“What about fasting?”

Steve Brown:
What about fasting? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Peter. How are you?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m doing good, but the whole title makes me very hungry that we’re going to be talking about today.

Steve Brown:
I know that’s true. So, you know, well, we’ll talk about when we get to it. By the way, if you haven’t gone to ForgeTruth.com you ought to cause that is so good. There’s a wonderful podcast there, a lot of great teaching, audio and video, life changing stuff and you ought to to check it out. And that’s Pete’s ministry, ForgeTruth.com and you were telling me earlier when you came in that you’re going to start doing something just for pastors.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. Just a gathering, a gathering locally here. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s so good. I’ll tell you, I get, we have about 4,000 pastors on our mailing list. And if a pastor calls or, I mean, if you write to us, I might see it, but I might not too, because we get a lot. But if you’re a pastor, it comes right through. If a pastor calls, so I’ve talked to a lot and it’s a hard time for a pastor.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it is. Pray for your pastor.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, really do. And encouraging when you can. And I’m sure that’s what, are you going to, is it going to be something you write or a video or a audio thing or what?

Pete Alwinson:
Right now, it’s going to be a local gathering of pastors where we’re going to be building friendships. We’re going to be enjoying grace. We’re going to be learning skills, iron sharpens iron, and praying for the greater Orlando area.

Steve Brown:
Oh, so it’s a, oh, I got, I misunderstood. I thought you were going to start doing something every week or so

Pete Alwinson:
it’s going to be

Steve Brown:
in terms of a blog or something like that.

Pete Alwinson:
No, no. We’re going to be really local grassroots stuff and see what happens so that we can encourage other pastors.

Steve Brown:
Well, listen, if you’re a pastor and you live within driving distance of Central Florida, you might want to go to ForgeTruth.Com and check that out. As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we answer your questions. And we love your questions. You can ask a question anytime by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 24 7, follow the instructions and sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

Or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. I promise that when you help us financially, we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in the giving of it. If you can’t, we understand. 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:
Let’s do that. Father, thank you today as we start this Friday or as we continue on in the day here, we thank you that you have been our sovereign God and leader all week, every day, every second. We come to you now and we praise you. Thank you for wrapping up the week with us. We give you praise for the fact that you’ve been in charge, that you are in charge and you’ll always be in charge. And so, we come to you, Lord, and we pray that you would help us with your wisdom by your Spirit to make sense of those things that have happened to us. To listen to your voice, as we study your word privately, but even more this week-end, we pray as we go to church and sit in front of our pastors and worship teams. And as we worship and listen to your word taught, we pray Lord Jesus, that by your Spirit, you would speak to us in a powerful way, that you would enable us to understand the gospel in a deep, deep way. And that you would set us freer and freer and freer as your people. And so, we give you the trials that we have, the money that we need, the requests that we have and ask now that you would help us to answer some questions that would be to your honor and glory. We pray in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this first question’s an e-mail. What do you think about the practice of fasting? What does the Bible say on that issue?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, it’s interesting because in the Old Testament, it is something that is instituted. In the New Testament, it is something that’s presupposed. It’s just presupposed that we will continue to do it. And Jesus says that we have to have the right attitude in our fasting.

Steve Brown:
Can I get stuff from God if I fast?

Pete Alwinson:
If you fast long enough, Steve.

Steve Brown:
You have to go a long time though to get him to move.

Pete Alwinson:
Jesus went 40 days. You have to go beyond that.

Steve Brown:
And we’re being facetious of course.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
You know, there are people that do fast and they think that when they fast, that God will listen to them more than if they didn’t. That’s not true. But fasting is for our benefit. It is a time of focus. It is a time of looking at Jesus in a more profound and deeper way, and it can be quite effective.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Yeah. And Jesus teaching for the self righteous Pharisees was that we, you don’t, you know, don’t look disheveled, don’t look like you’re really suffering for Jesus or for God because you’re not going to get any reward that way. But it does. It is really more for us. And we do a deal within our ministry where we, and I’m not a big faster. I’ve always struggled with fasting.

Steve Brown:
Me neither. I was at one time.

Pete Alwinson:
You did. You did before you went speaking. You always did.

Steve Brown:
I did, until the speaking schedule got so much that I was looking like death warmed over.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
I was starving to death.

Pete Alwinson:
The boy needs to eat. Well, just that, you know, there are some times on important subjects that it’s good to stop and like you said, focus and not have your body diverted to anything else other than listening to the Lord. And I think it’s a good practice. It’s good to say no to the flesh and it’s good to say yes to God.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. And by the way, if you are diabetic or if you have a blood sugar problem, don’t feel guilty about not fasting. My wife can’t fast because, well, two things happen. She has a blood sugar thing, and she turns mean if she isn’t fed. When we’re on the road, the staff will say, feed Anna before she turns mean. But you’ve got to be careful and not silly about it. I had an early mentor and my minister, he wrote a book about fasting and he talked about not only the spiritual benefits that we’ve been discussing, but he talked about the physical benefits.

Pete Alwinson:
There really are. Yeah. You know, if you Google that and study that, there really are a lot.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. So, it’s a good thing, but don’t obsess on it, but it’s good. Was Judas saved?

Pete Alwinson:
Not according to the Bible. In John 17, he’s called the son of perdition, which means, and the son of hell. And, so don’t expect to see him in heaven.

Steve Brown:
I’m told, and I don’t know where I got this, that there was an early cult in the early church that was built around Judas. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but if there was, I’m glad it’s not around because it’s plainly different than what the Bible teaches.

Pete Alwinson:
Boy, I know. And you know, one of my missionary professors at Bible college told about, in Africa, or someplace there was a group who, when the missionary was telling the gospel and told the story of Judas, they cheered because betrayal was one of their higher priorities as a culture. And the missionaries had to do some fast work there to talk about that.

Steve Brown:
You know, Jesus said with men, that’s impossible, but with God, all of things are possible. So, who knows? We might get to heaven and find out that Jesus gave him a pass and I’m going to go up to him and say to him, Judas, what in the world were you thinking?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man. Right?

Steve Brown:
But the short answer is no, he probably wasn’t. What is the difference between fundamentalist and evangelicals?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, you know, that’s good. And boy, that’s a question of really in the 1970s, it would have been easier to talk about that.

Steve Brown:
It’s not so much anymore.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. How would you, how would you make the difference today?

Steve Brown:
Well, the fundamentalist, and that’s a negative word. When you use the word fundamentalism, and there was a sense in which evangelical was softer in terms of the sound and what people thought. But that’s no longer true. Evangelical can get you in trouble too. But initially the fundamentalists were named after a group of booklets and the fundamentals of the Christian faith. And a very wealthy entrepreneur, businessman gave the money for those booklets to be sent to every pastor in America. And they were. And there were things like the physical resurrection, the second coming of Christ, the virgin birth, justification by faith. I forget how many, but there were a bunch of them.

Pete Alwinson:
There were! And it was powerful!

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s where the word fundamental came from, the fundamentals of the faith. And then all of a sudden that morphed into sometimes self righteousness and condemnation of others. And the word fundamentalist, and this happens to words all the time, took on a very negative bend to it. And some groups, many of whom were my friends. Billy Graham was one of those, Harold John Ockenga was one of those, and a number of others decided that they wanted to stick with the fundamentals, but they didn’t want to go in the cultural direction that a lot of that had gone in. And so, they founded what was the Evangelical Movement, which was the same basic beliefs, but an attitudinal thing that was softer, more gentle, more caring, more loving, and that worked until the 70s came to an end. And then as you said, all of that is morphed and it’s very difficult to define anymore.

Pete Alwinson:
And even in our, in recent history after, you know, during the time of COVID and all those, we’ve seen how different even evangelical churches have changed and are redefining themselves. So, It’s harder. You know, C.S. Lewis book, Mere Christianity, in which he tried to talk about the very basics of the faith and what it meant to be a Christian. Fundamentalists fleshed that out more. Evangelicals gave it softer. But we have to be careful that we, as Christians, go back to the Bible. And so that’s the call we have.

Steve Brown:
And if you are a pastor and you’ve changed, may you get the hives. That’s a joke, but don’t do that. Stick, read the fundamentals and stick with it. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.