The week between Christmas day and New Year's day is an ideal time for fasting and prayer. All the Christmas activities are over and we find ourselves looking right into a brand new year.
For those who are able to do so, this last week on the calendar is the best time of the year for soul searching.
In this verse Paul states that he fasted often. Here he is speaking of a voluntary denial of food. Earlier in the verse he mentions the hunger and thirst he had suffered as a result of his apostleship.
Fasting and hunger are not the same. Hunger is an involuntary denial of food imposed by circumstances. In a fast, food is available but the person chooses not to eat it in order to better hear from the Lord.
Psychologists tell us that man has two basic appetites: food and sex. They relate these two drives to man's primal instincts for self-preservation and reproduction of his own kind. Man eats food, they say, for his own survival; he engages in sex to satisfy a deep-seated desire to assure the survival of the species.
The Christian does not deny that these two drives exist in man. He acknowledges these appetites. But he admits to a greater desire: hunger and thirst after righteousness. To the believer, his quest for God is even greater than his quest for sustenance and succession.
"In fastings often..." is an indication of the place the Lord occupied in the life of the great Apostle Paul. Seeking after God should also be number one on our list of priorities.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Dick Mills was ordained at The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1949. He and his wife Betty traveled as evangelists all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, and Australia. Dick and Betty are now home in heaven.
