|The Blue Door Audio

Fasting, Spiritual Violence,and the Sermon on the Mount

Released in late 2014

Direction (47 min)

Direction is everything in following Jesus.  Jesus didn't call us to simply get a new location in salvation, but a new DIRECTION.  To be "born again" means to begin again...in a new direction, with new possibilities and capabilities.

This is super important for those fasting right now.  What direction are you fasting into?

This is also a prelude to upcoming teaching on Laodicea.

Guarding of our Hearts While Fasting (13 min)

Fasting increases your spiritual experience.  It speeds things up and increases your capacity…taking you deeper, further, faster.  This is great for the heart.  Fasting is “Jesus 101”:

Matthew 9:14-15  Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?"  15  And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.

 

Matthew 6:16-18  "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.  17  But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,  18  so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

 

Fasting really works.  Every major religion fasts.  Not all fasting is Jesus-centered.  We have to understand when entering into fasting that we are flinging the gate of our heart further open.  We need to guard what we let in during fasting.  When Jesus fasted, satan came to war against it. 

Luke 4:1-2  Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,  2  being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.

 

This quick message is about how to guard our hearts during fasting and get victory to increase in this season in the right way.  Increase IS happening, which direction are we increasing in?  Going fast is only good if you are going in the right direction!