In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal story about a mission trip to a remote camp. Initially, they had planned to finish their work and return home, but they discovered one more camp deep in the wilderness. Despite the challenges and reluctance, they decided to go. The speaker emphasizes the importance of repentance and seeking God's face, drawing parallels to biblical examples like David fasting and praying for his child's healing. The sermon concludes with a call to deny oneself and be willing to continually obey God, as the time for repentance is limited.

Your father, who sees in secret, shall reward you openly. In talking about fasting to a Christian worker friend of mine, he made the rather facetious remark that every time he tried fasting, all he could think about was food. Now, mind you, he looked the part, too. I mean, he was considerably overweight. Fasting in the Bible, by the way, was never used as a means of losing weight. God had other things in mind, and we want to look at some of this this afternoon. There are forty-two references to fasting in the Bible, and if you compare the Old Testament to the New, there are more references in the Old Testament than there are in the New. Pardon me, there are seventy references to fasting. Did I say forty-two? There's forty-two in the Old Testament and, well, the balance in the New. However, since the New Testament is considerably shorter than the Old Testament, there's one reference to fasting every twenty-eight pages in the Old Testament, and there's one every twelve pages in the New Testament. That's interesting. I say that because oftentimes Christians don't feel it's a New Testament doctrine at all. They think it's strictly Old Testament. We don't do that today. That's legalism, and so on. But that helps to balance that and show us that it is a New Testament teaching. And I'm sure, I know there are people here that fast and pray, and perhaps some of you do it on a regular basis, and I'm also positive there are people here who have never really fasted, maybe because we don't understand what it is or why we should do it. What is fasting? Well, it's doing without food or drink or perhaps both for a stated period of time. It may be a partial fast. Daniel did without, he said, no pleasant food, no wine, no flesh came into his mouth for three weeks. It doesn't say it was a total fast, it was a partial fast, and we could fast that way. Or it might be total as it was with Moses in the mountain, 40 days, 40 nights on two separate occasions, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself in his conflict with Satan. He fasted for that 40-day period. So it can be either. Now, Jesus never said if you fast. Remember? He said when you fast. Now, you know what that means. That means that he took it for granted that we as his people would always, I don't mean always in the sense that every day, but we would make fasting a regular part of the Christian life. Now, why should I fast, or to put it differently, what would fasting do for me? I mean, we look at a lot of things from a selfish angle, I suppose. Why should I fast? One Bible writer said, I humbled my soul with fasting. You know, it's a means of humbling yourself. People keep telling me, I'm so proud. Well, all right, fasting will humble you. Or you might ask, why again? And we can pursue that further, too, because the Lord said, Humble yourselves. We say, God humble me. Well, God may do that, and he knows how to do that. Those that walk in pride, he is able to evade. And there's times when he does that. He may stick a cane between your legs and knock you flat in the mud when you're trying to look nice, and all that kind of thing. He knows how to do that, and he can do it perfectly. Just ask me. I've discovered this over the years. When you think you're something, that's really when God will make you to see that you're nothing, and he does it because he loves us. But I humbled my soul, and if I'm a proud person, there ought to be times when I fast and seek God about this pride thing. I humbled my soul with fasting. Then, another Bible writer said, or perhaps it was the same writer, it's in the Psalms, I chastened my soul with fasting. Now, what would the difference be between humbling and chastening? Whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. Well, it goes, I think, a little further than just humbling myself, but allowing myself to do without something legitimate, because I want to please God. I'm chastening, you know, the normal appetites of my body, which are clamoring for attention and gratification all the time. I'm saying no. Mike, this friend of mine, he asked me one time, he said, how do you stay slim? And I said, well, I do without a stomach, without a meal now and then, to show my stomach who the boss is. And he said, well, I have a different program for showing my stomach who the boss is. And I said, what is your program? And he said, well, my stomach hollers enough, I throw some more down. And he made a big joke of it, and it really wasn't funny. And I hate to say this, but that Christian worker is far off from God today, far, far away from God. He's gone, I guess, as far as a person could go after having a great ministry for many years. There's those natural appetites which need to be curbed. I've talked with people who got to the place where when they saw food, if nobody else was around, they ran to it, grabbed it with both hands, stuffed it in their mouths, and puked it all up and did it all over again. Sometimes this is an occult problem, not always. All right, I humbled my soul with fasting. I chastened my soul with fasting. And fasting gives me power with God. Remember Jesus said when the apostles could not cast demons out, he said, this kind goes not out but by prayer and fasting. In other words, it was not just a case of commanding the demon to go. You might command a demon to go, and he would not go. So you have to fast and pray until you have the power, the victory, and then the demon will go. So fasting then gives added power to the Christian worker in certain cases. And that's clearly taught. Now, you probably have noticed this, you may not have, but the Lord Jesus in Luke 9, the opening verses, he gave his disciples power over all spirits, it says, over all spirits. And around verse 40 in the same chapter, they tried to exercise that power, and it wasn't there. And they were embarrassed. The Pharisees began to noodle them because of their failure, and they were mightily embarrassed, and that's why they asked Jesus after this was all over, why couldn't we cast them out? Jesus did it so easily. And that's when he told them, because of your unbelief. In other words, fasting is an antidote to unbelief also, which has to do with the power of God, because if I don't have faith, I don't have the power of God either. Stephen was full of faith and power, it says. Stephen was full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. And fasting is an antidote to unbelief, and it gives me power with God that I otherwise may not have at all. Then it commends me to God. You know, in 2 Corinthians 6, it says, in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, and one of the things he mentioned was fasting, in the context, in Corinthians 6, 1 to 5, fasting, it commends me to God. There's a person, God will say, that means business. I know fasting can become a form, as Jesus warned us, it can, and sometimes it is that, but it need not be. It need not be. And the spiritual person will make sure that it's not just a form. It's just that I'm adding some urgency to my prayers. And then it helps me in the area of self-control. And Paul talked about this over in 1 Corinthians 7, and I know it's not very popular, you read all kinds of books about the physical side of marriage, and they'll talk about 12 different positions and all this stuff, you know, but they never ever discuss Paul's little statement in 2 Corinthians 7. I have never seen it in a book on this anywhere. They never talk about this, because that's not popular, see. What does he say? He says, to married couples, do not defraud each other, except it be with consent, that is common agreement, for a time. So the husband and wife agree together we'll do without sex for this period of time. And then it says, come together again. Why? That Satan tempt you not for your lack of self-control. You notice what he's saying there. The desires of the flesh, if they're always fed, they get stronger. And there needs to be time in this relationship where husband and wife agree together for this period of time. It's not a case of defrauding each other, but we'll agree together for this week or whatever, however long time you agree on. We'll forego this legitimate pleasure. So we may give ourselves to fasting and prayer, it says. And then come together again. But the whole idea was that Satan tempt you not for your lack of self-control. Now, as I said, this is not popular teaching. Well, of course, the whole concept of fasting is unpopular, because, you know, Billy Sonny said, most Americans dig their grave with their teeth, and I think most Canadians do, too. Anyway. All right. These are some of the things that fasting will do for me. Now, how is it used in Bible times? We find that when Israel was going to battle against the enemy, they fasted. Because they wanted to know the will of God. How to go about fighting the enemy. They wanted to have victory over the enemy, so they fasted for guidance and for victory. And we can spiritualize that to some extent. We don't need to in some respects, but in some other respects, perhaps, to some extent. And apply it today for guidance, power over Satan, victory in some distressing situation or circumstance, just as they. Then they prayed for protection. Remember when the Israelites were coming back from captivity, and they stopped by a river, and they had a prayer meeting a long time, they fasted, they prayed, and they sought from God a right way to go, and they sought from God protection against the enemy? Well, that's much like what we've been talking about already. In Judges chapter 20, there's a reference there to Israel fasting and praying. First of all, they prayed, and that didn't get any answer from God. Then they went further and fasted and prayed, and then they got an answer from God. And so, I suppose in a sense we could say, looking at it from a very practical angle, it shows God will mean business. It just shows God will mean business. But they used it in many different cases in the Old Testament, sometimes to avert the judgment of God. When wicked king Ahab, and he was a wicked king, married to a woman that was worse than he was, and she incited him to evil, what an awful combination. And when the prophet came and laid it on the line, and told him what God had in mind relative to him, what did Ahab do? He fasted. He clothed himself. He took off his kingly robes, and he put on some sackcloth, and it says he walked very softly. Boy, he was just tiptoeing around, you know. He was afraid, bang, God was going to get him, you know. He was really scared. And so he fasted. But there was some reality in his humbling, because God was pleased. It wasn't all phony. He was better than his wife was, you know. She was trampled by horses, if you remember. But she was quite a horsey person, you know, so it's not surprising. Anyway, there are different cases like this in the Bible, and the Ninevites, the king of Nineveh, when he heard this message from Jonah, they proclaimed a fast, and he said, Let man and beast cry mightily to God. And God heard all of this, and God did not do what he had said he would do through this prophet. We could avert the judgment of God on our nation. We might see it coming someday, who knows. And that will be a time for Christians to seek the face of God. Famine, the book of Joel. Famine and problems of this kind in the country, they proclaimed a fast. Seek God. Perhaps God will repent. Perhaps God will leave a blessing. I often wonder, I say to myself, what would happen to Canada if we had to go 28 months without any rain? What would happen to our forests? Well, we've seen what happened several years ago when we went a few months without rain, and we had 82 forest fires burning in northern Saskatchewan, and the smoke from our forest fires was blowing way down into the United States. And if we had no rain for 28 months, and we have what we sometimes have, actually fairly frequently, these dry electrical storms, we wouldn't have any timber left in northern Canada at all. So sometimes there's a need for national repentance for fasting. I don't know if you know of the Life Action people from Buchanan, Michigan, but they have a multimedia presentation which is called America is Too Young to Die. It's not based on a book by that name. And I've seen the presentation. They did it for me once when I was with them in a training session. They just did it for me. They wanted me to see it. I was a Canadian, and they wanted me to see this, and I wanted to see it, and so I saw it. And it was really a thrilling presentation. There were times when the tears were running down my face, although I was a Canadian, not an American. You know, the Americans are great people. I have a lot of friends among them. And Canadians need to remember that most of the evangelical work in Canada was started by Americans years ago. You need to remember that. Anyway, they have shown this presentation. I'm not sure where it is now. When I saw them a couple of years ago, over a million people had seen this presentation, 40,000 people had been saved through it. Vice President Bush and the Cabinet saw it. There were 10,000 people in that meeting. And when the presentation was finished, he leaped to his feet with these other men. They were clapping. They were so moved by it. But what Dale Faisenfeld, the director of that work, does at the end of this presentation, he brings a short appeal to the people of America to repent of their national sins. And he asks them all to kneel before God, Vice President Bush included. And here were all these thousands of people. He said if we have a crowd of 10,000, we have them kneel to repent before God, 200 people will walk out, and that's about all. That's interesting. That's interesting. Thank God for what people are doing here and there to call our nations to repentance. Anyway, in Bible times, this had to do with seeking the face of God, averting judgment. David fasted and prayed so his child might be healed. The child was not healed because his sin was so grievous that God could not, weighing this whole matter in the balances of justice, he could not, even tipping the scales with mercy, he still could not heal that child. And the child died. But David did the right thing. He fasted as well as prayed. So these are some reasons then why people fasted in Bible times. And then we need to look for a moment or two at some of the dangers associated with it, because there's times when people fasted in the Bible and God didn't listen to them at all. Zechariah 7. The nation had their fast days, you know, stated fasting times. But it was strictly a ritual that they went through. And I suppose when they were through those days of fasting, they thanked God. They were back now to business as usual. We can eat all the stuff we couldn't eat for these days. God said, did you do it all fast unto me when you fasted? You didn't fast to me. You just fasted because it's something the nation is doing. It was not done unto God. And fasting doesn't mean anything unless it's done unto God, before God. That's why this danger Jesus talked about in Matthew 6 of disfiguring your face, hoping somebody will ask you why you don't look so well so you can tell them, well, you know, I've been fasting for seven days. Oh, really? You just blew the whole thing, brother. You just blew the whole thing. Might as well go eat some junk now, you know, because you lost it all, see. Trying to get brownie points by fasting, you know. With people, not with God. You know, sometimes we do that. And there's a real danger here. You know, it's so hard to do something like this without somehow letting somebody know what you're doing. Isn't it hard? How would I know? Just ask me. I've done it too. You know, you do something, or you make a big sacrifice financially, or you do without meals. Man, it's hard to do that just unto God, you know. Somehow you have to let some other people know what a super saint you are. And there's subtle ways of doing it, so subtle that they really don't catch on that you're doing it. But God does. And then, of course, his heart is grieved that one of his children was not satisfied to hear him say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. I had to hear men say it as well. Which means, of course, I'm not in the spiritual condition in which I should be. Then there was the man in the Gospel of Luke who said, I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. But he didn't go down to his house justified, did he? Well, he was one of those people that, you know, made sure that people knew he was fasting to be sin of men. And Christ said they have their reward. That is, they are sin of men. That's what they wanted, and that's what they got. But they get nothing at all from God. Now, it's inevitable that if you're fasting and you're in a family situation, somebody's going to know you're fasting. That's different. Your wife will know. Your husband will know. So your children will know. Daddy's not eating today or something. You know, they'll know. That's different. But where I can do it so that nobody knows, we'll do it that way. Sometimes husbands and wives will do it together. I met a godly couple one time, and she, I'm not sure whether he was or not, but she was fasting two days a week, every week, in the interest of revival because she wanted to see the work of God prosper. Anna did that, didn't she? She never left the temple. She served God with fastings and prayers night and day. Served God with fastings. Ever thought of that? There's a strange phrase in the Bible that talks about the matter of the fastings and their cry. So, fastings cry to God. Someone called it praying without words. And it is that. When the heart is right, and I have something specific in mind, my fastings cry to God. When you fast, and not if you fast, humbling, chastening, seeking protection, guidance, adding power to my ministry, my work, whatever it is in certain specific situations. Some of you will know the story of Jack Hiles, and some of you will not, so at the risk of repeating something you already know, let me just remind you of what he did. When as a young pastor he discovered he had no power with God or men. The thing that brought it to a head was the fact that his father, who was an alcoholic, the only preacher he ever heard preach was Jack Hiles, and he dropped dead one day without being saved. And this brought it to a head in Jack Hiles' thinking. See, a lot of people think that Jack Hiles, it's pretty frothy, you know, it's a lot of flesh effort and so on. But the man often spends whole nights in prayer, and you don't do that if it's a fleshy thing, I mean, you know, anyway. Perhaps he uses some methods I would not use, I think probably he does. I remember one time in a preacher's meeting, a preacher said to him, Well, Brother Hiles, you baptize a lot, but you lose a lot. He said, I lose some, but I'll tell you something, my dear brother, I wind up with a lot more than you've got. And it wasn't said in the spirit of pride, it was said in humility, and the fellow had to be quiet, because Jack Hiles has got 80,000 members in his church, and this fellow had 70, you know. So it's kind of hard for 70 to sit in judgment on 80,000, you know, a little hard. Anyway, after the funeral was over and all the relatives had gone, Jack went to his father's grave and threw himself across his father's grave, and he prayed this way, he said, I won't eat, and I will not drink, and I will not leave this place until you give me power to preach the gospel. Now, he was a Baptist. Baptists don't usually pray that way. He lay there three days and three nights, and all he says is, God touched me. He takes that verse from the Psalms, you know, I should be anointed with fresh oil, and he says, God anointed me with fresh oil. He went back to his little church in Texas and preached and gave an invitation, and 18 people came forward for salvation. And the church went from 60 members to 3,000 members in six years. They said, well, Jack, you can do it in the South, but you can't do it in the North. Well, he went up to Hamden. The alleyway is now. The church went from 700 to 80,000. And he says, even now it happens. I feel empty and fruitless and dry, and I do it again. And sometimes he'd get a few people to fast and pray with him, or he'll do it alone and call on God until God anoints him with fresh oil. Petru sang about restoring the springtime. Oh, people, we need that. Sometimes our hearts are so hard and so cold, and we need the springtime restored. And sometimes we need to fast and pray. The early church, when appointing Christian workers, missionaries, or whatever, they frequently fasted and prayed. You read of that in the book of Acts. They would fast, and they would pray, and then they would lay their hands on them and commit them to the work. We don't do that today. We ask the candidate to give a statement concerning our 14 points, affirmation of faith, or whatever you call it, and he does that beautifully because he's been studying it for months. And we don't ask the kind of questions that the Bible says are to be the requirements for pastors, you know. Those questions are not asked. We ask them strictly doctrinal questions, which are not asked at all. The doctrine is taken for granted in the Bible, you see, in this particular thing. And we don't fast and then pray. I'm sure there are exceptions to what I'm saying. Thank God for that. But oh, that somehow we could come back to this again. I am sure we would see more of the power of God in our work. We would get clearer guidance from God. We'd find protection. I know traveling in foreign countries, there's times when you really commit yourself to God and maybe fast along with it because sometimes the transportation is not exactly the way it should be. We went 14 hours in a boat on the ocean when we were in the Philippines, and the National Whiffers did not tell us until after it was all over. He said, I have sailed on this ship before, and he says normally the motor quits and you drift for 10 or 12 hours every trip they take. This time it didn't. Because when I looked at that old ship, I thought to myself, if I'm not mistaken, this thing's going to be drifting around in the ocean, you know, so I just had special prayer about it, you know, and it didn't drift. The motors kept humming all night. It was a filthy old tub, but it got us there, and we called on God about it. Fasting and praying. Clear guidance from God. Protection from God. Power to work for God. I was in a crusade one time. The crowds were great, but nothing was happening. And so we took a day. It was a Thursday for fasting and prayer. And Thursday night, there was a great response, which continued for some weeks. And people, I often wonder what would happen if all of God's people were to fast and pray as the Spirit leads. It's not to be a legalistic thing. And it can easily become that, of course. But it's unto my God. Unto your Father, Jesus Christ said, who sees in secret and who reads your heart. And your Father, who sees in secret, shall reward you openly. He will do for you the things you are asking Him to do. When you fast and pray, all right, I'm not sure that I have much more to say about it. It's a challenge to my own heart. I frequently deal with the occult. And when I'm lecturing on that subject, I normally try to fast that day. I found fasting a delightful exercise. And you know, at the beginning, especially if you haven't done it before, you may find it very difficult. I've had people tell me, Man, I get this terrible headache. I get this terrible pain in my stomach. I have to eat. Well, no, you don't have to eat. It may be just a psychological thing. I mean, you haven't done this before. And I mean, you're crying for food. Your body's crying for it. And you know, you can work yourself up into all kinds of things just so you don't have to fast. The Lord didn't actually make any exceptions here. However, a word of caution, you may have a physical condition concerning which you need to talk to your doctor before you try fasting. That's something to keep in mind also. The work of God generally, for some reason, or some Christian worker, I feel constrained to pray and fast on behalf of that particular person or whatever it is. But it gives power to my praying. And I find this, I was saying that before, that the longer I fast, the easier it becomes. Two days, three days, you're not even thinking of food. You're so wrapped up in God and the Word of God. I find this very helpful to me in studying the Bible to do without meals sometimes. And we know from all the Lord said in the Bible that He loves to see it. But make sure you read Isaiah 50, 58, isn't it? He said, is this the fast I have chosen? The day to bow your head like a bulrush and spread sackcloth and ashes? He said, no, that's not the fast I've chosen. The fast I've chosen is to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo every heavy burden, to let the oppressed go free. You see, I might be fasting and neglecting doing other things that are more important. And this will nullify the fasting thing. Like, for example, there might be some specific Christian duty that I know about, that God wants me to do, and I don't want to do that, so I may try fasting to get off the hook. And God will know that, and that will not work. We can't coerce God by fasting. That's not the idea. But our Savior said, and this may be a general term that would certainly apply here, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself. Cecil Carter, blessed man of God, a good friend of mine. God's used him to win hundreds of people to Christ. I hope somebody writes a story after he passes on. He had a heart attack several years ago, and now he can't be out on the road the way he was for years, preaching in logging camps and mining camps. But last year, he led 30 men to Christ, talking to them on the streets of Prince George, British Columbia. He baptized all 30, and all 30 are in fellowship. So he told me, a great man of God, but he said this. He said he never knew, in his experience, he never knew any ministry to be blessed of God that was not connected with some form of self-denial on his part. And I think that's so. I think it's true. I'll give you an example. This was right after the revival in 71, and my wife and I had several weeks of holidays coming up. So what we would normally do is check the weather reports and see if the sun is shining in eastern Canada, we'll go to Ontario. If it's raining in eastern Canada, we'll go to western Canada. We'll go to Alberta someplace, you know. Go up to the Lake Country. We had it all figured out. This time we had sense enough to pray and ask what God wanted. And he said, I want you to go to Kamloops, British Columbia, where my daughter at that time lived with five or six lively children. They now have seven. And we talked about it, and we love our kids, and they're great kids. Dan is pastoring a church now in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. But you know, you're lying in bed there at five o'clock in the morning, and there's one of those little guys comes in and says, Grandpa! And he tweaks your beak and pulls your ears and stuff, you know. And I just didn't want that. Because I'd had it a couple years before, you know. The Lord said, go. So we went. I'm so glad we went. What a time we had. They asked me to speak at their prayer meeting Wednesday night. And halfway through, a fellow got to his feet, a young married fellow from Vancouver, and he was shaking and trembling. He says, God has shown me I'm not even saved. Would you people pray for me? In a prayer meeting. So we took him off into a side room, led him to the Lord, and he came back out and gave his testimony. Whoo! That was some prayer meeting afterwards. And then, we had some meetings in houses, a little afterglow sort of, you know, when we never had the first glow. We just did it that way, and people started to meet God, and we just had a great time. So we burned up a couple of weeks of our holidays, and then I thought of going to see my brother, because as I prayed, that came to my mind, and the same thing happened there. Well, we never had much time left, and I said to my wife, I said, Honey, you know, I'm just really kind of pooed out. I really need a few days rest. Let's see if we can go down to Fishing Lake. There's a Bible camp associated with our conference there. I phoned the local pastor, and he said, Come on, I'll make sure that, you know, everything's fine. Nobody will know you're at the camp. You can be at the camp. There's no program. You'll go there fine. So we went there Saturday, and it was so restful. Nobody around but the seagulls and everything, you know. And then early Sunday morning, around Sunday morning, we heard cars coming. Cars and cars and cars and cars. And one of our local churches decided to have their Sunday morning service at the Bible camp, and they found I was there. So they insisted I preach. So we were back doing it again, and that's how we spent a whole holiday time. But it was a blessing. Bill Russell, Bob Russell, his son, is in town. Some of you will know him. Loves God with all his heart. And his dad, Bill, introduced me to the Shantyman's mission work years ago, and we had laid plans, you know, to do this and this and this, and we figured it would take us three weeks to reach all the camps in this area, and then we can get home. So we had it all planned to finish on Friday night. Saturday we hit for home. But on Friday we discovered there was one more camp way back in the wilderness, and we knew we had to go. But we didn't want to go, so we talked about it. There's only 14 men in the camp. That's just a small camp. The road's terrible. They told us the road was terrible. It might take you two hours to go ten miles. That's a bad road. And we tried to talk ourselves out of it, but we couldn't. There were 14 men there that needed the gospel. So we scrapped our plans, and we drove over this horrible road. I'll tell you, it was horrible. When you're driving on a road so bad that you bend the tie rod, you know, it's a bad road. And if there hadn't been two of us, I'd be there yet. We straightened that tie rod out. If you want to know how we did it, I'll tell you sometime. With no tools at all, we straightened it. And we saw cars and trucks that had been abandoned at the side of the road. The road was too bad. And somehow we made it. Oh, man, what a meeting we had that night. One of those meetings where, just like God suddenly walked into the place. It was fantastic. I wouldn't have missed that for anything in the world. And so, people, we have to learn to deny ourselves. And we don't want to ever come to the place where we say, Oh, Lord, not again. You know. Lord, I just did this last week. Again? And the Lord would say, Yes, again. It'll be all over for all of us very soon. Right? And there's that beautiful song that says, I wish I had given him more. More, more, so much more. I wish I had given him more. So, make no provision for the flesh. Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Seek to be filled with the Spirit of God. Fast and pray when God so leads. And he'll bless you. Your life will become richer, fuller. You'll reach more people for the glory of God.