What do you do when a propos of nothing at all, you are working away and this phrase goes round and round and round?
Then two weeks ago someone like Michael O 'Hare writes the same phrase. And anyway....what does fasting look like from a third level point of view?
Where does this phrase come from ?
The one I was thinking of was in Matthew 17 (although Mark 9 and Luke 9 are kind of similar), in the context of having just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration and the other disciples being unable to cast out a demon from a boy with epilepsy. Later the disciples asked Jesus how it was they couldn't do it.
They'd seen the Spirit move through them on many other occasions, why not this time?
Jesus referred both to the substance of faith and how powerful it is.....even if only the size of a mustard seed.
Then He referred to prayer and fasting. But as I grow in the Lord I'm seeing Jesus might have meant this more generically than specifically. More in a bit.
Fasting in the second level
I'm not sure anyone today fasts more than a few hours in the firstlevel of Christian growth, so I'm starting with the charismatic movement. Key: Books like God's Chosen Fast by Derek Prince and one by Mahesh Chavda etc.
Brits and fasting
Secular Britain only thinks we live from our left brain. Things have improved a tiny quantum since the advent of professors talking about an EQ quotient as well as an IQ quotient. A few weeks ago Richard Dawkins wrote an excellent article in Prospect Magazine on the subject of Common Sense. The jist being that it was becoming less common.
Brits are not Jews, nor meditating or praying Easterners or Muslims , so have no concept of fasting for spiritual strength and insight.To a Brit, spirit is Radio 4 articulation, so is wisdom. If you ask a Brit raised on the all supremacy of the Ape what he means by the sanctity of human life, he will say something like singing a hymn in a crematorium, before burning the hell out of a corpse. There is no framework in a Brit's mind for sanctity of human life. Man is a complicated robot, 2 % more complicated than an ape by DNA. Why would religious thought be important? And why would you fast?
A Brit thinks that you die after 3 days of no food.
The charismatic movement teaches you the truth.
Physical Fasting
About 3-5 days into a water only fast, your body enters into the state of ketosis, a desert survival mode where your metabolism slows, and your body begins to feed on the junkier side of our systems. Toxins exit through our pores, our tongue and urine. Tiny powerful non calorific mints are what Ed Miller advised. Especially when praying for folk...or else it wouldn't just be the Spirit wiping people out!
The first 3 days or so are quite bad, because your stomach is still behaving like it has food in, and continues to try to pump "nothing" through. Brits don't generally get beyond this, so that is all they know about fasting. Until about the 40th day you enter this kind of Time machine state, whereby you experience a bit of what you will be full time in the future.With your physical appetite system largely shut down, you become so much more aware of what your spirit is actually communicating, when it's not full of food.
The Fortieth Day
Matt 4:1-2 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Now , unlike these idiot leftbrain professors you get in the "learned theological institutions" in England, this last sentence is not stating the obvious. As in," ofcourse he was hungry, stupid"
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| Wilderness of Judea |
Around the fortieth day, our bodies have finished scavenging around waste toxins and fat in our cells, and begin attacking the bodies' vital organs and breaking down the rest of the body. This is the dangerous level that prison protesters reach when refusing food. Death becomes increasingly likely. This is why Moses' stint on Sinai was so supernatural!! And up until this point Jesus had been strengthening Himself in the Father, as you do when fasting. It was the fortieth day when His battle encounter began. By now, death was looming closer. And incredible weakness.
The other point about all this is this phrase: Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. We follow the Spirit into these kinds of thing. WE DON'T DECIDE. Or else we're just performing some empty religious activity....some works activity.The scriptures describe Jesus getting up early or praying late alone, but NOTHING more is said about fasting on any other of the three years' ministry, or anything else particularly in the 30 years before this. Which highlights even further the stupidity of Anglicans and Catholics playing silly people every year for 40 days. OK, so how come Jesus never did it twice? And" as He is, so are we in the world?"
But I was forgetting ofcourse for a moment there that Anglicans and Catholics are actually more holy than Christ .
NOT.
No, I suppose they would say we are less holy so need to do it more.
All Anglicans and Catholics desperately need a DETOX in order to remain sane on planet earth. Anglicans Anonymous and Catholics Anonymous."Hi there, I'm Gerry,and I'm a Catholic....."
The thing is, when I'm tuning for theological students, they actually know the irony of their situation. They would laughingly repeat this same joke to me with a knowing look. But guess what....If I address their "Ezekiel 8:10 scrawlings" their "religious stronghold and security" from my innards by the Spirit of God as a prophet....(which is , incidentally, all a prophet is doing...so anyone can sign up to be one.).... their faces turn ashen, their pleasant demeanour vanishes, and you can see the spirit manifesting through their snarling hissing teeth..... DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH ME.....YOU....YOU.... PIANO TUNER.....WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME....me,THE EARNEST THEOLOGY STUDENT.......WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE....? well that's the underneath version, it's usually a horrific grimace.
Ofcourse I could reply in the natural, "well how about fixing your life on the real Jesus?", but by now I've lost them anyway.....and probably the next tuning in 6 months time.
Third Level View of Fasting
Points so far -
To fully "get" fasting you have to hold loads of scriptures simultaneously in the Spirit.
Here are two of the clues in the note so far.
1.Led by the Spirit
2.Going down to the Wire with your life
Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God......NO one else . Ouch. That's a zonker.Do with that what you will. Hmmmm. Time to be baptised in the Spirit? I'll say no more. Just this.
In San Diego it just isn't good enough to be able to "imagine" if your air conditioning is working. You've really got to know your air conditioning is working as summer approaches. My Skoda at the moment is....hmmmm...."I think it's working Christine....I vagely think I feel something" But this is not San Diego , this is the UK.
You don't say, "I think I've been baptised in the Holy Spirit......I think my Spirit Air conditioning is working."
You say something, you do something, and it has Spirit effects....of permanence! None of this lazy evangelical approach, realising the Bible gives them no option anyway, so they hurriedly screw their theology up to great heights, and usually their eyes, and say....
I've been born again, so....so.....well......I must be baptised in the Spirit.... The last bit is said snappily beteween clenched teeth.
OK then. What difference have you noticed since you trekked the outer court corridor of the heavenly Temple, past the brazen altar where you accepted Jesus, past the Laver where your conscience was sprinkled absolutely clean with the washing of the Word....Jesus Himself came in as your Mirror.....
and baptised in the Spirit now, you entered into the Holy Place, where there is NO NATURAL LIGHT anymore,
WHAT DIFFERENCE DID YOU NOTICE as you passed from the outer courts to the outside part of the Inner court of the Lord.
What?
Absolutely nothing. No difference whatsoever?
Well no way have you experienced the Baptism, the Inundation of the Spirit in your life. Now go get some....or you just won't understand a thing about the Living Church of Christ from here on in.
Oh...you don't want to go further in? Well I thought you did. Sorry. It really is your choice. But, anyway, remember the scripture:"those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God."
The scriptures...
By the time of Isaiah 58 fasting was a regular Jewish practice and concept. The whole race had prayed and fasted in the desperate threat in the book of Esther. Isaiah 58 is a prophetic corrective, to reconnect with the heart of God.
It's not just an empty ritual to twist God's arm with...it is a dynamic tool whose inner heart and thrust is not to gain some "static" position of a mythical level of holiness. Charismatics please note!! Since holiness is a Person who does NOT share space with you, and lives through you as you.
No the dynamic in God's heart is to set creation free....to bring justice....a loosening of the oppressed. The Spirit blows. He moves. He is dynamic. Never still. "And for this purpose was Christ made manifest, that He may destroy all the works of the Evil One." (What, even Anglicanism?)
We can fast, we can tithe mint and cumin,but our Christianity is never locking horns in the Spirit, and out like a river, from the throne, in actual 3D reality, with the every day mess of planet earth.
Notice Christianity does not like some human task force say.....oy.....you Mafia....hoppit. It begins in the Spirit by binding the Italian religious,political and moneylevel symbiotic hookup that is the Catholic Church, the Italian Government and the Deathly Mafia. It goes behind the scenes first, to completely wipe the floor with every spiritual power that has tied these knots. We don't begin, as many are doing in America, at simply rearranging the outer furniture on the Titanic.
But here is the rub....and the connection with what is to come in this note
Having begun with a process that involved our identification with Christ, which in those days took decades,
Mother Teresa and
Lydia Prince
"Did what was in their hands to do".
But it wasn't the "in their hands to do" that had the power. Or else any idiot charity worker would be smashing evil apart, and making permanent changes on planet earth. The power at work in these two was that manifest outwardly in fairly ordinary activities, allbeit sacrificial ones, these two had already done something in their hearts. They had fully identified with the Galations 2:20 life of It is not me that live any more....
Sorry....you're too late...it's Christ.
It was this identification that was driving a LIFE LEVEL IDENTIFICATION -
A LIFE LEVEL FAST.
Mother Teresa wasn't a charity worker per se.She was doing what Christ was doing through her in India.
Lydia Prince was not a charity worker per se. She was looking after orphans in Jerusalem as Christ as her.
This is something so so so so different from standing in the O2 centre for 2 hours, rattling away in tongues and calling this intercession . No , like Jesus in the wilderness, this is your life down to the wire. If Jesus never says another word, you are there stranded in the thing. You're risking your own concept of what your life should be on what you are claiming is the Spirit by you. When all other religious authorities are probably claiming you are being ludicrous. What a waste! And your ministry was looking so promising!!! (Actual phrase was said to Watchman Nee)
So do you understand now why the third level people can be quite dismissive of fasting from food? Or 2 hours in a charismatic intercession conference?
In the third level you've signed up already to God's total life programme. You have no life. Well as an independent being. The whole thing was a Genesis 3 delusion anyway.
The truth is there is only ONE LIFE in the Universe , and this One LIFE has a Cross in it.
So thirdlevellers are the only normal people on earth.
Everyone else is still fighting. Still in the delusion that there is anything else.
"Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God " is the rather radical but true phrase that THIS ALONE IS THE CHURCH, THE ONE BODY IN THE EARTH, made up of many bodies, laid down in a permanent Isaiah 58 SELF FOR OTHERS FAST. All the rest of it just isn't the Church. It says so on the tin lid.
Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God .
Jesus said Luke 11: 23“He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters."
Verses like this make no sense when you are a charismatic, because you see more than one. You see God out there, and tons of other lives all rushing about doing manifold things. Then Jesus comes along and says stupid things like there are only 2 forces, or 2 lives really. A charismatic just stands there scratching his head for years, no make that decades.
He cannot see that who we are is spirit, because all he sees is surface stuff, which is soul and body level, and ofcourse at this level there are 6 billion unique individuals. No, at the level Jesus is training us to see, there are only 2 lives, and one of those is a ripoff merchant. The devil's life is really God's life inverted, that is the devil had God's own self for others life, but he inverted it into a self for self type of life. Me for me. All of mankind operates from this selfish default, unless briefly choosing otherwise....and the Bible even describes this as for selfish motives, or unless at a spirit level, the true inner choice level, we make a change.....what we commonly refer to as asking Jesus in. But a charismatic doesn't really get that Jesus shares this spirit space with no man, booting out our satan-I infested spirit, taking it down into death with Him, and raising it up totally new in Himself. So to Satan now, since the Cross every human being is a walking blasphemy and he hates us totally, and wants to keep every human from ever discovering this fantastic new status that was won for everyone on the Cross.
So this laid down life at our core is a very much simpler existence than looking around at surface level and working out who believes the same as me, which is what the disciples were trying to do like good charismatics here in Mark 9:30
Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. 40“For he who is not against us is for us."
If you are simply following the Hub of the Wheel of the Universe, who is Jesus, the Eternally laid down Life of the Lamb,
how is it that you as spokes of the Body of Christ wheel won't all meet in the Holy of Holies?
Welcome to the life of the Fast. We won't all be called to the same outer forms of commissioning, but if like Psalm 84 "In your heart is the highway to Zion" exactly what is your problem with me? Why are you keeping your distance?
The only thing left for any of us are the Ezekiel 8:10 scrawlings that are usually hidden from our own sight, but in Body Life are the little splinters that we can tear out of each others "single eye", once the Big Log of our "independent self delusion has been dealt with". Don't anyone think these splinters are small in power though.
Just as faith the size of a mustard seed is all you need to blast a mountain,
these Ezekiel 8:10 scrawlings are the Psalm 24 Ancient Doors whereby we let the whole of the Enemies forces in to start with.
And the last scrawling has the power of the total removal of Death off Planet Earth. So don't scoff at the littleness of this note. You just haven't understood it yet!!!
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