Humble Fasting
Bible Text: Matthew 6:9-15 | Speaker: Mike Chalmers | Series: Messiah and King | After then the Lord’s Prayer (really, the Model Prayer or Disciples’ Prayer), Jesus then addresses the most humbling of these activities (giving, praying), which is fasting. Fasting by nature is the humbling of the soul before God through the deprivation of food for a time, to seek Him, to meditate on His Word, and to pray.
Our Lord shows that to show ourselves to be humble by neglecting our appearance when we fast (or do anything spiritually) is the opposite of true humility, and in pretending genuine faith, we actually deny the humble Christ who bought us through His utter and complete humiliation on the cross.
More than this it is the hope of the Gospel within us that drives us to joy even through the humbling of our bodies, whether we plan a fast or whether the Lord takes us through difficult times. We don’t go out of our way to pretend we’re happy, but do everything we can to show others Christ and not ourselves.