“How can I fast if I’m diabetic?”

Steve Brown:
How can I fast if I’m a diabetic? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus in the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us. But there’s a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. I cannot wait to hear how you’re going to answer that.

Steve Brown:
I’m not. You are. Why do you think you’re here?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m pre-diabetic, believe it or not.

Steve Brown:
Are you really?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown:
You ever fast?

Pete Alwinson:
Once in a while.

Steve Brown:
Listen, I give up. I fast a lot during Lent. I give up okra and I fast from liver.

Pete Alwinson:
Good for you.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it’s hard.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re a spiritual giant, for crying out loud.

Steve Brown:
That’s Pete Alwinson. He comes in on Fridays, as you know, and we answer questions. And we love to get your questions. By the way, check out ForgeTruth.com and if you haven’t read Pete’s book, Like Father Like Son, you have missed an absolutely great read. You can get it from any place you buy your books, or you can get it from Key Life, Like Father Like Son. As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, Pete comes in on Fridays and we answer questions, and we love your questions. You can call 1 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, follow instructions, record your question, and you might make it on the air. You can send your question to

Key Life Network

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if you’re in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. We will be faithful with your gift. This is a very expensive ministry. And the way we pay our bills is when you help us. And the bills have always been paid because we worship a faithful God, and we have faithful listeners. So, if you can help us, do. If you can’t, we understand, do say a prayer for this ministry. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer, and then we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Our Great God, we do come into your presence at the end of this week and just stop and thank you for being the God that you are and always have been holy and righteous. And yet, even though you are powerful, you are lovingly involved in our lives. Thank you that you’ve never left us, that you don’t forsake us, that you shepherd us, that you care for us, that you have plans. You teach us, and even when we mess up, you forgive us because of Jesus. And so, we come to you right now at the end of this week, and Lord, we can’t control what happened to us, but we ask that you would turn to good all of those things that right now seem to be negative and bad. And we pray that you would help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus. Be with our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders, Lord, all those that will stand before us, exhort us, rebuke us even, call us to being your church this week-end. We pray Lord that we would show up in person that we would be there, that we would glorify you, and that we would grow with the family. So, thank you for who you are, what you’ve done, and we commit this time of Q&A to you right now, as we pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
How can a diabetic fast in the Lord? I’ve tried and tried and tried.

Pete Alwinson:
Hmm.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s hard. Listen, first you’ve got to know that fasting is not one of the Ten Commandments.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s important.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really is. You know, you get a similar question from a former alcoholic who’s one drink away from the gutter when they serve wine at church for communion. How can I take wine when that sets me off in a horrible, in all of those cases, God understands and be practical. And there are other ways you can fast.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You don’t have to fast with food, you can fast by saying this time I’m going to give up going to movies for at least a month and I’m going to give that money to missions. That’s a fast too. And there are other ways you can fast, but that’s a hard place to be and don’t let anybody tell you if you don’t fast you’re going to hell, that’s not true. Fasting is helpful.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. So, how is it helpful to you? I mean, the idea is that we give up something so that we can focus on God. And that we can gain, by giving up, we’re giving that time, we’re giving that energy to him.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. And that’s what it’s about. There are people who fast who like to think that they’re making a deal with God. If I fast, then I’ll win the lottery. Or if I fast, she’ll say yes when I ask her to marry me. It’s not what a fast is., You don’t make deals with God.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not a quid pro quo.

Steve Brown:
No, there is no such thing.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
Right on. So, but what you said is exactly true. I had a mentor, John Stanton, back when I was a young pastor who had written a book on fasting, and was a big advocate of it. He said that the best way to do it was a juice fast, so you didn’t die, but he began to teach me how to do that. And for years, I haven’t recently, I used to fast every time I would go speak somewhere outside of the church.

Pete Alwinson:
Would you fast a whole day?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, a day, a day, but that’s no problem with me. I don’t, I’m not a big food fan. I mean, I like to eat, but when I don’t eat, I generally don’t eat until dinner anyway, so it’s no big deal.

Pete Alwinson:
You forget to eat, that blows me away, I don’t understand that.

Steve Brown:
Well, I just don’t think about it. But so, fasting is not a hard thing, but I did it every time I would go to speak. And then I got so many invitations to speak. I thought if I don’t quit this, I’m going to die of starvation. And so.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it. I love it. So, so really to this dear woman, I appreciate your desire to be obedient to God in fasting and to be close to him in that. But I think your point really hits her case. Don’t overemphasize the physical fast because God understands.

Steve Brown:
Of course he does.

Pete Alwinson:
He wouldn’t want you to put yourself in physical danger.

Steve Brown:
Absolutely.

Pete Alwinson:
I mean, you could become, you pass out, I mean, or whatever, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. So, that’s a good answer. Be careful. Listen, since we had such a good question there, let’s go back to our phone lines.

Caller 2:
Do you guys know exactly who wrote the books of the Bible?

Steve Brown:
Who wrote the Bible? His name was Sam and I knew him personally.

Pete Alwinson:
Steve, you’re going to get struck by lightning for that one, man.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, we don’t have any thunderstorms in the area right now. So, I can kid. You know, Jesus did. You know, we’re going to say a lot more than that, but the word of God that entered time and space was also the one who wrote the word of God. And so, it was Jesus that was the writer of the entire Bible. Now, there are other things that need to be said. 66 different books. How many different authors?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh yeah. I don’t know. 40 something.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, a lot. And, you know, one of the best arguments for Christianity is that you’ve got 66 books over hundreds and hundreds of years. And they never contradict. They have a theme that runs everywhere. They didn’t even know each other. And yet, you have this book that you can read from cover to cover and never get confused.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, it is amazing. If you will take and study through Genesis to Revelation, you will see the plane takes off in Genesis and it’s landed perfectly in Revelation.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
I mean, and it is a divine book. There is a unity to it. Now, I hear his question deeply from a human standpoint. So, we do know some of the human authors. But Biblical scholars would differ over some of the books.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Most conservatives would say, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. First five books are the Mosaic. And then probably Joshua wrote Joshua and we go on and on. What books would you say, we really don’t know who wrote it.

Steve Brown:
Hebrews would be one.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, in the New Testament.

Steve Brown:
And there might, and there may be some others that are, you read the Book of Job and we know that that kind of story has been told in a lot of cultures. And so, it has overtones that are universal there, but we don’t know who wrote it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, there’s some that we know, you’ve got others?

Pete Alwinson:
No, I would say.

Steve Brown:
Oh, I thought you had the answer and you were going to see if I knew.

Pete Alwinson:
There are some where it’s disputed. For instance, Daniel probably wrote down most of Daniel.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Isaiah is such a big book with 66 chapters, that some say, well, maybe he didn’t write it all. I think we do know that down through the ages, God superintended the proper transmission of the text.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And that there were some, probably some editors, divinely authored, authorized editors.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true.

Pete Alwinson:
That helped put it into its final form.

Steve Brown:
So, that’s a rational understanding of Scripture, and we could spend broadcast after broadcast talking about the process whereby God brought us the Canon of Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
It is obvious, there are people that think that God dropped this golden book out of heaven and we just received it and got this direct, God really did use human people, with human thoughts, who had different ways of writing, different styles of writing, different kinds of cultural understanding. And yet, as you said, his Spirit was overseeing it so that everything in Scripture is what’s supposed to be from Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s exactly right. And back to your comment about Jesus being the ultimate author, is that every book in the Bible you can trace, you can see the Jesus imprint all the way through.

Steve Brown:
You really can.

Pete Alwinson:
What’s the Bible all about? It’s about Jesus, ultimately.

Steve Brown:
It really is. And you can find Jesus everywhere.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And the Bible is, we can talk in a scholarly way about Scripture and we should, but actually it’s God’s love letter.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
And if you’re not spending time in Scripture, you’ve probably made it too religious. You probably made it this sacred thing that I’ve got to be pure and good. Don’t. Go read it, there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible about sex. There’s a lot about power. There’s a lot of great stories. There are human beings throughout Scripture who have warts, who have done bad things, really bad things. And God included that on purpose.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Absolutely. So, go study the word. Get a study Bible and read the introduction too.

Steve Brown:
And you’ll be glad if you do. We’ve got to go. We appreciate your joining us. And by the way, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.