THE REWARDS OF FASTING BY MIKE BICKLE (excerpt from Introduction)
The Holy Spirit is readying the Bride of Christ—the Body of Christ—at this time for the coming days of glory and opposition. How radically the Lord must change the Church to prepare her for His return! What the Western Church today accepts as normal values and practices will be dramatically altered as our minds are renewed and we are transformed into the people God originally designed us to be.
By definition, fasting is abstaining from food. The fast that we are after, however, goes far beyond just denying ourselves physical nourishment. Our desire is to position our hearts to encounter Jesus as the Bridegroom.
What He delights in is our obedience and our pursuit of intimacy with Him. More important to Him than fasting is that we do His will.
When we fast it must be as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself.
Scripture teaches us to fast to strengthen us in our quest to be preoccupied with God and His will.
Jesus promised that God would openly reward those who approach fasting with the right spirit. Fasting is a grace that significantly increases our receptivity to the Lord’s voice and His Word. It allows us to enter into depths in our relationships with God that are beyond what we normally experience.
THE REWARDS OF FASTING BY MIKE BICKLE (excerpt from Chapter One)
There is a growing hunger and desperation that flows from the Body of Christ’s recognition that we are spiritually barren. We understand that we are in great need of the in-breaking of God’s love and power. As a result, there is clearly a growing enthusiasm for fasting, even fasting as a lifestyle.
This new interest in fasting is God’s gift to the Body of Christ. It is part of God’s commitment to prepare the Church for the soon coming time of glory and crisis in the End Times. This ready response is surely the work of God in our midst. And it is unmistakably in line with the Word of God. With boldness Jesus emphasized that the Father rewards fast. This proclamation alone makes fasting of great importance to the true followers of Jesus. It is not secondary. The grace of fasting must not be neglected.
There is a tension in fasting and living the fasted lifestyle. While God does reward fasting, the rewards He gives are not earned or deserved by us because of our fasting. We are weak people who can never earn God’s favor or rewards, but can only receive them. We give ourselves to the grace of fasting by positioning ourselves before His infinite goodness. He wants to flood our lives with many rewards—rewards that are internal as our hearts encounter Him, external as our circumstances are touched by His power, and eternal as fasting impacts even our eternal rewards.
Truly the rewards that the Father gives to those who fast regularly are vast. And that is why, even now, He is preparing the hearts of believers worldwide to say “yes” to the New Testament lifestyle of prayer and fasting. He will prepare us as we experience Jesus’ affection as our Bridegroom God. Our ability to experience more of our glorious God is deeply connected to our embracing the grace of fasting.
Deep within the human heart is the desire to know that we are loved and valued.The dilemma is that though our desire for love is real, and though we are innately designed by God to be exhilarated by His love and acceptance of us, there remains a distance between the knowledge of this love and our actual experience of it. Believe it or not, fasting is one of the most practical ways to posture our hearts to experience more of God’s affection and love.
The gap between knowing that God loves us and actually experiencing that love is rooted in living from a false identity based on the way people receive us rather than on how God receives us. How we think and feel about ourselves is greatly impacted by those whose opinions we value most.
Our Creator is the only One who fully knows who we were designed to be. He tells us who we really are by revealing how much He loves us. Our belief in His affection for us determines how we feel about ourselves, how we approach life, how we interact with others, and how we deal with setbacks and difficulties. God wants our identity and sense of value to be rooted and grounded in the knowledge of His affections for us (Eph. 3:17-18). This is where our hearts come alive!
Jesus described the Kingdom of God as a wedding, and the Father as the One arranging a glorious marriage for His Son (Matt. 22) This is the highest revelation of the Kingdom of God. It is the revelation of Jesus as our Bridegroom God and of us as His cherished Bride. It is through receiving the taking to heart this revelation that the gap is closed and the dilemma is solved in our experience of God’s love.
The Holy Spirit’s final emphasis before Jesus’ Second Coming will be on the intimate relationship between Him and His Bride (Rev.22:17) John described the Church as being in deep unity with the Holy Spirit at that time, saying and doing what the Spirit is saying and doing. She will have completely assumed her identity as the Bride and will be fully participating in the bridal longing for the Bridegroom to come, to return.
The final prophecy reveals not only what the Holy Spirit’s primary activities will be in the coming days, but also three key things that will happen in and through the Church. (1) The Church will be anointed with the Spirit. The Spirit will rest on the Church in great power and revelation. (2) The Church will be deeply engaged in intercession, crying out, “Come, Lord Jesus.” (3) The Church will be established in her bridal identity.
The bridal paradigm views the Kingdom through the eyes of a Bride whose love is loyal, wholehearted and devoted. It is the bridal perspective of the Kingdom of God.
As sons of God, heirs of His power, we are given a position that allows us to experience God’s throne (Rev. 3:21; Rom. 8:17).
As Christ’ Bride, we are in a position to experience God’s heart—His emotions, affections, and desire for us. We must understand that being His Bride points to a position of privileged nearness that enables us to encounter His heart.
Being a “man after God’s own heart” implies that King David was a student of the emotions of God’s heart.
What empowered John the Baptist was the revelation he had of Jesus as the Bridegroom God. John spoke of hearing the voice of the Bridegroom as that which caused his heart to be overwhelmed with joy. (John 3).
The way we view ourselves is greatly impacted when we understand Jesus as a passionate Bridegroom. We begin to see ourselves as ones who have immense value to Him.
The Bridegroom message is a call to active intimacy with God. God has opened Himself up for us to understand and feel His emotions, desires, and affections. (Eph. 3:18-19)
It is true that God is angry at rebellion, but He has a heart of tenderness toward sincere believers who, though immature and weak, seek to obey Him. He enjoys us even in our weakness. He feels pleasure over us while we are growing, not just after we’ve matured.
Jesus is mostly glad when He interacts with sincere believers. Even in our weakness we can approach Him and be confident that He is glad to relate to us.
Jesus feels about us the same way the Father feels about Him (John 15:9). The depth of the Father’s love for Jesus is unfathomable.
Love is not passive and the God of affection is an all-consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). His jealousy for us is as demanding as the grace, a most powerful flame, the very flame of God (Song. 8:6-7). Jesus wants the entirety of our hearts and He will continue to jealousy pursue every aspect of our lives until we are fully His. Out of His zeal come His judgments, which destroy all that opposes love and all that injures His Church (Prov. 6:34; Ezek. 38:18-19; Zech. 1:14; 8:2; Rev. 19:2).
The God who created Heaven and Earth is a Bridegroom whose heart burns in holy love for His Bride. The God who possesses all power desires intimacy with human beings. Only when we understand Jesus’ great desire for us can we understand who we really are. We are His eternal companions. He shares with us that which the Father has given Him.
When we come face to face with the extravagant affections of God, the very core of our being is impacted. This internal impact is what we are after. It is what changes our lives.
Living according the reality of Jesus being our heavenly Bridegroom and viewing ourselves as His cherished Bride is the only way we can prepare for the Lord’s return. It is our only hope of filling the void of our loneliness and rejection.
We do not naturally live in this identity, though it is the highest revelation of who we are before Him.
The Lord will unveil Himself as a Bridegroom and He will do it through prayer and fasting. God beckons us to come near Him. Oh, that we would respond to this invitation wholeheartedly.
The only logical response to God’s extravagant love for us is one of wholehearted love, characterized by denying ourselves. As we do, we will lay hold of the highest things God has for us. This present age is but a brief window in eternity. This life is but one small “moment” we have to respond in full obedience and love to Jesus. In loving Him, we seek to obey Him at any cost. In responding to His love, we receive all that He longs to pour into our lives. Jesus said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments. (John 14).
His first command is to love God with all our heart (Matt. 22). Before the Lord returns, the Church worldwide will be passionately in love with God and living abandoned lifestyles of happy holiness.
How do we grow from immature love to blazing, abandoned love for God? We dive headlong into the revelation of His desire for us. In faith, we must receive the testimony of His unyielding affection for us. We must remember that our God is a God of gladness who loves us and likes us. Our love for Him will grow as we take to heart this foundational principle regarding His feelings for us.
It is the indescribably beauty of Jesus, the Bridegroom God, that fascinates our hearts just as it did David’s. David desired one thing above all: to behold God’s beauty (Ps. 27:4).
Fasting enlarges our capacity to receive truth, and accelerates the process of God’s truths taking root in our own hearts. It is a God-given way to make room for more of God and therefore is an essential component to the age-old question of “How do I grow in love for God?”
In order to grow in love, our capacity for God must increase, and in order for our capacity to increase, we need to incorporate the practice of fasting into our lives. Fasting fuels our experience of God’s love.
The Holy Spirit is readying the Bride of Christ—the Body of Christ—at this time for the coming days of glory and opposition. How radically the Lord must change the Church to prepare her for His return! What the Western Church today accepts as normal values and practices will be dramatically altered as our minds are renewed and we are transformed into the people God originally designed us to be.
By definition, fasting is abstaining from food. The fast that we are after, however, goes far beyond just denying ourselves physical nourishment. Our desire is to position our hearts to encounter Jesus as the Bridegroom.
What He delights in is our obedience and our pursuit of intimacy with Him. More important to Him than fasting is that we do His will.
When we fast it must be as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself.
Scripture teaches us to fast to strengthen us in our quest to be preoccupied with God and His will.
Jesus promised that God would openly reward those who approach fasting with the right spirit. Fasting is a grace that significantly increases our receptivity to the Lord’s voice and His Word. It allows us to enter into depths in our relationships with God that are beyond what we normally experience.
THE REWARDS OF FASTING BY MIKE BICKLE (excerpt from Chapter One)
There is a growing hunger and desperation that flows from the Body of Christ’s recognition that we are spiritually barren. We understand that we are in great need of the in-breaking of God’s love and power. As a result, there is clearly a growing enthusiasm for fasting, even fasting as a lifestyle.
This new interest in fasting is God’s gift to the Body of Christ. It is part of God’s commitment to prepare the Church for the soon coming time of glory and crisis in the End Times. This ready response is surely the work of God in our midst. And it is unmistakably in line with the Word of God. With boldness Jesus emphasized that the Father rewards fast. This proclamation alone makes fasting of great importance to the true followers of Jesus. It is not secondary. The grace of fasting must not be neglected.
There is a tension in fasting and living the fasted lifestyle. While God does reward fasting, the rewards He gives are not earned or deserved by us because of our fasting. We are weak people who can never earn God’s favor or rewards, but can only receive them. We give ourselves to the grace of fasting by positioning ourselves before His infinite goodness. He wants to flood our lives with many rewards—rewards that are internal as our hearts encounter Him, external as our circumstances are touched by His power, and eternal as fasting impacts even our eternal rewards.
Truly the rewards that the Father gives to those who fast regularly are vast. And that is why, even now, He is preparing the hearts of believers worldwide to say “yes” to the New Testament lifestyle of prayer and fasting. He will prepare us as we experience Jesus’ affection as our Bridegroom God. Our ability to experience more of our glorious God is deeply connected to our embracing the grace of fasting.
Deep within the human heart is the desire to know that we are loved and valued.The dilemma is that though our desire for love is real, and though we are innately designed by God to be exhilarated by His love and acceptance of us, there remains a distance between the knowledge of this love and our actual experience of it. Believe it or not, fasting is one of the most practical ways to posture our hearts to experience more of God’s affection and love.
The gap between knowing that God loves us and actually experiencing that love is rooted in living from a false identity based on the way people receive us rather than on how God receives us. How we think and feel about ourselves is greatly impacted by those whose opinions we value most.
Our Creator is the only One who fully knows who we were designed to be. He tells us who we really are by revealing how much He loves us. Our belief in His affection for us determines how we feel about ourselves, how we approach life, how we interact with others, and how we deal with setbacks and difficulties. God wants our identity and sense of value to be rooted and grounded in the knowledge of His affections for us (Eph. 3:17-18). This is where our hearts come alive!
Jesus described the Kingdom of God as a wedding, and the Father as the One arranging a glorious marriage for His Son (Matt. 22) This is the highest revelation of the Kingdom of God. It is the revelation of Jesus as our Bridegroom God and of us as His cherished Bride. It is through receiving the taking to heart this revelation that the gap is closed and the dilemma is solved in our experience of God’s love.
The Holy Spirit’s final emphasis before Jesus’ Second Coming will be on the intimate relationship between Him and His Bride (Rev.22:17) John described the Church as being in deep unity with the Holy Spirit at that time, saying and doing what the Spirit is saying and doing. She will have completely assumed her identity as the Bride and will be fully participating in the bridal longing for the Bridegroom to come, to return.
The final prophecy reveals not only what the Holy Spirit’s primary activities will be in the coming days, but also three key things that will happen in and through the Church. (1) The Church will be anointed with the Spirit. The Spirit will rest on the Church in great power and revelation. (2) The Church will be deeply engaged in intercession, crying out, “Come, Lord Jesus.” (3) The Church will be established in her bridal identity.
The bridal paradigm views the Kingdom through the eyes of a Bride whose love is loyal, wholehearted and devoted. It is the bridal perspective of the Kingdom of God.
As sons of God, heirs of His power, we are given a position that allows us to experience God’s throne (Rev. 3:21; Rom. 8:17).
As Christ’ Bride, we are in a position to experience God’s heart—His emotions, affections, and desire for us. We must understand that being His Bride points to a position of privileged nearness that enables us to encounter His heart.
Being a “man after God’s own heart” implies that King David was a student of the emotions of God’s heart.
What empowered John the Baptist was the revelation he had of Jesus as the Bridegroom God. John spoke of hearing the voice of the Bridegroom as that which caused his heart to be overwhelmed with joy. (John 3).
The way we view ourselves is greatly impacted when we understand Jesus as a passionate Bridegroom. We begin to see ourselves as ones who have immense value to Him.
The Bridegroom message is a call to active intimacy with God. God has opened Himself up for us to understand and feel His emotions, desires, and affections. (Eph. 3:18-19)
It is true that God is angry at rebellion, but He has a heart of tenderness toward sincere believers who, though immature and weak, seek to obey Him. He enjoys us even in our weakness. He feels pleasure over us while we are growing, not just after we’ve matured.
Jesus is mostly glad when He interacts with sincere believers. Even in our weakness we can approach Him and be confident that He is glad to relate to us.
Jesus feels about us the same way the Father feels about Him (John 15:9). The depth of the Father’s love for Jesus is unfathomable.
Love is not passive and the God of affection is an all-consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). His jealousy for us is as demanding as the grace, a most powerful flame, the very flame of God (Song. 8:6-7). Jesus wants the entirety of our hearts and He will continue to jealousy pursue every aspect of our lives until we are fully His. Out of His zeal come His judgments, which destroy all that opposes love and all that injures His Church (Prov. 6:34; Ezek. 38:18-19; Zech. 1:14; 8:2; Rev. 19:2).
The God who created Heaven and Earth is a Bridegroom whose heart burns in holy love for His Bride. The God who possesses all power desires intimacy with human beings. Only when we understand Jesus’ great desire for us can we understand who we really are. We are His eternal companions. He shares with us that which the Father has given Him.
When we come face to face with the extravagant affections of God, the very core of our being is impacted. This internal impact is what we are after. It is what changes our lives.
Living according the reality of Jesus being our heavenly Bridegroom and viewing ourselves as His cherished Bride is the only way we can prepare for the Lord’s return. It is our only hope of filling the void of our loneliness and rejection.
We do not naturally live in this identity, though it is the highest revelation of who we are before Him.
The Lord will unveil Himself as a Bridegroom and He will do it through prayer and fasting. God beckons us to come near Him. Oh, that we would respond to this invitation wholeheartedly.
The only logical response to God’s extravagant love for us is one of wholehearted love, characterized by denying ourselves. As we do, we will lay hold of the highest things God has for us. This present age is but a brief window in eternity. This life is but one small “moment” we have to respond in full obedience and love to Jesus. In loving Him, we seek to obey Him at any cost. In responding to His love, we receive all that He longs to pour into our lives. Jesus said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments. (John 14).
His first command is to love God with all our heart (Matt. 22). Before the Lord returns, the Church worldwide will be passionately in love with God and living abandoned lifestyles of happy holiness.
How do we grow from immature love to blazing, abandoned love for God? We dive headlong into the revelation of His desire for us. In faith, we must receive the testimony of His unyielding affection for us. We must remember that our God is a God of gladness who loves us and likes us. Our love for Him will grow as we take to heart this foundational principle regarding His feelings for us.
It is the indescribably beauty of Jesus, the Bridegroom God, that fascinates our hearts just as it did David’s. David desired one thing above all: to behold God’s beauty (Ps. 27:4).
Fasting enlarges our capacity to receive truth, and accelerates the process of God’s truths taking root in our own hearts. It is a God-given way to make room for more of God and therefore is an essential component to the age-old question of “How do I grow in love for God?”
In order to grow in love, our capacity for God must increase, and in order for our capacity to increase, we need to incorporate the practice of fasting into our lives. Fasting fuels our experience of God’s love.
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