Dharius Daniels - The Fasting Factor

Alright, well, let’s go together to the Book of Mark, chapter number 9, beginning at verse number 25. Mark, chapter 9, starting at verse 25. Will y’all help me make some noise? Let’s welcome in our New Jersey location! Come on, let’s go crazy for them! Y’all are not loud enough—New Jersey is in the building! They had their Anchored Goals women’s live event yesterday, and Pastor Shemica was there, and Coach Camille was there. I saw church mothers with resistance bands! I said, «You got the mothers working out! My God today, this is a changed church!» I think we’ll be gathering this Saturday; this is Atlanta’s weekend coming up, so I’m just so proud of them and all that God is doing. I want y’all to go crazy at our Gwinnett location for everybody every single week! This is a culture of hunger, traffic lines, and people pressing their way into the lobby for additional seating. Clap your hands for everybody in additional seating at this location! A shoutout to the lobby, the MPR! They say, «Listen, I’m not playing about my word.» Pastor Mark 9, verse number 25 says, «When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more.’» Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out, and he became as one who was dead; so many said, «He’s dead.» But Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, «Why could we not cast it out?» So he said to them, «This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.» As we prepare for Lent in this good series, I want to spend this whole lesson today teaching. I want you to see we’re back in Sunday school today! Alright? I want to talk about the fasting factor. That’s the kind of response I got at the other service too—the fast, the fasting factor. This passage here in Mark 9 is a powerful picture of a principle that can be captured in the following phrase: there are some things that won’t turn around until we turn our plate down. In other words, some unusual situations require unusual sacrifices. Some chains won’t break until we break our routine. Some issues won’t move until we move away from the table. I’m simply suggesting, family, that there are some predicaments that are so problematic that they require more than passionate prayer to fix them. There are some predicaments that are so problematic that they need prayer to partner with an essential asset that is extremely important and often overlooked. I’m saying, family, your greatest prayer partner isn’t your friend—that’s important—but prayer’s greatest partner is fasting. Prayer moves the heart of God, but fasting empties the hearts of men. Prayer brings the fire, but fasting brings the focus. Prayer is reaching out to God, fasting is letting go of any and everything that hinders my reach. Prayer is saying, «I want the gift, ” while fasting is saying, „I want the giver.“ Prayer is the godly bond, fasting is the godly side, and practicing one and never practicing the other is the equivalent of trying to fly the plane of your life with one wing. Fasting is a deliberate act of abstinence from any form of gratification to achieve a greater spiritual goal. It is a deliberate act, not an accidental act; so if I forgot to eat, I’m hungry; I’m not fasting because that’s not deliberate. Deliberate—am I making sense? Deliberate is intentional; I identify what I’m going to abstain from, and I determine how long I’m going to abstain from it. It’s deliberate. Am I making sense here? It is a deliberate act of abstinence from any form of gratification—not just food. I can take you to the scripture and show you 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul talks to believers in the context of marriage, and he even says if both of you mutually consent, it’s okay to abstain from intimacy. So it’s not just limited to food; it is an act of abstinence from any form of gratification to achieve a greater spiritual goal. So a greater spiritual goal is important because this suggests fasting isn’t just about denial; fasting is about pursuit. Fasting isn’t just about abstaining from food; it’s about feasting on God. Fasting isn’t something we do for God; it’s an appeal to God to do something for us. Fasting isn’t just denying your hunger; it’s saying the hunger of my soul is greater than the hunger of my stomach. Fasting is not just something we resort to when we’re having a breakdown; fasting is what we lean on when we need a breakthrough. And if I’m reading my Bible correctly, God is the God of breakthroughs! He is the one who will move a thing out of the way. You better ask Moses, and he’ll tell you he moved the Red Sea out of the way. You can ask Joshua, and he’ll tell you he moved Jericho’s walls out of the way. You can ask David, and he’ll tell you he removed Goliath out of the way. And you can ask your neighbor, and your neighbor will testify there were some mountains, some obstacles that He moved out of the way. That’s why when I come into this house, you think I’m going to sit cute and quiet? The devil is a liar! He had to move some things so I could keep my mind; and when I think of the goodness of…