I am half way now on my 10 day fast and it is going pretty good. I am not feeling any ill affects, and I toad my stationary bike for an hour tonight.

The first reason I am doing this is to increase my prayer power with God. The second reason is to grow in self-control. The third reason is to possibly experience some health benefits. The fourth reason is to be a model and an encouragement to others who might want to try this for the same reasons.

The fifth reason is to lose some weight, and so far I have lost 16 lbs.

I am fasting with water only for 10 days, and I am just finishing day 4 and I am feeling fine, and I even rode my stationary bike for an hour while watching the Super Bowl, wow, what a game that was. I have 5 motives for choosing to do this fast.

The first reason is that our “Five Days of Prayer” at Jefferson Baptist Church, starts tomorrow, and I will be praying about 8 hours each day with people from our church. We are praying specifically for the mission works that we have started and the missionaries that we support around the world. Fasting in conjunction with prayer increases my prayer power with God, and I want to see many, many people around the world come to have a personal relationship with Jesus so they can live with Him forever. Fasting is one of my least favorite things to do in all of life, but if people are changed forever it seems a small price to pay.

My second motive is that I want to grow in character to become more and more like Jesus. Self-control is a major character trait that is a key to growing more mature every day. Self-control grows like our muscles grow stronger, exercising and adding a little more weight on the bar each time we do it. The resistance of the weights that our muscles push against makes us stronger, and in the same way if I do things periodically like fasting that requires a huge amount of self-control, and if I can make the 10 days without cheating when everyone has gone to bed, I will have grown in self-control. If I can grow even a little bit in controlling what I think, what I speak out of my mouth, and the impulsiveness of some of my choices this 10 days without food will be worth it.

The third reason is to promote better health of my physical body. I have read several books that have listed significant health benefits to an extended fast with no food. It is so much more enjoyable living life feeling good and strong as apposed to being tired and aching all day. This is an experiment to see what does improve, but if there is any noticeable improvement in my health I will be highly motivated to make this a regular part of my life.

Reason number 4 wasn’t a reason when I started but has become one as I have discussed my fast with people who are interested and concerned about this adventure of sorts that I am attempting. As a Pastor I want to model right living for people that I have influence with. I am far from perfect, but the journey and the attempt to grow faithfully as a person in godly character and maturity is a choice that we all make daily, and I want to be a motivation for many others to make the effort to become a better person every day that they live. A number of people are fasting with me and a much larger number are thinking about fasting for even one or two meals as they follow what I am doing. Who wouldn’t want more motivation to pray and more power when they do pray, who wouldn’t want more self-control, and who wouldn’t want better health.

I started a water only fast February 1st and I plan on continuing it until the end of February 10th, unless I get to wimpy before then. I have three major motives, actually I have now identified five reasons why I am doing this.

The first reason is to increase my power in praying. I want to change people and the world through my praying to God on their behalf, and when we are willing to sacrifice , even as small as going without food God works more and changes more because of the time I spend praying.

The second reason is that the self-control level that I presently have in me will grow stronger as I fight with my flesh in choosing not to feed it.

The third reason is to pursue better health. I have read much of late on the health benefits of fasting, and there are many. I have a number of significant health issues as most people at 70 years of age do, and I wouldn’t mind being able to take more control of those if possible through the discipline and practice of fasting.

I am drinking lots of water and sleeping a little bit more, but so far going good.

I am fasting for 10 days from February 1st to the 10th, drinking only water and an occasional cup of coffee. Getting close to the end of day 2, and I am feeling fine, except all I think about is food. The psychological part of fasting usually ends after day 3, and I am no so mentally obsessed with anything that vaguely looks like it would be good to eat.

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog the first reason I am fasting is in conjunction with JBC’s 5 day prayer event in which I plan on praying with many others for our ministries around the world, especially in Sierra Leone, West Africa. I believe that the Bible teaches that fasting will increase the power I have in my praying, and I want to accomplish as much as possible in my praying next week for these people.

The second reason I am fasting is as a discipline that will grow the strength of the character trait of self-control in me. As I work at growing as a husband who loves his wife as Jesus loves the church, I realize that almost all my failures as a husband is because of the lack of self-control in the words that I speak. As I work at managing my time well, it is easy to see that my lack of self -control is why I waste time doing things that have no value. As I work at eating healthy and keeping my weight under control, again my lack of self -control is why I do poorly in this area. Each evening as I spend some time replaying the day, confessing to God all the sins that I can remember, I am pretty sure that most of what I confess is a result of weak self-control. As I go over our budget at the end of the month, and recognize the number of things that I bought for my boat went way over what I had budgeted, and the reason was I had as much self-control as a little kid in a candy store. It is kind of embarrassing to be almost 70 years old, and still have the desires of my flesh running my life to the extent that they do.

So, my plan is to put into practice 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 where the Apostle Paul says “I will discipline my body and make it my slave”. I want my flesh to be my slave, not my master. I ride my stationary bike every night for an hour because of the benefits I experience physically as a result. It is called exercise. I am going to use fasting as an exercise to grow stronger and stronger in my inner person. Tomorrow I will write about third reason I am fasting for 10 days.

I am going to fast February 1st through the 10th, eating nothing and drinking only water and coffee. I may drink some fruit juice when I take my meds if they start to give me any problems. I am choosing to do this for 3 different reasons. The first reason is that the Bible teaches fasting as a discipline along with prayer in order to increase our power in prayer or our influence with God in prayer. There are many factors in the life of the person who is praying to God taught in the Bible that increases or decreases our power when praying. One of those factors is the presence of unconfessed sin in the life of the person praying, the Bible says that God will not listen to that person’s prayers. The book of James in the New Testament says that if a person doubts or has little faith they won’t have much power when they pray either. There are at least a dozen of these factors mentioned in the Bible that either increase or decrease our prayer power. Our church is having a prayer event called the “Five Days of Prayer”, which starts on Monday and goes until Friday. We have people in our prayer room praying together from 5 to 10 am and from 5 to 10 pm each of the five days. There are usually 20 to 30 people in the prayer room each of those hours praying and asking for God’s blessing. We have 4 of these prayer events during the year and each one has a different focus. This particular one is focusing on our Foreign Missions ministry that we have around the world. I want more and more power or influence with God when I pray, and I want more and more power from God in my life as I live, and I am believing that my choosing to fast for the next 10 days will result in that increase in power.

I don’t like to fast, I like to eat. I am not looking forward to the next 10 days, in fact I am dreading them. But I am looking forward to what I expect will be a time of growth in my life, and in my relationship with God. I said at the beginning that there were 3 reasons I was fasting, I will write about the other 2 in the next couple of days.

I believe in God, I believe in the God that is described in the Bible. I believe that He is all wise, infinitely powerful, omnipresent, totally and completely just, sovereign over everything and everybody, creator of heaven and earth, and that He loves me unconditionally. I believe in Jesus Christ, that He is equal with the Father, one with the Father, that He willingly emptied Himself of all that He was as God and became flesh, became man, just like me, experienced life like I do, was tempted to sin in every way that I am tempted, can totally sympathize with my weaknesses, and that He lived a perfect and sinless life. I believe that Jesus took all my sin upon Himself, that He became my sin, that is, it was as if He actually committed the sins that I have committed, he felt the shame and the guilt of my sin, and that God the Father turned His back on His own Son as He hung on the cross because He had become my sin, and God the Father because He is completely holy could not look on His Son because He had become my sin. Jesus felt that break in their unity, and oneness, something that had never happened in all of eternity, and cried out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me! I believe in the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, and that He abides in me, lives in me, that He gives me power and strength to live my life in a way that is pleasing to God the Father. I believe in the Church, the Bride of Christ, the eternal companion of Jesus, that Jesus loves the Church, gave His life for the Church, and is in the process of making her beautiful for Himself. The Church is the Body of Christ, the physical manifestation of Jesus on the earth today. I believe that my love for my church is my love for Jesus, that my commitment to my church is my commitment to Jesus.

I have poured out my life over these last 41 years for my church. I have worked hard, prayed a lot, studied and preached often, organized, administered, and led, envisioned and set goals. I have done all this for all of these years not as a job, but because The church is the Bride of Jesus, He loves the church and so do I, He gave His life for the church, and so have I.

Most can’t see past the flawed people that we all are, Jesus loves the flawed people and so do I, so many are very critical of the church and say things like, “nothing but a bunch of hypocrites”, we can’t help ourselves, we are just sinners, born that way like everyone is, but we are forgiven by Jesus because we love Him and we are pursuing righteousness and He is helping us.

My love for my church is my love for Jesus, no more – no less. My commitment to my church is my commitment to Jesus, no more – no less.