“Yet even now, declares the LORD, return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning,” (Joel 2:12).
Fasting is a key spiritual discipline we read about in both the Old and New Testaments. It was after a 21-day fast that Daniel saw spiritual breakthrough, Esther saw her people delivered after a three day fast and Jesus said that some demonic spirits require prayer and fasting to be cast out. Fasting, then, is something the Lord desires for His people to do in order to seek His presence and see the manifestation of things happen on earth as it is in heaven.
In a recent sermon, Jentezen Franklin shared with the Free Chapel congregation how fasting can be a key to removing the burdens of your soul.
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“It’s a powerful thing when you humble yourself in fasting and prayer. You cannot humble yourself in prayer and God not exalt you. It is impossible. You cannot humble yourself in fasting and seeking God with all of your heart and God not exalt you. It would be unbiblical for that to happen. If you humble yourself, Psalm 35 says, ‘We humbled ourselves with fasting.’ So fasting is a manifestation of humility that says, ‘I desperately need you,'” Franklin says.
Franklin says that fasting can represent the part of the sacrificed bull or sheep that the priests, the Levites, were to have as their inheritance: the shoulders, cheeks and stomach of the animal. The shoulders, Franklin says, represent the burdens we carry, the heaviness we experience in life. These are the things we must hand over to Jesus because His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
The Promise to Freedom
Franklin dives into Isaiah 58:6 which reads, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen: too loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke?”
“When you fast you’re going to unload. You’re going to give [the Lord] the shoulder that’s been carrying all this stuff and [He’s] going to let the oppressed go free, and [God’s] going to break every yoke and lift the heaviness of of you, and you’re going to smile again and you’re going to have faith again and you’re not going to let the trials of life just oppress you and beat you down,” he says.
“Sometimes we think when we go into a new year we just are supposed to bring the same old stuff, but I feel like God is trying to say to us today, on this fast, don’t go into the new year with last year’s burdens. Let it go. Leave it there,” he continues.
Jesus is the One who took up the cross for our sake, taking our burdens with Him. They were nailed to the cross at Calvary, and He promises to break the yoke of all oppression upon our lives.
With the new year just getting started, if you choose to fast, seek God through it, know and trusting that He can break any pain you are dealing with. It is in His name that we find life and life more abundantly.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
