Why should Christians fast?

Introduction

Good morning. I don’t know if any of you have heard of the name Irma Bombeck. I asked the 8 AM service that, because some of them have a longer life experience than some of us. Although to be fair, most of you were born in the 1900s. You’ve been around a little while, but it’s fair you don’t know her. Particularly in America, she probably became a bit more of a household name from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. She was a comedian, author, a humorist, wrote columns in newspapers. By the ’80s, she was published in over 900 newspapers across the United States and most weeks on television. She wrote a whole bunch of bestsellers. She wrote a book called “Life Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.” She wrote, “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, Why Am I in the Pits?” She wrote, “A Marriage Made in Heaven or Maybe I’m Just Too Tired for Divorce.” This is kind of her idea of humor; this is what she was like.

She writes a story in one of her articles about an experience she had in church. The experience was she was sitting in church, and there was a little boy down the front, and he was looking back at everyone, and he was smiling at them. He was giving a little cheeky smile to people, and they were smiling back at him, and that was kind of this quiet game he was playing. But his mother suddenly fiercely grabbed his arm, pulled him around, and said, “You sit still; you’re in church; no smiling in church.” Irma was really taken back by that, as you can kind of imagine. She writes, and it’s quite interesting, she said that we sing songs about “Make a Joyful Noise to the Lord,” but then, in her words, our faces in church look like we’re hearing the last will and testament of a great aunt and finding out she gave all her stuff to her pregnant hamster. That’s her idea of what kind of church often looks like.

It’s true for us to think about that idea of what is the posture we should be in church? What should we be like? We know that this spectrum exists for us. There are churches out there that feel like they say, “Park your sorrow in the car park. You leave that in the car when you come into church; it’s Jesus’s good times for you, all right, and that’s it.” It’s that idea that no, you can’t be sad. In fact, I heard someone say to me once that Christians can’t have depression; that’s not a Christian thing. That’s a total misunderstanding of both the Bible but also a misunderstanding of depression, and I want to say that’s completely not true. But we have that end of the spectrum, and we have the opposite end of the spectrum where you park any joy, happiness, or humor you might have in the car park, and you come into church. Church is serious business. We believe in a holy God, and we’re not even worthy to come before him, and so you come before him with that kind of mindset.

I hear the conversations around. I was part of a church in Cannes that had a question over, should we install an air conditioner? If you process that for a moment, what’s crazier is the answer was no. The answer was no, we come to church to worship, not to be comfortable. Is this an incompatibility? Worship and comfort, are these things? We come to this story in Mark today, which is a question about fasting, and it puts some of these ideas on the table. What is the idea of our posture before God? What is the right way for us to live out our lives as Christians? In particular, the question is to Jesus about his disciples: why are they not fasting like John the Baptist’s disciples are, like the Pharisees’ disciples are fasting? Why is Jesus’s disciples not assuming the same posture that these other guys are?

It’s pretty timely for us to think about some of this because this week is Ash Wednesday; it’s the start of Lent. For many people, this is an exact conversation about the idea of fasting. It’s also led me to do a bit of work on that myself, spend some time this week getting my head around fasting. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve really spent time biblically understanding the concept of fasting like this before, and it made me realize there’s a lot of assumed things I have that I’ve heard over the years from Christians about fasting that I just kind of went, “Ah, this is what fasting is.” As I read through this week, a whole spectrum of the Bible on fasting, I actually found out that lots of things that I understand about fasting aren’t things that we find in the Bible. I want to spend a bit of time thinking about that and thinking not just about fasting and what that is and what that might look like, but thinking some of the reflection on what that means for us as our posture as we think about what our attitude should be, what should our attitude be as we come before a holy, righteous God who made everything, including fun, laughter, and joy.

Fasting is Tied to Grief

Fasting and Grief in the Bible

We’re going to think a little bit about that as I unpack fasting and read right through the Bible as many passages I could find this week that talk about fasting. I really wanted to distill the reasons the Bible gives us for fasting down to just two things. It’s a little bit more nuanced than this, and I’ll unpack some of that, but really just two things that I think the Bible depicts fasting as. The first one is that fasting is strongly tied to the empty feeling of grief. Fasting is strongly tied to the empty feeling of grief, and so we get those moments in the Bible where someone is in great grief, and we’re told that they fast. Now, to be fair, we have to be a little careful here. Do they fast because it’s a religious, spiritual choice, or do they fast because they’re just in grief, and they didn’t eat? That is the right question to ask when you come to some of these passages because it seems like people are trying to draw spiritual conclusions out of a situation where someone is just in grief, and they’re not eating.

I’ll give you an example: the story of Paul. His name is Saul originally; he’s the Apostle Paul. He meets Jesus on the road to Damascus, and he is so transformed. He is against Jesus; he’s actually under his watch having Christians killed. He’s so against Jesus, and then he meets Jesus on the road. He is so radically transformed that he becomes the writer of the vast majority of the New Testament. That transformation moment impacts him in a way that actually leaves him completely blind. We’re told for three days he’s blind, and so he goes into the town, and for three days he’s blind, and we’re told the passage says he didn’t eat or drink for three days. It seems as we think about reading that passage, there is no clue we get in the passage that suggests that there’s some spiritual thing going on with his eating and drinking. Paul, we know, was a Pharisee. I’ll talk about this in a little bit, but Pharisees had a tradition of regularly fasting, and so he would have fasted many times before; he would be very familiar with fasting, but we’re given no sense that that’s what’s going on. It seems more likely that it’s just tied to the grief and bewilderment of the situation. He is struck blind; he goes into the town, and he just doesn’t eat or drink, and I think we can kind of relate to that idea. You know those moments where grief is so strong or your life is so overwhelmed that you just don’t feel like eating? That’s the picture we get there, and so we want to be careful in moments like that that we don’t overly try to draw spiritual conclusions out of a description of what’s happening.

Examples of Fasting in Grief

There are definitely other moments tied to grief where people in the Bible do make a decision to fast. An example is King David. So before he’s king, he’s been anointed to be the king; he’s going to be the next king after the current King, King Saul. King Saul’s in battle, and David is in hiding with his men, mostly from Saul. They do a bit of helping out with the army, but mostly he’s in hiding from Saul. The battle goes badly; Saul loses the battle; he’s going to be captured, and he kills himself. When the word that the king had, when that word arrives to David, now David’s going to be the next king. There’s lots of dimensions going on there, but what David does is honor the king who was God’s appointed king up to that point by telling his men to fast. David and his men, in a space of grief and respect, take on a fast for a number of days; they don’t eat. They also take that time to bury Saul’s body. The enemy dishonors him by hanging his body up, parts of his body up on a tree. They take it down; they bury it. There’s a whole lot tied with their respect, but they fast. It’s a very deliberate thing. David commands his men, and it’s seven days. That’s in 1 Samuel chapter 31; we read that story.

There’s those kinds of moments. There’s other moments where it might seem like a spiritual thing, but it’s quite an emotional response to things. The story of Esther, if you know the story of Esther, she’s a Jewish girl who got a whole book of the Bible named after her. She marries another nation’s king that’s ruling over Israel. She’s brought in as one of the wives. A man in the king’s leadership, Haman, hates the Jews, in particular Esther’s uncle, and so he basically convinces the king, “Let me kill all the Jews,” and the king agrees to it. That decree goes out, and all the Jews, many Jews, are killed, and the word gets back, and the whole nation of the Jewish people all go into mourning over this situation. You can imagine why. It’s clear there’s incredible grief, and so they all fast, and we’re told paired with the fasting, they wear sackcloth, and they put ash on their head. It’s a picture of grieving, and so Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, he’s doing that at the king’s gates each day. There’s a fast that happens strongly tied to grief.

Fasting and Sincerity

One of the things we want to, one of the filters we want to put over that is, is this commanded by God, or is this culture for a particular group of people? The answer is kind of the picture of sackcloth, and that sort of thing isn’t commanded. In fact, there’s only one command in the whole of the Bible to fast. I’ll come back to that, but this isn’t commanded in this situation. In fact, the one thing Jesus says about fasting is almost the complete opposite to that, almost the complete opposite to putting on sackcloth and ash. This is what Jesus says. It’s the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of his Sermon on the Mount, he’s trying to, he’s turning what people think about holiness and about what it means to live for God on its head, and so he wants to pick up traditions and rituals that people have turned into meaningless things or turned into some kind of show, and Jesus wants to say, “No, following God needs to be about something that is real; it needs to be something that is genuine.” This is what he says in Matthew 6: “When you fast,” he says, “don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting.” He says, “That is the only reward that they will ever get, but when you fast, comb your hair, wash your face, then no one will notice that you are fasting except your father who knows what you do in private.” What is key here is that it’s something that’s genuine. What that says to us is the sackcloth, the ash, that isn’t something that has come as a command from God. In fact, we can’t even see that the fasts themselves are something that’s commanded from God and probably more likely something cultural that happened in the day.

Let’s wrestle with a particular relevant thing as we think about the beginning of Lent and Ash Wednesday. If you know the tradition, some people get a palm leaf cross, and they burn it, and they use the ash of that to put a cross on their head, and Lent is a fast right up till Easter. That is taking something out of your life; it doesn’t need to be food, and it’s an opportunity to focus on God. I think some tricky things for us to think about that is to apply this passage where Jesus says, “Comb your hair, wash,” really seems to go directly against the idea of putting ash on your head and kind of having that symbolism. I think what’s really important as we wrestle with that is that the point Jesus is making here is that all these kinds of religious things we do need to not be about our relationship with other people but our relationship with God. What’s happening here is that Jesus clearly assumes Christians will fast as he says, “When you fast,” not “if you fast.” He doesn’t say, “Don’t fast.” There is an opportunity for fasting that he’s allowing in this space, but he’s saying the priority is not on the show, but the priority is on the heart, and so that’s important for us to think about. It does seem like a lot of the fasting that we see is tied strongly to grief.

Fasting is a Hunger for God to Act

Fasting and Hunger for God’s Mercy

That’s not the only thing that we see fasting tied to. Often related to the grief is the second reason we see fasting in the Bible, the second main reason, and by far the most majority of situations where there’s fasting in the Bible is a hunger for God to act. That’s what’s happening often. It drives out of grief, so people are grieved by something that happens, and they’re desiring God to act in this moment. They’re desiring God to bring mercy; they’re desiring God to intervene. Very often, the two things are very strongly tied together, like in the example of Esther. The people respond with fasting, but then Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, goes to her and says, “You need to do something about this. You are the queen; you can talk to the king. Your own people are being killed.” Esther, of course, says, “That’s not the kind of relationship that I have with the king. That’s not that kind of king and queen situation. There’s multiple concubines and women in the palace. No one comes to the king without permission.” She says, “In that moment, I haven’t been invited into the king’s presence for 30 days; he’s not talking to me at the moment, probably had a fight about the dishes,” and so she’s like, “I can’t go in to talk to the king,” and Mordecai says, “Well, your people are dying, so what are you going to do about it?” She says, “Okay, I will go to the king,” and then she says, “Tell the people of Israel, tell the Jews to fast for three days, and for three days we’ll fast, and then I’ll go see the king.” The idea of grief is strongly tied to this idea of wanting to see God, hungry to see God act, which brings us to the one command in the Bible on fasting.

The one command in the Bible on fasting is the Day of Atonement. We find it in Leviticus. It’s what people would use the word “Yom Kippur” to talk about. The Day of Atonement is a day every year in the Jewish calendar to call on God’s mercy to bring salvation to his people. Like all the ways that God’s people were called to do that, many of them involved a sacrifice of many different kinds. The Day of Atonement sacrifice was a sacrifice of food, was to go without something. One day, once a year, God’s people were called on to sacrifice food, to not eat for 24 hours as a way of calling on God’s mercy to offer salvation. Like all the other sacrifices, we would say that this is something that is pointing them towards one who is going to come. We know that to be Jesus, who is going to come and be the ultimate sacrifice. In the Old Testament, they’re commanded to do that, and now with Jesus here, there’s a transformation that’s happening in a fulfillment of that tradition, and so we would say that people who follow Jesus don’t need to participate in the tradition of the Day of Atonement in order to call on God’s mercy for salvation because that was offered in the sacrifice of Jesus. That’s the only command we’ll find in the Bible that talks about fasting itself. Most of them are still this call for God to act.

Examples of Hunger for God’s Mercy

Here’s another example: the story of Jonah. Jonah, a very famous Bible story, most people know the story that he’s called to go to Nineveh, preach against them. He races off the other way. God redirects him through a fish and sends him back to Nineveh. He goes to Nineveh; he preaches against them. His sermon is basically, “You’re going to die; sucks to be you.” The king of Nineveh, we’re told, is so radically transformed by that message that he is, his broken heart started over it, and he says, “No, we don’t want to,” and so he calls for a fast. He calls for a fast for everyone, including the animals. I don’t know how you call for a fast for the animals. My dogs think I do it every day. They are convinced they have fasted for a week and are desperate for food, but that’s what he does. He says, “No one’s going to eat; even the animals are not going to eat,” and he’s calling for God to act. He says, “Maybe even now God might change his mind and bring and have mercy on us,” and we’re told in the story, God does; he responds to that prayer. This is the big idea we see about what it means to fast is there’s this hunger to see God and act.

We get this story, and the question is, why did John the Baptist’s disciples fast and the Pharisees? Why do they fast, but Jesus’s disciples don’t? We don’t know the specific reasons about what the fasting looks like for John the Baptist’s disciples. We do know that John has already been arrested by this point. We’re told that in Mark chapter one, and so maybe this is an expression of grief for them; maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe John’s disciples are just fasting for that. Maybe John’s disciples have another tradition. The Pharisees had created a tradition of fasting once every week. It wasn’t something that was commanded by God’s law, but it was a kind of additional thing they had put on themselves as far as their holiness towards God. What we see in the time is that it had become, if it had right motives in the beginning, it had certainly become a display of their holiness to people around them. Maybe there was a desire at some point for calling on God’s mercy just like the Day of Atonement, but it seems like it deteriorated from there.

The Bridegroom is Here

Jesus asks the, answers the question, “Why do your disciples not fast?” He says, “Well, the situation is different here.” The first thing is there isn’t a situation of grief going on for Jesus’s disciples. He uses that illustration of the bridegroom that we read. Jesus replied, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can’t fast while the groom is with them.” I think pretty much in every culture, we understand that idea. Feasting, weddings are strongly tied to feasting. There’s almost no traditional wedding that exists that doesn’t involve feasting, and there’s certainly not a thing of saying weddings involve fasting. That’s not the thing, so we understand that a celebration usually involves food. Jesus says, “Here’s what’s happened; this is the wedding; the groom is here; he’s arrived, and it’s time for celebration, not for grief.” Jesus’s first point is this is not a place for grief. His second point is that this idea of calling God to act also is a little bit incompatible with what’s happening right now because the disciples are seeing God act. They might be hungry for him to act, but they’re actually seeing that hunger is being fulfilled in them because they’re following Jesus around, and Jesus is doing incredible things, and so they’re no longer suffering from grief nor are they hungry for God to act because they’re seeing it.

Jesus says, “Right now, their fasting is incompatible with what is happening in this moment.” He gives us those two illustrations. He says, “You don’t sew old cloth to new cloth; you don’t put new wine in old wine skins.” His point here is these two things are incompatible, that they’re similar, but they’re different, and the same thing has happened here. The tradition of the Day of Atonement is not compatible when the ultimate sacrifice has come and shown up here amongst them. He says, “That’s why they don’t fast because it’s incompatible.” There is still a question there, isn’t there? There’s two of them. One of them is he says, “But there will be a day.” This is what he said in verse 20, “But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.” What is Jesus talking about there? It’s possible he’s talking about now the time frame where Jesus has ascended into heaven, and so God’s people are not experiencing quite the same movement of God like they did when they were in the presence of Jesus. It’s possible that is what he means. It’s more likely he’s talking about the time between his death and resurrection. The language that he uses that says, “The groom will be taken away,” in the ancient Greek language, the words used there quite referenced to a violent taken away. It’s more like he will be ripped away. It would be probably a more literal translation, and so it seems more likely that picture of him being ripped away is not a picture of him going up into heaven but actually the picture of him being crucified, tied down, nailed, and crucified, and that seems more likely what he’s talking about. We can imagine that the disciples really did suffer grief; we know they suffered grief. We can imagine they didn’t eat over that time. They didn’t know; they were fearful for their lives. We can imagine that is true.

Fasting Today

The “Now and Not Yet”

It still raises the question for us, what does that mean for us today? What does it look like? What posture should we take? I think the answer is that we live in this, we often use the language a “now and not yet,” right? We live in a now, a time now where we do have an amazing transformation in our relationship with God, different to what the Old Testament had because even though Jesus has ascended into heaven and isn’t with us in the way that he was with the disciples, he has made a way that we can be made right with God, that even now while we wait for glory and heaven, even now there’s a relationship that goes on, that there is a sense where we are connected to the bridegroom, and so therefore there is a joy that happens there, and some of that needs, should be lived out in our lives. That is, we still face grief, but the joy that we can have in Jesus can push beyond and give meaning to the grief that we face in this world. We get this situation with Irma Bombeck pointing about church and this solemnness that might be there. She says in that situation, she wants to grab hold of the joy and happiness that God can provide. This is her words that she said in that article. She said, “I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God, the God who had to have a sense of humor to create the likes of us, a God who I wanted him to understand that he is an understanding God, one who understands little kids who pick their noses in church because they’re bored.” She had that idea that there is a place for humor, there is a place for happiness, there is a place for laughter, and there’s an invitation to celebrate that alongside the grief.

That is true; we live in that time, and so we, like the disciples, maybe there’s the, with the bridegroom situation, but we also know that there’s a “not yet” component to that, that we still live in a broken world, that we don’t experience the movement of God in a living, active way in the suffering that we face all the time, that there’s things we desire for God to in his mercy take away out of our lives that he chooses to not do at this time. There’s a looking forward to a time where there will be no more tears and no more pain, and so in a sense, we’re not entirely like the disciples who are standing there with Jesus celebrating with the bridegroom, but we still face this position of grief. I think it’s reasonable to say there would be moments where we might have such an outpouring of grief and such an outpouring of desiring God to move that we might fast alongside that, sacrifice something in our lives where we are drawing close to God, pouring our hearts out to him, and expressing really physically something that spiritually we might desire or long for.

Fasting is Not a Formula

Don’t miss the point of what’s happening there in fasting. There’s a bit of a danger when we come to kind of ritualistic type things that we fall into a danger of, we just got to figure out the formula. If we want God to move, we figure out the formula in order to get God to move, and this is the kind of thing people do when they start talking about fasting. If you Google Christian fasts on the internet, you will find a list of websites that give you formulas for fasting, and I think we want to be really careful as we approach that sort of thing to not fall into this danger of if we get the formula right, then God will listen. I’ll give you an example. Some would talk about the Daniel One fast. There’s the Daniel 9 fast and the Daniel One fast. The Daniel One fast, Daniel, he is in the Book of Daniel. He’s taken off to a foreign nation; he’s captured, and he fasts for 10 days. He only eats vegetables and only drinks water. You go online, look up the Daniel One fast, it’ll tell you the Daniel One fast is 10 days, only eat vegetables, only drink water, and you do that if you’re looking for strength, wisdom, and discernment because Daniel was looking for strength, wisdom, discernment. He got strength, wisdom, and discernment, so if you want that, do the Daniel One fast, except that’s not what the passage says at all. Daniel isn’t looking for strength, wisdom, and discernment. In fact, what happens in the story is he says, “I’m not going to eat meat because it’s been sacrificed to idols.” Why does he do 10 days? He puts them to the test. He says, “Give it a go; I won’t eat meat; me and my companions won’t eat meat for 10 days; see what happens,” and at the end of it, they came out the strongest guys in the room; they were looking healthier than anyone. He wasn’t actually praying that they would be strong, and I’m going to not eat meat for 10 days so that I can have strength, wisdom, and discernment, but actually that rises out of a totally different situation. I’m not saying you can’t choose to do a 10-day fast and choose to not do meat in those 10 days, and if it’s helpful for you to use Daniel One as the framework for that, fine, just don’t use it as the purpose and goal and outcome of what’s happening there. You’re not going to magically become stronger in your body because you’ve fulfilled these tick boxes that God has asked you to do from Daniel One.

We get the Acts 9 fast. Paul goes blind when he meets God, and he’s seeking guidance, so if you’re seeking guidance, then three days no food and water, and you’ll get guidance. Paul was seeking guidance because he was blind, and he wasn’t asking it from God; he was asking from the guy next to him to walk him into town. He wasn’t asking God for guidance because God gave him the guidance. We’re told God said to him, “Go to the town, and there you will be told what to do,” and then Ananias comes and tells Paul what to do, and so he’s not actually seeking guidance from God. You can choose to do a three-day fast with no food and be careful with water, but you can choose to do that. Don’t do it because it’s some formula for guidance. The Acts 27 fast, Paul and his companions are on a ship for 14 days; they don’t eat; they’re in a storm; they’re praying for safety, so if you’re praying for safety, do the Acts 27 fast, 14 days no food, except that’s not what’s happening for them. We don’t hear that they’re fasting and praying until the end of the trip where Paul says, “Hey, you guys should eat. I noticed you’ve been fighting for your lives for 14 days and haven’t eaten; let’s eat.” It’s not some formula to say this is how you pray for safety in a storm; don’t eat for 14 days. I think it’s really important that we take Jesus’s words about fasting very seriously, and that is it’s about a heart issue; it’s not some formula for God to hear your prayers.

God Partners with His People

What we see consistently in the Bible is God chooses to partner with his people. We take the same attitude towards prayer. God chooses to partner with his people through prayer. God doesn’t need you to ask him to be kind and merciful in a situation for him to be kind and merciful for a situation. He doesn’t need you to pray that prayer, but he invites you to pray that prayer. God doesn’t need you to pray for a situation in order for him to intervene; he invites you to. For God, we see time and time again, the greatest thing that we need is to come to know who he is, to fully comprehend that when we’re praying for healing, the greatest healing we all always need is spiritual healing, drawn to him. When we come to him and ask, and he blesses that prayer by fulfilling our wish, two things happen there. One is we see an answer to that prayer that we’re asking, but actually even greater than that is we’ve united our hearts to him, and so he gets the credit for that work that he’s done because we put ourselves in a place of asking him to do that work. God is actually working in us and through us in our prayers, not because he needs us to pray, but because he wants us to pray, and the same thing is true when we think about fasting. What’s clear in the Bible is this is something that pours out of really high emotional situations.

What surprised me as I unpacked fasting, I think one of the things that I had really been told a lot is fasting is strongly connected to decision-making. If you have a really important decision to make, then commit it to God, yes, and then fast and pray, and through that, you can get guidance. Almost consistently, every time there’s fasting in the Bible related to decisions, almost always the decision has already been made. Esther’s a bit of a strange one; the decision has already been made; she’s going to go to the king. I’m sure she has lots of prayers of guidance of what she says to him when she gets there, so don’t get me wrong, I think that prayer is there, but the key decision is already made. The one exception is in Acts. We’re told that God’s people are praying and fasting and worshiping, and during that time, they feel a calling to send Paul and Barnabas out on a mission trip. We’re not told that’s what they’re fasting for, but we’re told that as a result of their time of worship, they come to a decision. What seems really clear and the most distinct, consistent thing is these are people that are praying for God; they’re hungry for God to work, to act. Sometimes it’s because they’ve already made a decision like Esther, and they’re hungry for God to be involved in that situation, for God’s mercy to be at play. What’s clear is it’s something that’s very, needs to be very genuine; it’s not some big show that we do.

I want to encourage you as we think about all that, there’s a couple of things. It seems like in the Bible, fasting is actually quite few and far between except for the annual Day of Atonement, and so it’s not something I feel like every Christian needs to say, “I need to be regularly fasting.” It’s something you may choose to do, but I would say don’t hold some sort of guilt over yourself that you’ve not got this regular pattern of fasting. There’s no decree in the Bible for us to do that, but it is something worth us thinking about to, like the example of prayer, something that God has given us as a way of expressing physically something that’s happening for us spiritually, a long, a hunger, a desire, a grief that we might express through a sacrifice of not eating food, not because somehow our sacrifice earns God’s answer to our prayer, but because we express with our tears and with our words and in fasting with our body something that is a pouring out of our heart. It’s something that you should consider; it’s something that I think we should embrace and do it with the right attitude, that is it always must be sincere, and everything we do in our Christian walk is in that category, that we don’t do things because we’re putting on some big show of holiness to those around us or to God, but because we are pouring out our heart and living for him and seeking to follow him because these kinds of things help us express a real grief and sorrow that we genuinely feel. It’s right to say we don’t park our joy in the car park when we come to church, but we also don’t park our grief there. We bring both of them into this place; we bring both of them into every day of worship that we live, and that pours out of us sometimes in a situation like fasting, sometimes maybe in a situation like prayer, but these things pour out of us in a genuine and sincere way, and so I encourage you in those things as we seek to live lives for Jesus.