{"id":3274,"date":"2012-10-04T19:51:49","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T19:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/?p=3274"},"modified":"2012-10-04T19:51:49","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T19:51:49","slug":"consider-a-fast-before-you-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/04\/consider-a-fast-before-you-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider a Fast Before You Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday we will celebrate the Lord&#8217;s Supper together during our 9 &amp; 10:30 worship services. There are many ways to prepare yourself to participate in Holy Communion. One of those ways is by fasting. Perhaps you fast from media for a couple of hours before bed Saturday night, or from food starting sometime on Saturday. Remember, we never do these things to earn God&#8217;s favor, because we have it in Jesus. We fast because:<br \/>\n&#8212; Jesus commended fasting as a normative act of humility and devotion to God (see Matthew 6:16-18). Note particularly that he says, \u201c<strong><em>When<\/em><\/strong> you fast\u2026\u201d not \u201c<em>If<\/em> you fast\u2026\u201d (Seems like fasting is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;ved=0CCIQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FStandard_operating_procedure&amp;ei=cNdtUJuWFKO-2gX6l4GoDw&amp;usg=AFQjCNFynAnEOKbUvwVviPipf7_O308pnQ\">SOP <\/a>for apprentices of Jesus.) Take a look at Matthew 9:14-15. The first Christians fasted (Acts 13:2-3; 14:23).<br \/>\n&#8212;<span>At heart, fasting is an intensification of prayer. It&#8217;s a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, &#8220;We hunger for you to come in power.&#8221; It&#8217;s a cry with your body, &#8220;I really mean it, Lord! This much, I hunger for you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/04\/consider-a-fast-before-you-feast\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"25\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"recommend\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday we will celebrate the Lord&#8217;s Supper together during our 9 &amp; 10:30 worship services. There are many ways to prepare yourself to participate in Holy Communion. One of those ways is by fasting. Perhaps you fast from media for a couple of hours before bed Saturday night, or from food starting sometime on Saturday. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-apprentices"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1FrAa-QO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3276,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions\/3276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}