Fasting – Key Lessons in Book by Ps Jentezen Franklin

Many would agree with me that there is  a powerful touch of God on so many messages given by Ps Jentezen Franklin of Free Chapel, in Gainesville Georgia. Ps Franklin attributes much of the blessing of God on his life and ministry to the effects of God responding to FASTING. Ps Franklin wrote a helpful book on Fasting which my wife purchased, and I have enjoyed reading it. I recommend you buy this book for yourself. However, for the benefit of visitors to this site, I will seek to distill some of the main lessons and points of encouragement from the book here.

Some of the encouragement from the book comes through the anecdotal testimonials of what God did in response to the fasting that Ps Franklin and his church did. I would like to echo this, in the sense that in my own life, especially earlier on, I came into many spiritual blessings through fasting. I am sure I could have gotten more with more fasting, but what I did receive was really good and changed the direction of my life for the better.

Ps Franklin was called into the ministry on a fast, saw his early evangelistic ministry grow through fasting and received miraculous provision for the church while on a long fast. Their church is seeing great blessing through a season of 21 days of fasting every January. I think there is something for us all to learn from this.

“Fasting releases the anointing, the favor and the blessing of God in the life of a Christian”  (p. 4). I think this is what we want.

It all relates to GOD rewarding a person. As long as we are fasting for God to see it, and not for people to be impressed with our great consecration, then God will reward us openly (see Matthew 6).

“Biblical fasting is refraining from food for a spiritual purpose.” (p9). Fasting brings spiritual breakthrough.

Fasting sensitises you to spiritual things, unclutters your mind and spirit. “It is a secret source of power that is overlooked by many.” (p 10).

Jesus expected his disciples to fast just as much as he expected them to pray and to give. Matthew 616 says “When you fast …”, not “if you fast”. So “the three duties of every Christian are giving, praying and fasting”.

I saw a book by an old time evangelist in which it was stated that giving, praying and fasting unlock God’s bank. Yes, it seems to work. Do it for a while and see what happens.

Praying, fasting and giving are a strong threefold cord.

What blessings are not being released because we fail to fast? What bondages remain for this reason only?

In Matthew 17, the disciples could not cast a demon out of a boy, but Jesus could – because he had prayed AND fasted (Matthew 17:20-21 NKJV). Please not that Matthew 17:21 is one of those verses like Mark 16:17-20 that the devil wanted out of your Bible.

Some supernatural blessings can only be released through fasting.

Fasting is for everyone. After the bridegroom (Jesus) is taken away from the disciples then Jesus said they would fast (Luke 5:34-35). Some try to get around this by stating that this only referred to the days between the death and the resurrection of Christ. But when Jesus appeared to them, they had cooked fish on hand on one occasion! They weren’t fasting that whole time. No, the meaning of this is that when Jesus doesn’t seem close, we will fast.

God delights in giving rewards. Fasting breaks the power of the delayer – delaying spirits that seek to stop the blessing from coming through to us.

Fasting brings health and healing, and sometimes financial prosperity. So there are a lot of good reasons to fast correctly!

More to come later – that was from the first chapter of Ps Franklin’s book on fasting.