The question came from his daughter, who is nine, and who was not trying to do anything with it.
She said: so what happens to the food?
He had explained, in the way you do, that he was not eating today because he was praying about something. And she thought about it, and asked the question, and he found he did not have an answer, because nothing happened to the food. It was in the fridge. It was going to be there tomorrow.
He has gone without three times this year, over three separate things, and every one of them was entirely contained within his own life. His prayer, his stomach, his situation. If you had asked anybody on his street whether anything had happened to them in that week, they would have looked at you blankly, and quite reasonably, because nothing had.
He is not a selfish man. That is the thing worth saying. He simply learned this practice inside a frame where it is a private transaction between a person and God, and nobody ever read him the chapter where God describes it Himself.
Come and sit at the table. There is a chapter I want to read with you and it is not a telling off.
God describes it Himself, and it is not what we do
There is one chapter where God is asked directly about fasting by people who are doing it properly and getting nothing, and He answers at length, and the answer is not about their technique.
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?Isaiah 58:6
Every verb in that sentence happens to somebody else.
Loose. Undo. Let go. Break. Not one of them describes an internal condition. He carries on in the next verse and it gets more domestic still: bread to the hungry, the poor who are cast out brought to your house, somebody covered who had nothing on.
That is God's own definition, given in reply to a direct question, and it lands on a street rather than in a stomach.
You are invited into something that reaches somebody else's table, and it was always the shape of this. That is not my emphasis, it is His own answer to His own people's question, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a chapter written to a nation and makes it about the four houses either side of yours.
What that is not
Now let me guard it hard, because this is the exact point where teaching on Isaiah 58 goes wrong and starts costing people money.
Nothing here is asking you for anything. There is no cause on this page, no organization, no appeal, no amount, and nothing that supports this work. If a page about the fast God chose ever ends with somebody's bank details, it has turned the chapter into precisely the thing the chapter is against.
And this is not a transaction either. Doing something for your neighbor does not produce an answer for you. There is no exchange rate. God is not more inclined toward your situation because you carried somebody's bin out, and I am not going to imply it, because that is the mechanism this whole site exists to take out of your hands.
You are not buying anything, and there is nothing on the other end of this to collect. The written word says freely ye have received, freely give (Matthew 10:8), which has the word freely on both ends of the exchange on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps that a gladness rather than an obligation.
And if you are the reader with nothing to give this week, hear this plainly: this chapter is not written against you. A person with an empty cupboard is one of the people God is describing in it, not one of the people He is asking. If that is you, take the whole of this page as a description of what God is like and none of it as a bill.
And the safety, which outranks all of it
Some people must not go without food at all, and it takes nothing from them. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are unsure, speak to your doctor first and let their answer be the answer. The written word says the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is not withheld from anybody on the grounds of what their body can manage.
And notice something about the chapter: not one of the verbs in it requires you to be hungry. Loosing a burden, opening a door, feeding somebody, covering somebody. Every single one of those can be done today by a person eating three meals, which means the fast God says He chose is open to every reader of this page without exception.
You are fully inside everything on this page, and you were never at the edge of it because of what your body needs. 2 Corinthians 8:12 settles that, where God accepts according to what a person actually has, and the Holy Spirit has never once been given out on medical grounds.
If today is heavier than a page can carry, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.
So here is the turn, and it is not a heavier version of what you were already doing.
What God loosens through you is real, and it is not a performance, and it starts within about four doors of where you are standing. The written word says pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction (James 1:27), which is the same street level thing said again in the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary knock on an ordinary door part of what you were praying.
Your three fasts this year were not failures and I am not calling them that. They were half the chapter. The other half is four doors away and it has been there the whole time.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice, before you go. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of what you have to give. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely dutiful, and what God does about the thing you have been praying for is His, however He answers, and nothing on this page pretends to know.
- Fast that stayed entirely inside my own house, you are not a failure and you are not the whole of it. God answered a direct question about fasting with loose, undo, let go and break, and every verb of it happens to somebody else. In the name of Jesus I take His own description and I put it on my own street.
- Idea that doing something for somebody buys something for me, you are not God's word about me and you are not coming to the door with me. Freely ye have received, freely give, with the word freely on both ends of it on purpose, and His Spirit keeps this a gladness in me rather than a trade. There is nothing on the other end of this to collect.
- Father, You described the fast You chose Yourself, and every word of it lands on a street rather than in a stomach. I thank You that not one verb in that chapter requires me to be hungry, so there is nobody reading this that You have shut out of it. One plain thing this week, for one real person, and nobody is going to hear about it from me.
Isaiah 58:6
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
