FASTINGS REVELATION
"CONTAINER OF NEW WINE"
PART 1

Jesus has given us an important key so we can accomplish His purpose and plan!
It isn't a very popular key; yet when a person employs it, that key will shut down the fleshly nature.

That key is fasting.

If you ever learn to shut your flesh down, you will shut the door to the devil in your life.
The only power the devil has is through the seduction and manipulation of the flesh nature.
Which includes the mental and emotional realm as well as the physical body.

I. Breaking Down the Ceiling of Flesh

1. First, you must understand that your flesh is opposed to God.

Galatians 5:16-17
"So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.
They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want."

In other words, we naturally love to do evil things that are just the opposite from the things that the Holy Spirit tells us to do.
The good things we want to do when the Spirit has his way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires.

These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us.
Our wishes are never free from their inside pressures.
It is your flesh that constructs a ceiling over your lives.

2. Second, the devil will erect some kind of stronghold in our flesh realm.

Example as: Smoking, drinking, anger, lying, gossip, or lust.

Then he uses that stronghold to control us.

Illustrate: Every time we attempt to receive from God or to accomplish something for Him.

The Devil turns up the pressure in those areas so that we feel hopeless and out of control.

3. Thirdly, so what do we often do?

Therefore our lives stay the same all the time, never increasing.
We may instigate more programs, but the power never changes.

4. Fourthly, then one day, we decide to fast and pray.

As we add fasting to our prayer lives, we slam the door on Satan's accessibility to the control center on our lives.

The action of the flesh over our lives begins to drop down, so that the level of the flesh is not greater than the operation of the Spirit in our lives.
So we continue to fast and pray.

5. Finally, the action of the flesh drops below the control of the Spirit; its power is broken and result is answered prayer.

The prayer in which you believed would come, now comes to pass.
Even prayers that we forgot but God didn't.
The devil comes to inspect the stronghold he implanted in our soul and finds that his stronghold is replaced with God's program.

Why? Because through fasting, we have enforced the positional truth that our "old man" was crucified with Christ.
The flesh is rendered powerless to force us into sin.
We have released the operation of the Spirit.

II. Fasting Doesn't Move God to do what you want.

Personally, I thank God for fasting, because many times I have come to a place where I didn't know how to come to God.

I didn't know how to break the spiritual barriers of communication down.
But we must not think that fasting will move God to do what we want.

Question: How can we move someone who has so expressed His willingness to move on our behalf?

Romans 8:32
"He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

Our fasting doesn't move God; it moves us to a place where we can receive from God.

Fasting destroys the hold that the flesh has had on our lives.
Instead of operating out of the flesh, we can continually operate out of the Spirit!

God isn't the One holding the power back.
God wants all of us to operate in His power that raises the dead!


  Dale Boehs

10.01.2007