A Pause

 It has come to my attention that a handful of you have been asking various questions about fasting. Since I believe fasting to be an integral and essential part of the Christian journey, and since we’re a little over halfway through the book of James, we will pause our discussion of James for a few days and delve into the topic of fasting. That way, I won’t have to write ten different e-mails but have one teaching on the subject that I can forward to anyone inquiring about it if they haven’t happened to catch it on the blog or the Hand of Help website.

While fasting seems to have fallen out of favor with the modern-day church, being replaced by calling money down from heaven or declaring the things that are not as though they were, it’s something that was widely practiced in the Old Testament and transitioned over into the New Testament being a common practice among those whom we look up to and see as ideals and paragons of the faith.

Fasting may not be glamorous, but it is effective. It may not give someone a reason to boast, but it allows them to come to a place wherein they are more receptive to the voice of God and more able to lean on the power of God.

I was toying with the idea of naming it something pretentious like everything I know about fasting or giving it some other title equally grating just for funsies, but as my sense of humor is not to everyone’s taste, I’ll just name the study The Fundamentals of Fasting. I don’t know how long it will be exactly, but it will be however long it needs to be to answer some of the questions I’ve accumulated, as well as to lay a solid foundation for fasting itself.

To those of you enjoying the study on James, rest easy; we will return shortly. To those who’ve been asking about fasting, no, I haven’t been ignoring the messages Daniel forwarded along; I’ve just been trying to juggle everything satisfactorily.

By the by, I know it seems like it’s been a year, but we’re only into the third week of January. Could you imagine what the next 48 weeks are going to be like?

No matter what may come, remember to be strong and of good courage, neither dismayed nor afraid, for the Lord is with you. We’ll look back on this year and call it a lot of things; boring won’t be one of them.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.