November 23, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey

Transcribed by Beluga AI.

Whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you, this earth has nothing I desire. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you’re the strength of my life and my portion forever. Seek and you will find; ask and it will be given to you; knock and the door will open.

Lord, tonight we seek you. We ask of you. We knock on heaven’s door. And Lord, what we want more than anything else is you. We want you to fill our lives.

And Lord, we want to be like you. We desire to be better men and women, to be more like Jesus in our interactions with others and our love and grace that you want to demonstrate. And we pray that you would demonstrate it ever increasingly in our lives. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Amen. Well, it’s Thanksgiving week, and I just thought this was so funny as I’m going through Isaiah. And on Thanksgiving week, I’m going to talk from Isaiah 58, “Revival and the Discipline of Fasting.” That is, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Like what preacher preaches on fasting the week before Thanksgiving?

So here’s my admonition: Pay attention to what I say tonight. It’s important to fast. Just don’t do it this week. You don’t have to, you know—don’t go home feeling guilty. It’s like, “Oh, man, I was so looking forward to Thursday and leftovers on Friday.” Listen, there is a time for feasting and a time for fasting. So enjoy your feast. Give thanks and enjoy. That’s part of Thanksgiving, man. You enjoy your feast with thanksgiving. So do it, do it.

And then the week after that, not just because you have remorse of how much you ate, but for spiritual reasons, go ahead and fast. So anyway, we’ll get to that.

But Isaiah 58, and here’s the passage I want to read to you.

1 “Cry out loudly, don’t hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 They seek me day after day and delight to know my ways, like a nation that does what is right and does not abandon the justice of their God. They ask me for righteous judgments; they delight in the nearness of God.” (Isaiah 58:1-2, CSB)

That all sounds good. But wait. “We have fasted, but you have not seen. We’ve denied ourselves, but you haven’t noticed.” And then they complain, “God, you haven’t honored our fasts and our seeking you.”

And here’s what the Lord says. He says, “Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast and oppress all your workers. You fast with contention and strife, to strike viciously with your fist. You cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high.

“Will the fast I chose be like this? A day for a person to deny himself, to bow his head like a reed and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast? A day acceptable to the Lord?

“Isn’t this the fast I choose? To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? To bring the poor and the homeless into your house? To clothe the naked when you see him, and do not ignore your own flesh and blood? Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.

“At that time, when you call, the Lord will answer. When you cry out, He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you get rid of the yoke among you, the finger pointing, and malicious speaking, and if you offer yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness and your night like the noonday sun.

“The Lord will always lead you and satisfy you in a parched land and strengthen your bones. you’ll be like a well-watered garden and a spring whose water never runs dry.

“Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins. You will restore the foundations laid long ago. You will be called the repairer of broken walls, the restorer of streets where people live.

“If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath and doing whatever you want on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and a holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure or talking business, then you will delight in the Lord and He will make you ride over the heights of the land and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

3 “Why have we fasted, but you have not seen? We have denied ourselves, but you haven’t noticed!” “Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast, and oppress all your workers. 4 You fast with contention and strife to strike viciously with your fist. You cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high. 5 Will the fast I choose be like this: A day for a person to deny himself, to bow his head like a reed, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord ‘s glory will be your rear guard. 9 At that time, when you call, the Lord will answer; when you cry out, he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you get rid of the yoke among you, the finger-pointing and malicious speaking, 10 and if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday. 11 The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose water never runs dry. 12 Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins; you will restore the foundations laid long ago; you will be called the repairer of broken walls, the restorer of streets where people live. 13 “If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath, from doing whatever you want on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure, or talking business; 14 then you will delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride over the heights of the land, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58:3-14, CSB)

God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.

14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)

So we’re going to talk about fasting, good fasting, and bad fasting. And the context here is Israel had been returned from Babylon, back to the promised land, back to Jerusalem. They’re rebuilding the temple, and God is making all these wonderful promises to them. And they get back, and they’re facing some hardship and some struggles, and they’re fasting and they’re saying, “God, why aren’t you answering us?”

And He says, “Because you’re fasting with the wrong motives, you’re fasting for the wrong reasons, and you are not allowing your fast to affect your behavior.”

You know, it just… the New Testament, the whole Bible echoes this. If you say, “Peace, be still to your brother,” but you don’t extend the means of peace, the words are empty. And so this is the bad side of religion. This is religiosity that their fast is displaying. And you don’t earn a thing by not eating except a growling stomach.

But the Bible does talk about fasting. And so we’re going to talk about good motives and bad motives for fasting, and we’re going to talk about the river of fasting. What is there, what God has provided for us, and how fasting, like other spiritual disciplines, helps us step into that.

So what is fasting? Quite technically in the Bible, fasting is going for a period of time, a prescribed period of time, without eating food, sometimes without drinking water. That’s what fasting is.

Now, people will use fasting a lot of ways. I said I fasted from TV, or I fasted from sports, or I fasted from, I don’t know, I’ve made a, you know, I’ve intentionally tried to fast from hard physical labor. But people, you know, they’ll talk about doing that. I fasted from playing cards or social media. I went on a social media fast.

And so I’m a little bit split on that. That in a sense you kind of water down what fasting is. But I also agree, and especially there are some people who can’t fast physically—you know, they’re diabetic or some other reason they can’t eat. And I think it’s okay—you know, God can call you to self-denial in an area of your life.

You know, when I was a Catholic, you know, you’d give up something for Lent. So I call it, there’s fasting and then there’s kind of fasting. So like there was a year, there was a year I gave up watching television. All right? So it’s kind of, it was, you know, I thought this has become too much a part of my life. Watching sports has become too much a part of my life. It consumes too much time, and it consumes too much emotional energy. I’m just going to give it up for a year, just not going to do it for a year.

It was ironic that that was the year my wife was really into the NBA and really liked watching the Kings. It was such a switch. I’d walk by in the living room and she’s going, “Go, go!” And I’d be like, “…..” So that’s, you can do that, you can do that. And if you want to use the word “fast,” and I won’t be persnippity about it.

However, technically in the Bible, when it talks about fasting, it means you’re specifically giving up food for a prescribed period of time.

Is fasting required? Well, certainly not for salvation in the sense that, you know, the thief on the cross, you know, he didn’t say—well, you know, you know, Jesus said, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” And all he said was, “Remember me.”

However, I think we don’t look in modern, affluent Western culture at how fasting really is and always has been a part of the Jewish and Christian tradition and heritage and discipline. You know, it’d be like saying, is reading your Bible required? “Required” is not a word I would use. But I would say, if you want to follow Jesus, it’s awful helpful to read your Bible. It’s awful helpful to say your prayers, and it’s awful helpful to fast. It’s one of those disciplines, and it goes right up there with the rest of them.

And I don’t know why, but in my evangelical experience, the spiritual disciplines, at least at the beginning—and I get it, they were just, you know, baby steps. But my mentors taught me that the two spiritual disciplines—anybody else get this? The two spiritual disciplines: read your Bible, say your prayers.

Oh, then you go to church and there’s a third one added: read your Bible, say your prayers, tithe. I had a friend and he said, “Yeah, my pastor could turn any passage in the Scripture into a three-point sermon on read your Bible, say your prayers, and tithe.” All right?

And that’s an exaggeration to say that that kind of has become a mantra. I don’t know what other churches preach. I just know in my early Christian experience, at least not the tithing so much wasn’t taught, but the read your Bible and say your prayers was—you know, people said, “Do this, do this.”

Now, let me say, didn’t hurt me none. Those are two good things to do. In what I’m about to say, I’m not saying don’t read your Bible and say your prayers. I’m just saying that’s not the whole thing. You know, they didn’t say “Help the poor.” Well, that seems to be a normal part of Christian discipleship. They didn’t say, “Worship God, give thanks regularly.” They didn’t say, “Devote yourself to your family.” And so there are lots of things that are part of Christian discipleship, lots of things that are about following Jesus that are more than that. And fasting is one of them.

And so what is the point of fasting? Everywhere the Bible, I think, talks about fasting, it either talks about fasting in terms of repentance or prayer or both. It’s either an act of repentance, but mostly, especially in the New Testament, it is one of the tools of praying.

Well, how does fasting help your prayer? Well, I don’t know, spiritually, I think spiritually there seems to be some impact on the effectiveness of prayer when you put fasting with it. The church has experienced that. I know that for many people, the way fasting helps prayer is it actually increases the time you pray because you’re actually spending the time you would have eaten praying, and it increases your focus of prayer because the minute you choose to fast, your body begins to rebel and says, “I want to eat.”

And I’ve noticed whenever I fast that restaurants all over town intentionally blow the smell of their food out of the restaurants more aggressively than the days I don’t fast. It wafts through the air and it hits me and it’s like, “Oh.” My flesh starts crying out, you know, “Feed me. What are you doing, dude? What are you doing?”

Then I think, well, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, I was dedicating this time to praying for A, B, and C. That’s why I’m doing this.

And so I actually allow my little selfish flesh to serve the purpose, to remind me to pray. It’s a pretty good tool. I’ll tell you what, you fast for a period of time that you’re not used to fasting, you will find out that there’s—that the flesh in you doesn’t like it. It just doesn’t like it. It’s like, “What are you doing? We’re hungry.” You know, “Go to the pantry.” Oh, no, I’m not going to go to the pantry. I’m going to go to the prayer room. I’m going to go pray. You just tell the flesh, “Stay.”

Now you might look at me and go, “That boy don’t fast.” Listen, I do. I just prep for it. You know, everybody’s got your own method.

So what is the point of fasting? It helps your prayer life. What are the good motives to fast? Fast in response to God’s call. Fast in response to God’s call. God may call you to fast. They say, “You know, I want you to take a day.” There’s been times in my life I felt like God told me to fast.

I remember one time I was in the United Methodist Church and the evangelical conservative United Methodist Church, a group of them called for a three-day fast for the turnaround of our denomination. That prayer was not answered, but through that, other significant prayers were that were very akinly, closely related. God said, “No, I’m not going to do that, but I’m going to do this.”

Six months later is when I left the Methodist Church. And I believe that that fast was a key to that. That was the beginning of God saying, “Okay, I’m going to use this time to call you to what, you know, the next season.”

And I called the church to a three-day fast and I just told the church, I said, “I’m going to fast for three days and I’m going to pray for our denomination. I’m inviting you to join me. You can join me all three days.” Some people did. “You can take one of those days. I’m going to fast Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You take one of those days and join me on one of those days. If you’re not used to fasting, you’ve never done it before, take a meal. Say, you know, ‘Monday, I’m going to go without breakfast.’ But you don’t have to do it at all. Like I’m not the boss of you, you know, but hey, this is, you know, pastor, and you know, you expect me to lead you spiritually, so here we go.”

And so we fasted three days, and I felt like God called us to fast for three days. We fasted three days, and people did all of those different options. Some people didn’t fast at all. Some people fasted all three days. Some people took time in between.

And the night of the third day—I’d fasted three days before… I’d never in my life fasted longer than three days, and only once or twice I fasted three days. And it’s Wednesday night and Thursday morning’s coming, and I’m thinking, “I am going to go to sleep tonight. And tomorrow morning, here’s what I’m going to eat. I’m going to go and get the biggest breakfast. You know, I’m going to get two sides of bacon. I’m going to get French toast. Oh, I’m just…” And I was just, I was just, oh, my gosh, probably my thoughts were just gluttonously ugly. Yes.

And I hear this call, I hear this voice, says, “Kevin, I want you to go 10.” And so I say to the voice, “I don’t want to go 10. I’m really hungry.” I said, “If you want me to go 10, you’re going to have to take away these hunger pangs.”

And they didn’t go away that night, but I woke up the next morning, I wasn’t hungry at all. And so I fasted. That was the first time I’d ever fasted that long. And actually, that’s—I found out that’s pretty true of fasting, that the hunger, the flesh crying out in hunger, lasts for about three days. And on day four, you kind of lose the hunger. Your body shifts and goes, “Okay, we’re starving. All right, I’ll quit crying about hunger. I’m going to turn the metabolism down.” And you get tired and cold because you start to go into preserve-my-life-as-long-as-possible mode. That’s what your body starts doing.

And so I wasn’t hungry on day four, and I wasn’t hungry through all 10 days, the remainder of the 10 days. I did get tired. I did get, you know, I had less energy and I was chilly, you know, and that sort of thing, but I wasn’t hungry.

However, I do remember in the middle of that fast, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday came, and it was communion Sunday. I had read somewhere that if you’re fasting and you go to church and there’s communion, don’t fast for communion. Take communion, you know, take communion. That’s another spiritual means… So take communion.

We had two services, and I didn’t tell everybody in the church I was going to go 10 days. But a couple of my friends knew. And so I remember I took communion at the—we had two services. I remember I took communion at the 9 o’clock service, and one of my friends—and I took communion first, often like I do here, and then the church followed—one of my friends came up to receive communion. He goes, “Bet that tasted good.” It was the best communion ever. We had, like, the chunks of French bread, you know, and I just found the, like, biggest chunk and I just dipped, and I could hardly wait for the second service.

It was like, “I get to do this again. It’ll be awesome.” So, best communion I ever had. Best tasting communion I ever had.

All right, so you fast in response to God’s call. You fast to defeat the enemy. You’re being attacked by the enemy. You talked about your friend today, Ats and Aiko. Might be something to give a shot. You know, she might want to give a shot at that. It’s like, just fast to break that, whatever that is, and, you know, take a couple days to defeat the enemy.

I remember one time—I’ve told the deliverance story about that little girl at camp. I remember one of my friends who was a part of that deliverance. He was kicking himself that night as we’re doing that deliverance. He said, “You know, this morning I felt like the Lord told me to fast today, but those cinnamon rolls at breakfast just looked so good.” He said, “I didn’t do it.” And now we’re in the middle of this deliverance. He said, “I should have fasted.”

There’s something about, again, not—God’s power doesn’t increase, but your tapping into it, can be more available. And he just thought, “Man might be more effective in this deliverance if I had fasted.” So fast to defeat the enemy.

Fast for transformation and breakthrough. If you’ve got—you know, this goes along with the feeding the enemy—if you’ve got a persistent sin, a struggle in your life, take a day and fast over it and say, “Lord, I want a breakthrough in this area of my life. I want a breakthrough in some area of ministry.”

That last song we sang, “More Love, More Power”… “I’m going to give you what you asked for. I’m going to give you what you asked for.” And I remember the first time I heard that, I said, “Well, Lord, you haven’t given me what I asked for. You know, I’ve asked for A, B, and C, and you haven’t given it to me.” And He said, “Yet. Yet. Keep asking and fast for breakthrough.”

I remember there was a time several years ago I was praying for my family, and every member of my family, I felt like, was in a holding pattern, kind of like circling an airport. We were all just kind of like… It’s hard to explain, but we all, you know, were seeking God, but we weren’t, we didn’t feel like we were moving anywhere. And we all had the same experience simultaneously. And as I listed it out, there were like seven things I listed I remember. I can’t tell you what the things were, but there were seven things that I felt like, you know, we need breakthrough in these seven areas to get off this pattern.

And I really felt like I heard God. And He said, “You know, if you’ll just fast one day and pray for those seven things, watch. Watch what I do.”

And I did. I just fasted one day. It wasn’t like a big, heavy fast. It was just one day, and I fasted one day, and I prayed for those seven things. And I remember—and I had the list down, and I didn’t give it much thought after that. I remember, like, 10 months later, I looked at that list, and, like, six of the seven. Six of the seven had been answered in very specific, concrete ways. I looked at the seven and said, “Whoa, you know, what? What’s up?” And like, a month later, that one clicked into place.

And so there’s a breakthrough. I want to be more like Jesus, fast. Jesus fasted. He fasted—by the way, back to the last point—He fasted to defeat the enemy. Forty days in the wilderness, and Satan came to tempt Him. And so He fasted in preparation for His ministry. That’s how Jesus launched His ministry, with baptism and fasting.

You know, you thought if he had come to Christ, you know—if Jesus would have come to Christ the same way I came to Christ, He would have started His ministry with Bible study and prayer. But He started it with baptism and fasting, two other spiritual disciplines that are important.

So Jesus fasts for breakthrough and then fasts for mercy and justice. Isaiah talks about that. One of the great things you can do is, you know, feed the hungry. And you think, “Well, Lord, there’s so many hungry people. How do I take this on?”

I look around Bremerton, and I think homelessness, and I think, “I don’t know the answer to this.” I don’t know how to help the homeless. I just don’t know. And I know that the temptation is… Today was the first day in a long time—it’s been such a glorious season at the Firehouse Church in Bremerton. Nobody has camped and left a mess on our doorstep for several months. And I got there to church—and I was losing my PTSD. I’m not kidding, there was a time when I would just drive up to church dreading it, like, “What am I gonna have to clean up?” I don’t even like to clean up my messes, but I hate cleaning up other people’s messes.

But, you know, you got to do it, right? And so that’s what I liked when Discovery met at the Firehouse church. They met before us, so when there’s a mess on Sunday morning, it’s like, “Eh, you got to get it.”

But this morning, for the first time in a long time, there was a mess there. And it was raining, and it was messy, and it was a wet mess. There was no real gross stuff, but there was old food and just, and you know, you’re trying to sweep stuff up and the ground’s wet…

Anyway, so I don’t know what to do about the homeless, but I know this: I know that the Lord will not let me despise. And actually, I have a pretty good relationship with some of the homeless simply because I’m one of the places that’s nice to them. You know, they’re out front of instead of saying, “Get out of here,” I’ll take them some water because Jesus said, you know, “If you give a cup of cold water in my name, you get your reward.” So it’s like, “Hey, there you go. Free rewards.” This doesn’t cost me hardly anything. Take water out to them.

And so… but yeah, just… I don’t know the answer. But I can pray that God will give me a heart of mercy and justice and provide an answer.

And when you fast, you save money. You save money when you fast. That food that you’re going to eat costs money, so why not figure out what your average food cost is per day, fast a day, and give that money to some benevolent organization that feeds the hungry?

“Well, I can’t…” You know, people, they don’t do things because they can’t solve the problem. But you can always do for the one what you cannot do for the many. Right? It’s like the little boy, you know, and he’s saving starfish. They’d all come in during high tide. Now they’re stuck on the beach. There’s hundreds of starfish on the beach, and he just bends down and grabs one, throws it back in the ocean. An old cynic comes by, “Boy, look at all these starfish. You can’t help this problem.” He picks up another starfish and throws it out and goes, “Helped that one, helped that one.”

So, yeah, you can’t solve world hunger with your budget, but you could fast a day. One American budget of a day not eating probably equals two and a half weeks for some poor kid in a third world country, that amount of money. I know for a pittance of money you can feed a child, clothe a child, and educate a child from early childhood till 18 years old for a pittance of money a month, far less than it costs to stream your favorite streaming service.

I remember I went into one lady’s house, and she was the finance chair. I said, “You know, we need to encourage people to tithe.” She didn’t tithe. And she was like, “The finances just don’t work. You know, it doesn’t work out. I got a budget. It doesn’t work out.” And her son’s in the living room watching cable TV. I thought, “No, your choices don’t work out. Your choices don’t work out. Okay, make your choices, but…” Make your choices.

But you can fast for justice and mercy.

Now, bad motives for fasting… Actually, you know, they’re kind of all wrapped up in that first thing, fasting for image. That’s like fasting out of religious ritual or fasting to feed a religious spirit, fasting to earn merit. All of that starts with this: “Look at me, God, look at me. I’m fasting. I deserve something from you. People around, look at me. Look how spiritual I am. Look how good I am.” And here is the sad part about that. God says, Jesus says in Matthew 6, He says, “If you fast with that motive, you don’t get answered prayer to your fast. What you get is whatever you earn from that.”

Look at me, I’m so spiritual, I fast. And three people thought, “Wow, that’s a real spiritual person. Congratulations, you win.” Three people thought you were spiritual. Like their opinion matters.

It’s like the guy who tailgates you and zips around you and then goes up, and you get up a half a block, and he’s at the same stoplight you’re at. I always feel like getting out of the car and knocking on the window and saying, “Congratulations,” and have a little trophy in my car. “You get the trophy for first person at the stoplight. Good for you. You know, you endangered people’s lives. You cut people off.”

I don’t do that, by the way. Nobody else has evil thoughts when you drive? All right. Yeah, it’s a great test of the condition of your soul. Because I always say this: my anger at other drivers is more a reflection on the condition of my soul than it is a reflection on their driving ability. Just saying.

And so they annoy me, and I, you know, I want to get back at them. And I realize, oh, that says more about me than it does about them. I had a friend one time say to me, “Man, the other day, you really cut me off.” I realized, oh, you can cut people off without being a stupid moron, selfish, bad, evil person. You could just do it out of a mistake. Maybe that’s why other people cut you off. Like, oh, they made a driving mistake, so… Nah, they were morons. They were idiots.

All right. I don’t know how I got on that. Fast for mercy and justice. Fast for mercy and justice.

Oh, I was past that. I’m sorry. Bad image. You get your reward. Earn merit. Look at me, religious spirit.

All right, so that’s what you get, the approval of others. Big deal. If I’m going to go without eating, I want answered prayer. Just saying. If I’m going to put up with my flesh whining and crying and sulking and screaming at me to eat and saying, “Shut up, I’m going to go pray,” I want an answer to that prayer. I want God. I want God in that mix.

And so you fast unto the Lord, and you fast for His purposes. And you cannot—just like any other religious practice—you cannot practice your religion faithfully, you cannot practice your relationship with God faithfully when you hate your neighbor. You just can’t do it. Kills the whole thing, and your fast becomes useless.

So you can’t earn merit. Fasting doesn’t—I’m going to talk about the 11 benefits to fasting and the danger of that in just a minute. The danger of that is thinking that our fasting earns these things. I always look at the spiritual disciplines—I want you to look at the spiritual disciplines this way. There is a river of grace that flows—Ezekiel 47—there’s a river of grace that flows from the temple of God. It’s this ever expanding river. And the river is there regardless of who we are, what we do, what we think, what we say. None of us makes that river flow. None of us made God send Jesus. The river flows because it’s who God is. And so spiritual disciplines don’t get God to act and to make the river flow toward our lives. Spiritual disciplines are the way we step into the river that’s already there.

So the 11 benefits I’m going to talk about in a minute are already there. They’re all ours in Christ Jesus. But the disciplines—worshiping, praying, fasting, the Scriptures—are ways we meet God and inherit those blessings and benefits of being His child.

So don’t—fasting earns nothing, but it does help us step into the things that God has given us. Do not feed a religious—fasting can feed a religious spirit. The Pharisees again. “Look at me. Look how religious I am.”

And here’s how to tell a religious spirit. What do I mean by religious spirit? I mean a demonic spirit that loves religion in the place of loving God, loves the form, loves the ritual, loves the tradition, loves looking religious, but oppresses the worker, hates the neighbor, fights and bickers and backstabs.

So one of the ways you can tell a religious spirit, they hate to laugh. Because a religious spirit, more than any other spirit, takes itself very seriously. Very seriously. I have a hard time trusting people who can’t laugh at themselves, who don’t have a measure of self-deprecation. You know, don’t realize that, “Oh, I’m a fool. I’m a fool, and God loves me.” And so don’t fast to feed that.

Don’t fast because it’s a tradition, a religious ritual. Let me say it. Let me tell you the difference between tradition and traditionalism. Traditions in and of themselves are never evil. And in fact, almost every tradition, especially in the church, exists for some good reason. In other words, people, at the beginning, people began doing this. And the reason was very legitimate.

I grew up a very liturgical church, and very ornate. All right? Liturgical and ornate. Why is it liturgical and ornate? To a large part, that church grew in an illiterate society. Why is it that the Protestant Reformation happened right after the inventing of the printing press? Because then people could start reading their Bibles.

Before people could read their Bibles, they had to rely upon the few literate people out there to interpret the Bible and tell them the Bible. And the other thing they relied on were pictures, art, stained glass. I grew up with a lot of stained glass. Every church I went to had stained glass. And all the stained glass told the same stories, told the story of the cross. And it was beautiful, you know, a unique form of church artwork. But it was there to tell a story.

And so the tradition of—you go to Europe and you see these cathedrals with these high arches that just go up and up and up and up and up. And you go, “Well, why did they spend all that money building, you know? Why aren’t they like us and… you know, worshiping in warehouses, man, dressed down and all that?”

Well, because in a poor culture, they wanted those things to represent the glory of God. And what? Draw your attention. Where? Upward. You go into an early Reformed church. And you walk in, there’s the church, but what’s up there? The pulpit. The pulpit is elevated. What is that saying? This is the Word of God. We elevate the Word of God.

So traditions exist. And if you dive into any tradition, typically you’ll find there’s a good reason behind it. You know, the story’s told around Thanksgiving of the grandma who always cut the turkey, and she cut a big chunk of the turkey off every year and then would throw the turkey in the oven.

So her daughter grew up, and before she would cook the turkey, she’d cut a big section of the turkey up, just wasted a lot of the turkey. And put it in the oven. And then the grandma’s granddaughter would cut a big section of the turkey off, put the turkey in the oven.

Finally, the daughter just thought, this is ridiculous. What am I doing? I’m wasting turkey. And she went to her mom and says, “Why do we cut? You know, why am I cutting this turkey off?” And mom said, “Well, that’s what grandma did, and her turkeys were always so good.” And so she went to her grandma and she said, “Why do you cut that turkey down like that?” And the grandma said, “Well, my oven was small.”

That’s a good reason. Bird wouldn’t fit. It’s a bad reason to do it today.

So traditions aren’t gods. They’re not sacred. However, if you look at them honorably, you’ll usually find, oh, that makes sense why they did that. That makes sense.

Now, traditionalism is the idolatry of traditions. “We’ve never… We always do it this way.” The death of every church starts with these words: We’ve never done it that way before. Now, I had a friend of mine who also pointed out that’s also the beginning of every cult. But, you know, take your risk. We’ve never done it that way before. It’s tradition.

I remember—here’s a good example of the value of tradition and the poison of traditionalism. When I pastored my first Methodist church, every year, the four weeks before Christmas, they did something that was foreign. I don’t know why it was foreign to me, but it was foreign to me. They would light a candle called an Advent candle. They’d put up an Advent wreath, and they’d light one of these four, and they’d have four candles and a big ritual. Somebody would come down with, you know—look, it wasn’t like a guy with a lighter. It had one of those little long sticks. And they’d reach out, and we’d play music. And, you know, I just thought it was like, “What are we doing? It’s a silly waste of time, you know, why are we doing this?”

And so I’m with all these dear old saints at an administrative board meeting, and I said, “Let’s not do the Advent candle this year.” And you’d have thought I said, “Let’s take your grandchildren, boil them for Christmas dinner, and eat them” by their response to that. It’s like, “What?” What do they say? “We’ve always done the Advent candle.”

So, not being the smartest person as a young pastor—however, I was smart enough to know this: this is not a sword I want to die on. So I said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

But then I did something else. I just went and I researched Advent candles, and I realized, oh, this is about the light coming into the world. There were Scripture readings for each of those Advent candles. The first candle represented this. They had gotten completely rid of that. They just lit the candle, which drove—you know, it was like, I’m going, “We have lights. Why do we need candles?”

But once I read that, I was able to satisfy everybody. “Of course we can light the Advent candles. I’m going to make it even more special. I’m going to have somebody come up and read this Scripture.” And then the whole congregation goes, “Oh,” what? “This is why Grandma cuts the turkey. This is why we do this.”

Traditionalism is: “We must light Advent candles because we’ve always lit Advent candles.” Tradition is: “We established this tradition to help teach people the Christmas story.” Traditions are actually the living faith of dead men; traditionalism is the dead faith of living men. And it’s idolatry. Got it? I went long enough on that. But you know what? I don’t mind.

Eleven benefits to fasting, and I’ll only spend 15 minutes on each of these. Revelation—and these mingle together. There’s a lot of crossover, so I’m not going to hit them all. You know, revelation has to do with guidance and answers, but you need revelation. You know, “God, speak to me. God, speak to me. God, I need to know what is your Scripture saying? What are you saying? What are you speaking?” And so you fast to hear God’s voice.

Now, let me tell you, when you fast—oh, here’s something about fasting. When you fast, the answers to your fast don’t often come in the fast. I’ve had people, I told them to fast, and they fasted. They said, “Pastor, I fasted. I didn’t feel close to God. I didn’t see any breakthrough. I was just hungry.” I said, “Well, give it a minute.”

But, God, I want to increase my ability to hear your voice, to understand the Scriptures, to walk in more friendship with the Spirit. And so you stop eating.

And you realize when you stop eating, one of the things you realize when you stop eating is how much time we spend listening to the flesh. I want. I want. I want.

I remember when Theo, my grandson, was three years old, I nicknamed him “I Want.” He’d walk into the house, walk straight to the pantry, open it up and go, “I want. I want that. I want that. I want that. I want that. I want. Grandpa, I want.” I want. Our flesh—I want. I want comfort. I want it to be warmer. I want more money. I want a nicer car. I want a bigger house. I want my wife to be happier and more affectionate. I want my husband just to do what I want. Solves every problem.

I want people at church to behave differently. I want the pastor to preach better. And when you fast, the I want goes, “I want food. I want to eat.” And you say, “No, you’re not going to eat. Because I’m training my soul to want God and to want His voice more than I want that voice.”

Who have I in heaven but you? You know I say that a lot, right? I say it probably over half the mornings when I wake up. Not every morning, but half the mornings. Over half the mornings when I wake up, I just get up and it’s just on my—who have I in heaven? I start the day, “Who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth.”

And when I say that, there’s always this thing in me. It’s like, “You’re a liar. You desire lots of things on earth.” But why do I say it? Because I want it to be true. Why do I fast? Because I really want it to be true. I want you, God, more than breakfast. And so, Revelation.

Healing. Fast for healing. If you’ve got a problem, if you’ve got an issue, if you’ve got a… just fast for healing and pray. Later, anointing. Fast for the anointing to heal the sick. Say, “Lord, I need a breakthrough in this area of my life. And so I’m fasting for healing.”

Fast for holiness. I want to be more like you, in my character. And so I fast for holiness. All these things are God’s answers to our prayers as we fast.

Protection. Protection. Psalm 33 is my protection—a lot of people, Psalm 91 is their protection prayer. That’s a good one. I just go to Psalm 3:3 for some reason. Thou, Lord, be a shield about me, be my glory and the lifter of my head. And I pray it over me, and I pray it over my family, and I pray it over y’all. Pray over it the Firehouse Church in Bremerton and Poulsbo. God, O Lord, be a shield about us. Be our glory and the lifter of our heads. And sometimes, if you need protection, if you’re feeling especially vulnerable, fast and pray for protection.

You need answers or guidance? Lord, I’ve got a dilemma. Do I take this job? Do I not take this job? Do I move to this location? Do I not move to this location? What do I do about this situation? When do I retire? When do I do that? What do I… You know, what do I…? My kids, got this problem. How do I? How do I? What’s… where’s the answer to these problems in my household, in my family? Well, fast for a day and say, “Lord, I have no answers. I’m not smart enough to figure this out. I need your help. I need your answers.”

Fast for His presence. It’s always there. But again, when you deny the flesh, oftentimes you become more aware of the Spirit. You become more aware of the Spirit.

And you know, “Oh, I just want, I just want to feel God’s presence.” Well, there’s a better chance you’ll feel it fasting than you will at the buffet. All right?

Now let me say I am not here arguing against pleasures, feasting, and food and the good things in life. One of the greatest things we can do together—in fact, it’s so great, we do it every week. We eat together. So there’s nothing wrong with going to the buffet.

You know, we made a mistake at the Firehouse Church… we have an 11 o’clock service, so we never beat the Baptists to the buffet. But, you know, start to have a 9 o’clock service and you can get there before the Baptists, get all the good desserts. That’s more of a southern joke…

But there’s nothing wrong with that. But when you deny yourself, you can experience His presence.

Deliverance. We already talked about that. Fasting to defeat the enemy. If there’s a stronghold, a demonic stronghold in your life or in the life of your loved one, you can fast. You know, God did say you can cast out devils, so cast out devils.

Guidance. You can fast for guidance. God, direct my life.

You can fast for provision. Listen, I’m not a prosperity preacher, but God does not desire you to live in poverty. If God thought poverty was so good, why does He tell us to alleviate poverty? And if you want to alleviate poverty, one of the ways to alleviate poverty is to be a person of means. And so God provides. He provides houses and cars and jobs and incomes and retirements, and He provides abundantly and extravagantly.

And if you’re short of provision, if there’s some area of provision you’re missing in your life, fast for provision, and God will give you provision.

Fast for anointing. Lord, I need power in my life to do the ministry of Jesus. How many of you desired—we sang the song… “more love, more power, more of you in my life”? Fast for it. God, how come that person prays and the sick get healed and that person prays and they don’t? Could be all sorts of reasons. Some of them just wrapped up in the sovereignty and the mystery of God. But some of it can just be, you know, that person spent a week fasting and praying that God would pour out His anointing on him. Did God pour out His anointing? Yes. Or better yet, he stepped into that waterfall while he was fasting. While he was fasting.

And fast for revival.

By the way, it’s happening. Church attendance in the last two years has doubled in the UK as the government in the UK has tried to basically hand over one of the longest-standing, greatest nations of Christian tradition, Protestant Christian tradition, in the history of the last four or five hundred years. Very few stand out like Great Britain in terms of sending missionaries and having worldwide impact for the gospel. And Great Britain just tried to turn all that over, tried to turn all that over to Islam out of the codependent need to be nice, inclusive, which is a mistaken view of love.

Never mistake nice with love. If you’re a parent, you know this, right? To love your kids… I look at my kids and say, “You know, I want to be the nicest guy on the planet. You won’t let me.” You know, the little stinkers, they won’t let you. And so now you have to, you know, you have to draw boundaries and say, “Don’t cross this boundary.” “Oh, you’re so mean.” Yeah, because I love you. Because I love you.

My grandson: “Mom only lets us have this much screen time.” Yeah, because she loves you. She doesn’t want your brain to turn to mush. I’m on her side. “Grandpa, how could you be? You’re always on our side.” No, that’s Grandma.

Fast for revival. It’s happening in Great Britain. It’s happening in the United States. One of the tells is—you know, it used to be church attendance. It’s harder for—you’d think with all of our ability to know stuff, it’s easier for people to track church attendance. It’s actually harder because it used to be, back in the day, the people who counted church attendance just went to the Catholics and said, “How you doing?” Went to the Baptists and said, “How you doing?” And now you’ve got all these non-denominational—you know, nobody comes to how’s the Firehouse down in Poulsbo, you know, it’s like nobody asks us. You know?

Actually there’s one guy in Bremerton—I get a survey once in a while, but it’s harder now.

But one of the tells on how the church is doing in America is Bible sales. They have been dramatically up the last two years. Dramatically up. All right? And this isn’t churches buying a bunch of paperbacks. I get it. Churches we go to the Bible site, buy a bunch of paperbacks to give out to people free. But no, these are Bibles that people are buying on Amazon and other places. They’re buying Bibles, more so than they have in decades, right here in America.

So I pray and I fast for revival, and I pray for revival in five stages. I start big. I’m not praying for worldwide revival. I don’t start that big. I’ll let the Chinese worry about the Chinese. And I want revival in China, and it’s happening. But I start with America. It’s my country. It’s not that American souls are more important than anybody else’s souls; they’re not. But I just pray, “Lord, send revival in America.” And then I pray, “Lord, that it would be so deep and so impactful that it would bring around a cultural reformation, a shift in the mindset and worldview of the culture.” Not everybody’s going to go along with it, but a shift.

And I actually see it happening. I’m praying for that.

And then I go straight to my state. “Lord, I see it more generically in America than I do in Washington at this point. But Lord, I want to shift. I want a revival so deep in Washington that it brings about a cultural revival.”

And then I pray for Kitsap County. I pray for the Firehouse Church. And I say, “Lord…” Well, first I just pray for a revival in Kitsap County. And I say, “Lord, I pray for revival.” That’s three, four. “I pray for revival in the Firehouse Church and in Bremerton and Poulsbo. And I pray that the revival be so big”—here’s your destiny—”that it rocks Kitsap County.” How about that? You guys can rock Kitsap County. Maybe nobody will ever know but heaven. Maybe it’ll be your prayers or maybe one day people will go, “What’s happening there?” I don’t know. But that’s what I pray for.

And then I realized none of that can happen—I mean, it all can happen without me, but if I want to be in it… And none of that can happen without individuals at least saying this prayer: “Lord, I want a revival in Kevin.” Because you can’t give away fire if you don’t have fire.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do. Feast this week. Feast. Eat your turkey. Eat your cheesy potatoes, your… what is it? What are they? The beans, the string bean casserole, your rolls, your buns, your pumpkin pie, whatever, yams, whatever. Whatever your Thanksgiving feast consists of. I don’t like turkey. So, yeah, usually, we usually do a turkey, and I usually grill up a tri tip. That’s my turkey. If turkey’s so good, why don’t people eat it all the time, you know?

So has anybody ever told you, just this aside, you know, you’re my friends, does anybody ever come to you and say, “Oh, I like bacon, I like turkey bacon.” Do you slap them? Just wondering. I think—I’ve never done it, but I always think about it. That’s not bacon. That’s thin slices of turkey grilled up, made to look like bacon. Be quiet.

So all right, enough of that.

So next week, the week after Thanksgiving, take a day. If you’ve never done a day, take a meal. If you’ve done a day and the Lord calls you to more, take two days or three days, whatever, and fast for revival. And pray for revival.

I don’t know. Years and years ago, I prayed for a church to fast together. And we fasted and prayed, and I got thrust out of a denomination into a whole new life. So who knows, if we pray for revival, what’s going to happen? But it’d be fun to find out. Be fun to find out.

So the best feast we have is already before us tonight. The best thing, one of the best things Christians can do together is eat together. And so we do it every week with our King and Lord, Jesus Christ, who invites us to His table as an appetizer to the marriage supper with the lamb that’s coming. He says, “Don’t forget what’s coming. And my body and blood opened that door for you.”

Because on the night He was betrayed, He took bread and he broke it. He gave it to His disciples, said, “This is my body, which is given for you.”

19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19, CSB)

In the same way, after supper, He took the cup, gave thanks to His Father in heaven, and He said, “This is my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. And when you gather together, do this. Remember. Have a meal with me, and let your life be fed by Christ.”

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