory in the valley, we must do whatever it takes to find that victory instead of switching our mode, switching our method now into arguing and fighting. Let's come to the last point, the third point. I want you to write this down. Mountaintop people can handle valley problems. I didn't say mountain top people can fix all valley problems. Sometimes when you spend time with God in prayer, God gives you spiritual insights, direction, guidance, wisdom and ideas on how to fix, I call them, valley problems. Other times, He doesn't give you ideas. He just increases your strength. Not every problem gets solved. Some problems get handled. And when I was younger, I used to pray like this. I said, Lord, decrease my problems. I said, Lord, take away the stress. Take away the burden. Take away my science homework or my science teacher, whichever one is easier for you, Lord. Lord, take away all this, you know, my driving. I had to have a driving test and I grew up and I got married. Lord, take away the bills. Lord, take away the taxes. Lord, take away, you know, the people from the church because they're driving me crazy. Lord, take away the staff. Lord, take away the sickness. Take away everything. Then I realized if God will take everything away, I'm going to end up dead. So I switched my prayer. I no longer pray, God, take away the problems. Some problems they need to be taken away. I said, God, increase your strength. Mountain top people have the ability not only to solve valley problems, but to handle valley problems. Because sometimes you solve the problem and sometimes you walk in the valley of the shadow of death. You can handle it because you are not alone. Because he is with you. You will not fear evil. His staff and his rod will comfort you. So while the presence of God gives me power to overcome in the valley, it also gives me presence and peace to endure in the valley. Not get stuck in the valley, not get refined, but not get defined by the valley, but get refined by the valley and come on the other side where my table, I am seated at the table. My head is anointed and goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Come on, somebody give God some praise. So when Jesus came down from the mount and the Bible says that he saw people and they were arguing, they couldn't get the demon out of a boy. And Jesus had this, one of these moments where the Bible says, he says this, How long shall I be with you? It is another words. I'm sick and tired of you all. That's my translation. It's not a modern translation, it's just mine. Pretty much Jesus is like, you know what? I'm fed up with you guys. That's exactly what it says there. How long shall I be with you? Then he says, he identifies two problems of people who live in the valley and live by the valley. He says, you unbelieving and perverse generation. Now unbelieving means you're disconnected from God. Perverse means you're deeply connected with the world. Could it be that sometimes we lack victory in the valley because we are disconnected or we're connected? But like, you know how our phones sometimes in some areas in tri-cities, it's connected except you get disconnected. You drop the call, there's a lack of reception. It's like that barely working reception. It's that unbelieving factor, meaning not connected to God, in your connection to God, it's broken. But usually what I found out is that unbelief always leads to perverseness. You cannot have a weak connection with God without having a strong connection to the world. And you cannot have a strong connection to God without having a weaker connection to the world. That's why Jesus' solution to the valley problem people, he says, however, this kind does not leave except by fixes your connection to God, fasting disconnects you from the world. In other words, prayer is what repairs that weak connection that unbelief left. And fasting is what disconnects you from the world, whereas before you were perverse, you were just like the world. You claimed to be a Christian, but honestly, you were the same. Deeply connected, deeply entrenched in the world and then loosely connected to God. And then you're in a valley and you're wondering, man, why am I not getting victories? Why am I not getting victories? Why am I not getting victories? What if, what if the secret of your victory is in your connection and your disconnection? How is your connection to God? I'm not saying do you believe in Jesus. Demons believe they're still demons. I'm not saying do you occasionally go to church. I occasionally go to Taco Bell, never became a chalupa. I'm not saying is your mom or your dad saints. God doesn't have grandchildren. He only has children. How is your personal connection to God? It'll be very simple to answer that. If you're noticing it's weak, I can guarantee you without being a prophet. While your connection to God is weak, you have another connection right now that's super ultra strong. One gigabyte upload speed. For some of us, it's sports. For some of us, it's overeating. For some of us, it's videos. It's entertainment. For some of us, it's habits that actually are hurting our physical health. For some of us, it's friends and relationships that are toxic and are draining us and distracting us from our studies, distracting us from where we're supposed to be. And so what the Lord wants to do is he says, if you want this kind problem to be fixed this year, I want you to reset everything. Reconnect prayer and then fast disconnect from some of those things. And you will watch how you will experience victory in your valley. Amen. Fasting is not starvation. Fasting is disconnecting from the world. Why is this important? Why is fasting important? You have to understand. Eve ate herself out of paradise by eating. She got herself out of a paradise by eating. Esau ate himself out of his inheritance. First temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness was not with pornography. It was with food. The Bible says for some people, their stomach is their God. When the king's stomach gets too exalted, you stop seeing your feet. You know he's getting too high. A lot of us have an affair with food. Food is our friend and that's dangerous. Food is your fuel. It's not your friend. You're supposed to have real friends. And that friends cannot be fries. Some of us were deeper and closer friends with our fridge than actually with real friends. Why? Because we comfort our negative emotions by eating. And no wonder we get obese. No wonder we get overweight. And I understand it's a sensitive topic and some of you are going to throw stones at me. Just drop it in the comments. Don't actually throw physical stones. But I want to speak that into us. The Lord wants us to be a people who don't live our life, discovering ourselves but denying ourselves. And He wants us to live our lives where we humble ourselves before God. And fasting is one of the ways that you humble yourself. It improves your prayer life. It helps you to conquer your appetites. It doesn't move God, it moves you. It's not about losing weight. It's not about starvation. Starvation is an environment imposing it on you. Fasting is you imposing it on your body. It's very different. Diet is you trying to lose weight. Fasting is that you're trying to get in line with God. Amen. And so I want to encourage each and every one of you. For the next 14 days, we still have a 21 day. For those of you who are like, maybe this is not for me, why not? Are you already walking on water? And even if you are, Jesus fasted. This kind, do you have something in your life you're believing for a breakthrough? Is your walk with God so perfect that you cannot go a little bit deeper, a little bit closer? No, but I don't want to, I just don't want to fast. You don't have to fast all water. You can choose whatever that the Lord puts on your heart. But I want you to join this and then join the prayer as well. You may say, well, it's a little bit uncomfortable. It's kind of like fever. When you get fever, things kind of stop. You notice when you get fever, you stop doing everything else. You're lying in bed over there. Yeah, but that's the war is going on. Cleansing is happening. A fight is taking place. And that's what fasting is. Some things can stop for a season, maybe certain watching movies or watching sports and some other things. But at the same time, you can continue your normal life and the heat is being increased. It's not about you trying to be holier than that, holier than other people. That is not the purpose of fasting. It's actually you trying to become smaller and just coming closer to God. As you connect to prayer, disconnect through fasting, God promises this kind will go out. This kind will go out. Habits will be broken that you couldn't break on your own. Some of us are battling, not just with the obesity, we're battling something in our generics, something is in the spiritual realm that doesn't want us to be healthy. Some of us are battling with poverty that cannot be explained. We work very hard. We have education. We just can't make ends meet. If it's a spiritual problem, you can't beat it with the physical methods. And so it needs to be met with spiritual methods. Some of us maybe are dealing with anxiety and depression. We already taken the medication. We already switched to doctors. We switched to therapists. We already, you know, trying to do all of these things that the world recommends. But if it's deeper than your physical, this kind goes out by prayer and fasting. Check your connection with God. Check your connection to the world. Are you so deeply connected to God? Do you know the name of every movie actor, but you don't know the name of every disciple? Do you know the name of every artist and every billboard song? But you don't know how many songs are there in the Bible. That could show very deeply connected to the world and very loosely connected to God. I'm not condemning anybody because I am as guilty of this as myself. I'm just simply challenging each one of us that maybe the reason why we're seeing more defeats in the valley than God has wanted us to see is because we're deeply connected to the place we're supposed to be not friends with. And we are loosely connected to the place where God says, I want you to be closer, intimate with me. I don't want to be a Sunday date. I want to be a bride. I want to be close to you. Amen. Hey, thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed this content and this was a blessing to you, would you help us and hit thumbs up so that it could help more people to discover this video? It cost you nothing, but it can go a long way to help with the algorithm. As well as if you're not subscribed to our channel, hit subscribe, click on the bell, so that you can be reminded each time that we upload videos. Thank you so much for being a part of this community. If you're interested in learning more about Hungry Gen, our internship, our conferences, deliverance, and so many other things, go to HungryGen.com for more information. And as always, remember, better is not good enough, the best is yet to come.