 Fasting is not starvation. Starvation is involuntarily. Fasting is your choice. You choose that. Starvation is you don't control that. Fasting you control that. Amen. I'm going to give you just briefly four benefits, four doors that fasting can unlock in your life. One is calamities of life, where fasting can change the calamities of life. Calamities of life are the things that come unexpected. It's the challenges that we can experience in our life. It's the problems that we are facing. When you start to fast, something begins to happen. These challenges invite the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit to see change in that area of your life. When you fast, the challenges that you may experience, maybe you have something coming against you, that you cannot change on your own. Maybe something is risen against your family or against your health. Maybe something is risen against your marriage or against your finances. When you say, you know what, I prayed, I've done everything, but Lord, what I do now is I humble myself before you. You will see God's intervention. You may say, why is this so important? Because the Bible says biblical definition of humility is fasting. In scriptures it says, David says, I humbled myself with fasting. This is what happens. When you humble yourself before God, Bible says God gives you grace. Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is this force that helps you to get ahead, to get out and to get through. That grace is not given to people, listen up, who need it. That grace is given to people who are humble and the best way to humble yourself is by fasting. First is calamities of life. Number two is it's in our connection to God. We fast to establish connection or renew connection with God. With our connection with God, it's like your TV receiver. If the football is going on and you have a bad receiver, sometimes the TV starts flickering. How many of you just enjoy watching the last two minutes of the game with the TV flickering? You're like, just get a kick out of it. Amazing. I'm just glory. No, you get mad. You get upset. And you know the problem is not with the football. The problem is with your TV. The problem is not with the team that is playing right now. The problem is with the receiver. With time our heart gets corroded. With times our hearts get dull. Our passion for the Lord just kind of dines. Our passion for Netflix awakens. With time our zeal for Machiato gets strong. And our passion for the Holy Ghost just kind of gets weak. And sometimes it's reflected by how we attend church. It's reflected how we pick our nose during the worship. We look for the flies. There's none of them here but you're still looking for them somewhere. It's noticeable and it's not to judge you. It happens by default. By default, get complacent in our relationship with God. When you fast, this is what happens. Your passion for the Lord, your hunger awakens. When they came to Jesus, they said, Jesus, your disciples are not fasting. John's disciples are fasting. We are fasting, the Pharisees. And your disciples aren't fasting. And Jesus said this, and I love this thing. Jesus says, when I am gone, they will fast. You know what that means? When you feel that Jesus' presence is withdrawn, start fasting. To always stay close to Him, you gotta maintain, not just once in a while, not just when you have problems. But for your relationship with Jesus to be close, you gotta continue fasting. Jesus says, when I am gone, they will fast. And so the idea that Jesus paid for everything on the cross, I no longer need to pray. I no longer need to fast. I no longer need to live holy, guys. That is not biblical. Positionally, we have everything in Christ. But Christ tells us, as His disciples, we ought to embrace a lifestyle of fasting. Point number three. What fasting does is it unlocks our calling. The calling of God. So not only it helps in our connection to God, not only it helps to get us out of calamities, but it begins to unlock our calling. Our calling. Jesus, who tells us to fast, He did not fast because of a problem. He fasted because of a purpose. He went for 40 days to fast to unlock the purpose that God has given Him, and that purpose is to save souls. We see in the New Testament something very interesting. I was yesterday and a few days before observing the New Testament, and I noticed there was very few fasts in the New Testament because of problems. In the Old Testament, it's full of, you know, the city of Nineveh fasting because they had a wrath of God. Ahab was fasting because God says, you know, I'm going to destroy your descendants. And we see Israelites fasting, and we see, you know, Esther fasting, and we see different people fasting because there was problems. In the New Testament, we see people fasting a lot, but not because of problems, because of a purpose of God and the life of the church. In Book of Acts, we see the church gathered too fast to please God, and God sent out the missionaries. We see Cornelius fasting. Now, because he had a problem, he just wanted to know more of what God wanted to take him, and God's angel comes. We see Anna staying in a temple as a widow, instead of saying, God send me a husband, Jesus, God send a Messiah. And God sends Jesus Christ to Israel. See, Jesus did not just come on accident. There were people who dedicated their life to seek and pray to God to send a revival to Israel. And Jesus was an answer to that. Jesus was also fasting. Not because he had, he needed a wife, or he needed a breakthrough. It's because he was fasting, say, God, anoint me for the ministry that you called me for. God wants you to fast for your ministry that you have as a mother, as a father, as a grandfather, as a businessman, as the person of influence in your community and in your family. That has to be a time where it's not the pain that motivates you to seek God, but your purpose motivates you to seek God. Some people, they need God constantly to give them trouble for them to stay underneath. God doesn't want to send you trouble to get you close to him. God wants to whisper to you in your pleasures, but seldomly he is hurt. Sometimes he will scream in our pain, but he doesn't want to scream. He wants to develop a close relationship with you where he can whisper to you and you can hear him. But sometimes we are so deaf, because we only hear when something is hurting, something is broken, and then we are on our knees, then we are in the morning prayer, then we are fasting. God says, come on, grow. Let's mature. When you have everything, pray. Fast. Seek my face. Learn how to be passionate when you're comfortable. And the last thing I want you to write down is to conquer the devil. We fast to conquer the devil. There was many examples of that, the battles of Israelites against the Benjamin, and they couldn't conquer them, and then when they fasted, they conquered them. When Jesus says about the little boy, the disciples, we're trying to pray for deliverance, who had epilepsy, who had this problem, and disciples prayed and prayed, couldn't receive, couldn't break through. And Jesus said, this kind goes not but by prayer and fasting. I want you to see this verse in Isaiah. If you can put out the verse. In Isaiah 58-6, this is this not the fast that I have chosen. Now typically this verse is used to discredit fasting, because God, you know, talks about the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, the one that we read in the beginning, and God, you know, looks at people who just simply go without food and they bind people, they hurt people, and God is saying, come on guys, fasting is not just going without food. You got to release the prisoners, you got to help. But I want you to read this in the new light. God says, is this not the fast I have chosen, to lose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, so that you break every yoke. God has chosen a fast to be as one of the things you can do to be bonds of wickedness, meaning wicked things you continuously do that you cannot stop doing, you feel like. Start fasting. To undo heavy burdens, do you feel heavy burdened? Do you feel like the world is crushing on you? God says, is this not the fast that I have chosen, so I can remove heavy burdens, so that I can break the bonds of wickedness, means the sins you keep falling into. You might say, I've been through a prayer line, try a prayer life. This is what the Bible says. To let the oppressed go free. Do you feel oppressed? God says, is this not the fast I have chosen, to let the oppressed go free, and that you, not the anointing water now, not the anointing oil, not the pastor, you break every yoke. God says, is this not the fast I've chosen, that I remove your heavy burden, that I break the constant sin that you fall into. You just say, I've tried, I've tried, I've tried, and I have people all the time writing to me, especially young men, and they say, I've tried everything to stop this particular sin. And what they usually mean is I have an accountability partner, I installed a software, and I went to the pastor for confession. God says, is this not the fast I've chosen, to break the bonds of wickedness, to shatter them out of your life, and for you to walk out free in Jesus' name.