Fasting To Avert God's Judgment

# 268 Today’s Living Word comes from Mark 2:18 “The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting.”

Fasting is a beneficial spiritual tool that God has given to His people. Often in the Old Testament, fasts were called to avert God’s judgment. Perhaps the most unusual fast in that regard was the fast proclaimed in Ninevah.

Remember Ninevah? God sent Jonah to “Ninevah, that great city,” to “call out against it, for their evil has come up before Me.” (There comes a time when God gets fed up with evil)

Jonah's message was simple to the Ninevites. Repent or you will be destroyed in 40 days. “And the people of Ninevah believed God,” . They called for a fast and put on sackcloth.” Even the animals were put on a mandatory fast by proclamation of the king! The king urged all the citizens to cry out to God that He might turn away from His judgment, and God saw their works and He relented. (Jonah 3:10)

When one considers the current state of affairs in our own land, one has to wonder why we aren’t engaged in fasting. How long will it be before our own national evil comes up before Him?

Unborn children continue to be slaughtered at the rate of 3000 per day. Blasphemy fills our movie screens and television sets. Divorce and fornication (sex before marriage) are rampant. Idolatry in the form of materialism and hedonism abounds. Evolution is accepted as fact and required teaching in our public schools. Many mainline denominations have even called the Bible into question.

How long do you think God will withhold judgment from such a land? Don’t you think it might be time for the remnant (the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ) to consider fasting and crying out to God once again?

I’m Duane Matz and that’s today’s Living Word.