Spiritual Routine

It seems odd coming up after not giving the announcement. I was planning to do the teen Bible study downstairs, and so I wanted to cover myself doubly, so I asked Mr. Warren to speak long. So if you're wondering if that was a long sermonette, that was by design, and then I asked Mr. Call to give the announcements just in case. Luckily, we got through in time, and I was able to sit and relax and enjoy that.

And I wanted to say hello to our brethren down in Prestonsburg. I hope you enjoyed getting to sleep in a little bit later. And I will mention something else with those Bible study discussion questions. For those in Prestonsburg, you have copies on your information, too. And I left those there a week or two ago, so unless they've all scattered, there should be enough for everyone. And of course, the discussion questions for here in Portsmouth are different because we're a little further ahead.

I wanted to say... Oh, it's funny, Kevin had that question. I didn't get any ho-hos last night or this morning. But when I showed up at the Athens congregation this morning, Mr. Grounds had a box of donuts there for me. So I enjoyed that very much. I guess he went right by a donut shop or something that was right there, and... Mmm. Those hit the spot.

I enjoy a good donut. Now, what's interesting is I rarely have donuts. And I'd like to say it's because of self-discipline. It might just be about forgetfulness. Because when I was eating it this morning, I was remembering, oh, how much I like these. But it's not part of my normal routine to eat donuts. And matter of fact, I remember having a discussion with my boss in my former job. He was talking about how I could be a little more creative in different things. And one of the things I told him, he said, this is referring back to my breakfast routine. I said, you know what? I can tell you what I've had for breakfast almost every day for the last five years. Because I eat oatmeal every single day. Now, some people think, that's bizarre. And maybe it is a little bizarre, but it's part of my routine. I started off because I was cheap and poor as a student. And it helped me to, you know, keep the budget in line. And then I developed a like for it, and I realized it was healthy. And so, it's my normal routine. I have oatmeal. I try to make it a routine to eat apples and carrots, you know, good food on a regular basis. Now, that's something out of the ordinary. For most of human history, people didn't have to worry about deciding what they ate. You know, they ate whatever they could find. You know, it was just, you know, if you can find something that will keep you alive, you want to eat it. They didn't have to worry about getting too much food. That's a rare thing that we have in this society.

Now, there are other things as far as we do for health. And by the way, I am transitioning into the sermon, so, and part of my introduction, that, you know, I have scheduled exercise as something. I make part of my routine because, you know, we need to in our modern society. I was listening to a documentary on the radio a couple weeks ago, and a scholar brought out the fact that at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is when people started staying in one place for their jobs.

And actually, engineers started trying to design machines so that people wouldn't have to move. They'd stay in one place, seated or standing. And there have constantly been inventions like that to get the most productivity from a person. And it's great for that company, not so good for the people. If you're sitting down, and now, of course, we could sit down and you can talk to your friends online by Facebook or email. You can switch over and watch TV. You can spend your whole day sitting down, which is a wonderful convenience, and it's great if you're not able to get up and around.

But the human body was designed to need exercise in a certain way. So it's common nowadays for people to develop some sort of workout routine. And it's different for different people. It's interesting. I've heard doctors say the best exercise is walking. You know, all this running. And you know I'm a runner. I like to run. But they say that's not really good.

It's destroying your knees and such like that. I still do it because I like it. I run about three days a week. The Sabbath, I don't do any of that. But the other three days, I do some push-ups and set-ups and all that stuff. And I think, you know, 200 years ago, people would have said, you do what? You run and there's nothing chasing you? I'm not sure if they knew what push-ups were. They certainly had not heard of Pilates or yoga. They weren't doing any of that. They also didn't have to worry about setting up a routine for sleep, did they?

Most of them didn't have electric lights. And think, before TV or Internet, why would you stay up late? You'd go to bed at a decent hour like we all should. When I was a student, I was pretty good at that. Believe it or not, I was better at it as a younger person than I am now. 10 or 10.30 every night. And then get up at 5.30, keeping that routine. As I said in the old days, they had roosters to help them do that.

Which a nod to our Portsmouth brethren. I noted that yesterday. No matter what time of day it is at the meeting hall, you can hear roosters from back here. Those of you who have been there, you know. I find that astounding, how the people who live there. I've been meandering a little bit, but my point is that in our modern society, we typically develop a routine of things we do to maintain our physical health. And I'm not encouraging any of you to develop my or adopt my routine.

Because, you know, there's different things are best for everyone. But it's good to have a routine and to deal with certain things. Likewise, we could take that and make an analogy. For our spiritual health, we need to develop a routine of certain things we do. And that's important. I thought of that as a subject for following the Spring Holy Days. Because we focus so much on one particular thing, leading up to the Passover.

We examine ourselves and we really think about repentance. And we study about Christ's sacrifice. And then we work on sin and repentance. It's a little out of the ordinary to focus on it that much. And now we're going to get back to sort of a more normal life, spiritually speaking.

Back to, hopefully, a routine. And that's where I want to say there are certain things that we should have in our routine for spiritual health. Four most or four big things. Prayer, Bible study, meditation, and fasting. And I'll bet that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone in the room that I name those four things. We've often referred to these as spiritual tools.

And they are spiritual tools. Very powerful, effective tools. As a matter of fact, when I first started envisioning the sermon, I thought about bringing in some tools. And I thought about asking Mr. Shoemaker if he'd bring in his tool belt that I could borrow. But fortunately, Mr. Evans preempted me on that anyways. He brought in the tools earlier.

It's a great analogy. But the reason I wanted to think of the routine is because it's easy to look at tools as something you only need when you want to fix something. You know, when I have to do something to a machine at the house, I might get out the screwdriver and then I use it.

I put the screwdriver away and then I don't use it again until the next time it breaks. But these spiritual things we need to do, we want to do on an ongoing basis. Not wait until something breaks. Because they'll have what we call a cumulative effect. A cumulative effect a little bit regularly over a long period will make a big difference. Just think, a half hour of exercise, just on its own, won't do much to you.

It might make you sore if you're not used to doing it. And then gradually you'll get over being sore, and in the long term you won't notice that in your body. But if you do that half hour of exercise, five or four or five days a week, for weeks and weeks and months, it'll make a difference. I thought I hadn't put it in my notes, but it occurred to me this morning.

It's funny how memories jump back to you. I remember when I was a school-age boy, we visited the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus. I don't know if you're familiar, that's Children's Science Museum. And we were in the little display where someone was talking to us about optical illusions. And as one of them, he brought out this brick, and then he threw it out in the audience.

But it was made of styrofoam. It was just painted to look like a brick. And he said, see, there's nothing to it. It weighs hardly anything. He said, this is a real brick. See, it has real weight. And he said, you do this 50 times a day, soon you'll have a bicep like a grapefruit. And you know, of course, I zoned out on the lesson he was trying to teach. I was thinking, I'd like to have biceps like grapefruits.

I went home and I got a brick, and I started doing this 50 times a day. And you know, doing that 50 times and then stopping wouldn't have done anything. And my biceps aren't like grapefruits, but they did get bigger than they were. The cumulative effect, a certain amount time after time after time starts to build up. I was thinking, reading your Bible for a half hour will give you a little bit of a knowledge.

But if you read it a half hour every day, day after day, week after week, you'll start to accumulate a broad knowledge. Things that, you'll read things again that you'd forgotten and it'll start to stick in your memory.

So we want to do that. We want to have that physical, like we hope, let me say that again. As we hopefully have a physical routine for our health, we should develop a spiritual routine. Now in our physical routine, you might miss now and then, right? I mean, every now and then, like, well, this Friday, I didn't do push-ups or sit-ups because it was a holy day. And I'm sure physically I won't notice. And we can occasionally get bumped out of our spiritual routine, but the idea is that it's bumped out temporarily and we go back to it.

Because we can start losing ground spiritually even faster than physically because we're so dependent on God. We rely on Him. We can't become self-sufficient, is what I'm saying. So, this is a long way of getting into the fact that I want to talk about these parts of our spiritual routine. And I want to emphasize not as much of the how-to on each of them, but the fact that they need to be done regularly on a consistent basis.

So those four elements we'll discuss. Prayer, Bible study, meditation, and fasting. Starting with prayer. Prayer is the one that the Bible tells us the most about. And God's people pray. We simply do. That's what we do. And we should pray regularly. Famously, when Jesus talked to His disciples, at one point He told them, when you pray, and He went on, He didn't say, if you pray.

He took it for granted. Of course you're going to pray. And there's good reasons. For our first Scripture, let's go to James 5. James 5 and verse 16. I'm bringing this a little bit out of context, is where He talks about going to the elders and asking for anointing and being healed, and He talks about confessing your faults.

Here it says in 16, Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. And then He says the statement, I wanted to get to, The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. That's a good reason to pray. It's also a good reason to be a righteous man. It'll avail much. That effective fervent prayer, that gives us some idea of how we should pray, and reminding us of why it's so important.

Let's go forward a little bit to the book of Colossians. Colossians 4 and verse 12. Now, here I'm looking at an example. You know, at the end of the Apostle Paul's letters, he often made reference to certain people that he knew were in the congregation he was writing to, or he'd tell them about someone who was with them.

And in this case, he talks about a fellow named Epiphorus. Epiphorus isn't a common name today, but it might have been then. But he says, Epiphorus, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. That's interesting. He describes this fellow praying for them as laboring. It's a type of work to be praying for other people. And it's part of the work of God in that sense.

It's something we do, and it's accomplishing a good work. Now, we know, in some sense, what we're doing when we're praying, we're talking to God. It's good to keep in mind that we're also worshipping God when we do that. He wants to hear from us. He wants to hear from his children regularly. I've made this comment a number of times since becoming a father, but it doesn't get old. I know how much you want to hear from your children when you're a parent.

And even though Connor doesn't say much—well, he says a lot, he doesn't make many complete sentences— but I'm attentive to every word. I want to hear what he has to say. When he gets up in the morning, he starts going through all of his nouns, it seems.

He'll point and say, toy, and curtains, and moose. We don't have a real mouse, but he's got a toy moose and blanket. And I'm listening to every single word. And I think we might seem that immature to God sometimes, but I'm sure he's listening to everything. He doesn't care if we're in monosyllables still. He wants to hear from us. It's important. Now, if you don't have kids—and I think probably most of you are ahead of me on that— but if you have a close friend, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or a husband or wife, you want to talk to them.

You want them to talk to you. You want to hear from someone you care about. So for a healthy spiritual routine, prayer needs to be daily. It's not something every once in a while, or not something just when you need something, but daily pray. And we could go beyond that. The Bible gives example of more than once a day. When we talk about our routine for our physical health, we eat more than once a day to be healthy. At least it's much better to eat several small meals a day than one big one.

It's good for us to pray several times a day. I'm going to turn to Matthew 6 in the model prayer later, but within it I'll just make a note. Most of you know it says, give us this day our daily bread. Now, Christ could have said, give us a week's supply of bread, and I'll talk to you again next week. But He didn't. He said, give us this day our daily bread, implying that, of course, you're going to talk to God every single day, and you can make requests for the things you need. Let's go to Psalm 55. Let's look at a couple of examples in the Old Testament of people praying and how often they prayed.

Psalm 55, we believe, was written by David. And that'll be in verse 17. By the way, I mentioned Connor. I should say, you might have noticed Sue and Connor aren't ill, but they went with me to Athens this morning. And two services in a day is plenty for Connor, as we discovered yesterday. So she sent her greetings. She would have liked to have seen you, but she hadn't been to Athens in quite a while. So she was happy to see them. Matthew 55 and verse 17.

Okay, I should look at Matthew 55. The evening, morning, and at noon I will pray and cry aloud, and He'll hear my voice. Evening, morning, and at noon. Those three times a day and spaced out, perhaps not coincidentally, at about the time we normally eat meals. Morning and evening, the beginning of the day, the end of the day, and in the middle. Let's also go back to Daniel chapter 6. David wasn't the only one. Someone could say, well, David was some kind of a freak.

He was praying three times a day. Now, I think perhaps that's a normal thing for God's servants. Daniel chapter 6 and verse 10.

Without going into the story, this is a case where some of the government officials were jealous of Daniel, and they wanted to catch him. So they convinced the emperor to sign a law that no one in the whole kingdom, for a certain time, could make any petition or request to anyone but the emperor. And so Daniel, he heard this, and we break into it, says, When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home, and in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days. It wasn't just that particular time, but it was Daniel's custom three times a day to go to this place. It's funny, I often think of going to a place in private to pray, but he didn't mind having his windows open. It wasn't a secret. Now, I'll have to admit, I haven't always prayed three times a day. But when I've made that part of a routine, my life has just been on a more even keel. I've felt closer to God, and things just go well. Now, we can divide up and wonder. The Bible doesn't give us a stopwatch and say, How many minutes or this or that? Typically, when I'm praying three times a day, my morning prayer will be the biggest one. I'm a morning person. I like to do the most important things early on in the day. And that's when I'll pray typically 20 or 30 minutes. Then at midday, it's more of a checking in. You're in the middle of things. Sometimes when I worked in an office, I would close the door and just take a couple minutes to pray about some things. And then in the evening, a bit more. Not as long as in the morning, but talk to God about how the day went and how things are going, what I need to help on, all of that. I'll mention, because the examples in the Old Testament there weren't a command, I've had long stretches of my life where it was more common to pray a couple times a day. Still usually in the morning, and then you're busy all day going, going, going. And then in the evening, you can sort of look back at the day and go, whoosh! It's interesting. Well, I guess it's not the same. But I was thinking at the end of the day, I like to talk to Sue, and we talk about things and what's going on. So it would make sense to want to talk to God and sort of look back on things. Now, I want to make a point, though, that we need to remember to be flexible. I'm talking about a routine, and things will come up that will change it. You won't always be able to pray at the time and place you normally do. But if you get it into a routine where it just happens regularly, it's like a habit, you won't get knocked out of it very easily. Or like a ball sitting in a low spot. You might get knocked out, but you'll sort of gravitate back to that normal routine because it's just built into you.

Now, we do get questions, and it's interesting. I studied some old articles just to get ideas of how I wanted to cover it, you know, in the spiritual routine of these spiritual tools. And they mentioned a lot of the questions that came in the ministry, I think that don't come as much often anymore because we're such a mature church. But people would ask the question, well, how do you pray? I mean, what posture? You know, and what do you say? How do you do it? Well, the Bible describes people praying in all kinds of physical positions. It talks about them praying, standing up, lying down, sitting, walking. You can pray in any kinds of position. But the standard that you might want to... it's a good goal is kneeling. When it says, Daniel went into his room and he knelt. Jesus Christ set an example. Luke 22 and verse 41.

I shouldn't have drank that coffee. I'm talking fast and getting dry. Here, Jesus Christ... it's interesting, he was never bashful to let his disciples know that he prayed. Now, they often knew that he prayed. They wrote... you know, he went... they didn't always know what he was praying. In some cases, it was close enough that they did. But they often hear about him going off to pray. And this is one of those cases. It says, he was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and prayed. So, Christ went over and he got down on his knees.

And this was a very important prayer shortly before he was to be crucified. But he prayed on his knees. I suspect there were other times when he did differently. And I'll mention, one of my favorite ways to pray developed is when I'm out walking. And I developed a habit at summer camp. You'll hear me refer to camp a lot of times. But when I was at Scotland SEP, I was a counselor staying in a dorm with 20 guys. Not a lot of privacy there. You can get down on your knees by your bunk and they're looking over at you.

What are you... It's just hard to pray normally that way. So I got in the habit of going out. There was a nice wooded spot near the lake. And I would go out there and, since it's dirty and rocky and stuff, I wouldn't always get on my knees. But I would sort of stroll and look out over the lake and admire God's creation and talk to him. And I'm confident that he heard me because I had so many prayers answered. There's no doubt in my mind. So God is happy to have us come to him in a variety of ways.

We should never neglect kneeling because it humbles us, it puts us in the right attitude. But if you can't get to a position where you can get down on both knees, you still can pray. In an emergency, God can hear you almost anywhere. And I wonder how many of us have prayed from behind the steering wheel. If anybody hasn't, I'd be surprised if you drive.

And those are sometimes emergency prayers. Now, prayer is a bit more formal. I talk about it as a conversation. We want to talk to God. And as you feel closer and more comfortable with God, you might speak in a more relaxed tone.

But still, there's a bit of formality. And the actual definition of the word, and it has a number of definitions, usually referring to calling upon a God, or we would say THE God. But it can also mean any type of formal request. And that came to mind because I remembered when I was studying World War II, I was reading about Winston Churchill. And when he was Prime Minister during the war, he was sending memos to assistants and department heads all the time, asking them to do things.

And he developed the habit of saying, pray, do this, or pray. And he just used that. That was his way of making the request. And so they started calling them Churchill's little prayers. Now, they weren't prayers to God, but they were formal requests. Now, I think there was a good reason I was telling you that. Well, partly because when we pray to God, we do ask Him for things.

But we don't want to get to where we're just saying, give me this and give me that. You know, give me, give me, give me. Now, I'll talk to you tomorrow, and I'll ask for some more. Now, and the alternative, Christ's disciples made a point of asking Him to teach them to pray. I found that interesting because I looked at these four things I wanted to discuss. That's the only one where someone came and said, teach us how to do this.

They didn't say, Jesus, teach us how to study the Bible. That might have been partly because they didn't have this. Matter of fact, few people own their own personal copy. The roll, the scroll of God's Word was in the synagogues. And they went there, and usually you heard it read out loud once a week.

So we can be far in advance of them just because we have it available. But they did know they needed to pray, and they asked Jesus, please teach us how.

Matter of fact, we're going to go to Matthew 6. Matthew 6. But we'll remember that they came and said, John's disciples pray. He taught them how. Will you teach us how to pray?

We'll begin in verse 9. This is what, of course, is commonly called the Lord's Prayer. And it's a shame, I think it's partly how Satan loves to disguise things. You know, if he can't get rid of something, he'll make it so common that people lose track of caring what it is.

And maybe that's the case with this, because Jesus didn't mean, just repeat these words, and that's your prayer. But that's what a lot of people do. But we start in verse 9. He says, In this manner, therefore pray. In this manner, not saying these exact words, but he was going to give them a format, an outline.

This is a way you can pray, and then he goes on and he gives them the guidelines. If you did the Roman numeral outlines, like I learned in school, you got Roman numeral 1, and then you might have sub-point A, sub-point B, Roman numeral 2. Think of this like that.

It's an outline of points to hit. Starting off with the most important thing. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Worship God. Acknowledge His greatness. Realize that we can come to Him. The Apostle points out that by the blood of Christ, we can come to the very throne of God. And before Christ's sacrifice, he said, One high priest could come into the temple once a year, but now we can come every day, multiple times a day, because of the blood of Christ.

But we come in respectful, and we worship God and acknowledge the Father. And of course, you can say it in different ways. I've heard the story, and I'm not sure if it's a true story or if it's just become a joke. Someone talked about a little boy who thought God's name was Howard, because he heard, Our God and Father in heaven, Howard be your name. He said, No, it's not Howard, it's hallowed. Meaning, it gets less funny over the years, doesn't it? I had an uncle named Howard, so I think of it as a name.

I lost track of where I was going here. Oh, begin by acknowledging God, worshiping Him. And he says, then, of course, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We worship God, and we pray that His kingdom will come. And we can extrapolate that out. Of course, we want it to come. We want to see the ends of Satan's domination of this world and all the hurting and suffering that's going on. Just thinking under this point, it's easy to pray, God, have mercy on those people in parts of the world where there's warfare.

There are a lot of innocent people in Syria who are caught up in a war that's not their making. And the same in many parts of Africa. We want God's kingdom to come. It's also, when we say, your will be done, I often like to add, in my life. Let me be doing your will as you would have it. What is it you want me to do?

Of course, that gets tied into the next topic we're going to discuss is Bible study. If you study His Word, you'll start learning what His will is for you. Now, give us this day our daily bread. We discussed that earlier. It's fine to ask God for your needs, and it doesn't have to be limited to bread. As I said, that's like an outlined topic. But, God, I'm looking for a new job. Please provide. And you can ask for the things for other people who need. As He said, the Epaphras labored fervently for others in His prayers.

So, it's certainly proper to ask for things people need. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. I spent about an hour talking about that yesterday, so I probably don't have to go on. But it's something part of the prayer. And as we're asking for forgiveness, and face it, we're going to sin often enough, or think about sinning often enough, that it's going to be in our prayers pretty regularly. But we need to be in a repentant attitude and a forgiving attitude.

Those go together very well. And don't lead us into temptation. We know God doesn't tempt anyone. It says that in James... I wrote it down somewhere here. Hope if I look at my notes, then I know. James 1.13. I'm not going to turn there. But it says, He doesn't tempt anyone. But we could ask Him, lead us around the temptation.

Save us from things that could lead us astray. And this is a good time if you're having a problem, or there's a particular thing that could lead you into sin, talk to God about it and say, I'm having a problem. Or, I'm not sure if this is a direction I should go or not. When I talk to on the last Holy Day about avoiding sin and making wise decisions, you're not always sure. So talk to God. Say, well, what's the wise thing for me to do here? I'm not sure. Please tell me.

And of course, you want to do it with the right attitude so that you'll accept the answer when you get it. And deliver us from the evil one. My new King James says, the evil one. The old King James says, deliver us from evil. Now, there's general evil, but we want to remember there is one who leads the evil in this world.

We believe that there's a real Satan the Devil, and he's smarter than we are, he's more powerful, and he's unrelenting. We need God's protection from him. The good thing is, God is all-powerful. Satan can't do a thing that God won't let him. So God will protect us, but we shouldn't take that for granted. We should ask God to protect us. And then, of course, coming back, wrapping up with, again, worshipping God. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

And it's good to think of... It's easy for me to pass over worshipping God and saying the right things. And I wonder, sometimes maybe because I grew up in a single-parent household without having a good close relationship with my dad when I was younger, develop more of a relationship later, saying things like, I love you, God, didn't just roll off my tongue. And it does for some of you very naturally. It's appropriate to acknowledge how much we love God in his ways and worship him.

And think of different ways to say it. I have to catch myself because sometimes I talk about routine is good and habit, but you don't want the words to just always be a habit. I'll start praying, and sometimes I'm saying the same thing without thinking about it, and I better back up. Sometimes I'll borrow things from others. I mentioned this morning, my father-in-law likes to pray, and I hear him mostly pray when we're asking a meal over...or asking a blessing on the meal. He often refers to God who gives us the very breath of life. He's focused on that because he realizes...and maybe because he's getting on in years, he's realizing how important the breath of life is, the existence and power we have just to be alive. And that depends on God entirely. It's good for us to remember and worship God for that.

I'm bogging down. I didn't want to talk a lot about the details, but talk about the routine. This outline can always serve us well, and you can see there's a lot of room. You could stay within that outline and pray about a lot of different things for either a short time or a long time. But it's not bad to use different formats, either. One of the things...I make it a point every now and then to spend time in prayer and doing nothing but giving thanks. And it's easy...at first it can be seen hard, well, thanks, God, for everything you gave me.

But if I start out, thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the food that I enjoy and for me being able to taste it and how good it feels. And I thank him for Connor being born and being healthy and for suing my life. And I thank him for being able to be here. You can start breaking it down, and you could just spend a half hour or an hour or more just saying thank you for various things.

And I'll mention this also, not just because it's a good exercise, but when I'm feeling kind of down or feeling sorry for myself, that's when I do that and it changes my attitude. I start realizing how much I have to be thankful for, what he's given me, and it tends to bring me back up. That's a good thing. And of course, I talk to God about what's on my mind. As I said, we can follow a format, but sometimes we have to discuss a particular thing and talk it through like you would a friend.

I've had many times where I'd be discussing and saying, well, I'm looking at this and I'm thinking about this and it could be that and help me. And as I'm talking out loud and weighing the options, sometimes it starts becoming clearer. You know, there are times I think God has guided my thoughts. Now, I don't want to say, you know, he's never talked to me and he hasn't guided my hands per se, but I think he's helped me to reason things out, partly because I'm sharing with him and asking him to do so.

So there's a lot of ways to pray. I've got an extension to my glass here.

We want to use all the opportunities we have. And let's talk about Bible study, though. As we talk about talking to God, and the other alternative, we all have friends, but have you ever had a friend that you talked to and talked to? Or, let me put it the other way, he talked and talked and talked and never listened? If you have, they probably didn't stay a good friend for very long, right? You want that two-way back and forth. And that's the way God is. He wants us to talk to him. He desires that very much, but he also wants us to stop and listen. Now you can stop him. I don't hear anything. Well, he's not going to talk to us in an audible voice. He did that with the prophets, so that they could write down his word. But then he preserved this word in writing and he talks to us that way. And that's the way he communicates back to us. And it's amazing, the Bible is put together, as it says in Isaiah, line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. Mr. Armstrong described it as like a giant jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces, and we need God's Spirit to put them together. But it's also important, it's put together in a variety of ways. There's different types of writing. There's straight history, there's law, there's poetry, there's action and adventure and all these things. So that we can keep reading it all of our lives and always be learning and gaining something new. It's not like reading even your favorite novel. You might read it and then a couple years later read it again, but you're not going to keep reading it over and over. It gets old. But you can read in the Bible all of your life. But we do want to remember what it is we need to understand. If you go to 1 Corinthians 2, 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, a principle I think we know and we've spent time talking about it and certainly will as we lead up to the next Holy Day on the calendar.

And here it says, The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they're spiritually discerned. And that applies to the Word of God. We can understand what's in this as God's Spirit leads us. And we can tie that back to our prayer. One of the things I try to make a point in my prayer is not only asking for daily bread, but asking God to renew the Spirit in me. God, please stir up your Spirit. Help me to use it so that I can understand.

It's also not a bad idea to ask God to motivate us in our study. Because Bible studies is one of those things we always want to do it and it's easy to put aside and not do. And we want to have that routine where we do do it. Let's go to Hebrews chapter 5.

Hebrews 5, and we'll begin in verse 12.

One of the things that we should be striving for in this, and Paul is... Well, we believe it was the Apostle Paul. Some say it was Timothy who wrote the book of Hebrews. It doesn't change what's in it, but I'll come back to that later when we talk about studying the Word and thinking about things. But here he says, Now, you ought to know this stuff so well that you're teaching, but you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. Now, oracles of God sounds like something Greek or ancient, but it means the Word of God.

The oracles are the words, the utterances. It's what's in the Bible. So he said, you need someone to teach you again, but we should become teachers, and we want to move on to that. You have come to need milk and not solid food, but everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the Word, the Word of righteousness, for he's a babe. We don't want to be unskilled in the Word, we want to be skilled.

It says, So we use our senses, and we study in this Word, and that helps us discern good and evil. Well, there's no evil in this book, but we learn about good and evil and what it is, and it helps us to look at the world around us and know what's going on. And we see a goal of progressing from basic study, or I should say, basic understanding to more complex, but I don't want to say basic study to more complex.

Because that's important. You don't have to be doing some super sophisticated new style of studying the Bible. You just have to put your nose in it and start reading those words. Now, there are different methods, but first of all, you have to make sure that you're doing it. So it's worth talking about some of the ways to motivate our study.

How do we make sure that we're doing it and continuing to do it? I've got a list of... I should know how many points. I've got four points that tend to overlap. I don't give lists very often because I wander off from them. But the first way to motivate your study is simply ask God to motivate you. In that prayer you're doing, ask God, help me to want to study your Word and open it up to me so that I'm learning from it and I'm enjoying it.

God is able to help us enjoy all kinds of things. Maybe Brussels sprouts. I don't know. I've never asked Him for that. Maybe I should, but soon never cooks them because He knows I don't like them. Another second thing to help you be motivated as you're reading, think about what we call the big picture. The big picture is, say I'm reading here in Hebrews. Well, where does this fit? Well, it was written to who? The Hebrews. Well, most of the Hebrews is another way of saying the Israelites, but most of the Israelites didn't know who they were. So it's written back to those of Judah, probably many around Jerusalem. Who was it written by?

What is He talking about? Many of Paul's epistles were addressing problems in a congregation or problems arising in Christianity. As you read many of Paul's epistles and those by John, they were writing mostly to address heresy that was brought in, especially by a group called the Gnostics, who thought they had secret, special knowledge. And the Gnostics started believing that Christ hadn't really come in the flesh. So if you have that understanding, you see the big picture, some of what the epistles of John make more sense in what he wrote.

So think of that. How does this fit in the history of the Bible or in the history of the intellectual thought? Okay, another way to motivate your study? Set goals. Say, okay, I'm going to set a goal that I'm going to do this. It might be, I'm going to get through Jeremiah before summer.

That's my goal in the in-home Bible studies. I'm going to finish Jeremiah. I started it. I thought we'd be done three or four months ago, but we're going to get to the end. Now, you might say, I'm going to focus on a book that I don't read very often. Or sometimes, I'm going to focus on one that I do read very often. I've got camp on the brain because I'm starting to kick into high gear, but I thought, I've developed a tradition at summer camp. And it happened way back the first time I went to SEP and I was traveling and I felt homeless.

So, just because of that, I started studying the story of David when he was on the run from King Saul. And so, you know, I've read he's going from here and there, he's hiding, he doesn't have a home. And it just seemed, you know, not that I was on the run or anything, but it seemed comforting, and then it became a tradition.

So, every year when I'm at camp, I have something I'm going to be studying. And I've learned new things about it all the time. So, you might have things you're going to read certain times of the year. You might set a goal that you want to study a specific subject. You might set a goal that I'm going to go through the Bible study course that the church provides. And that'll lead me through things that I might not do on my own. There's different ways to do it.

But getting back towards doing it in a routine, it's good to set a specific time and place for your study. Now, try to make it so going to the Bible is a habit. What you study or the mindset you have doesn't have to be just a routine. But if you have a normal time and place, it's routine and you do it.

For me, it's in the morning on the couch. I developed this habit back when I was a college student, and it works well for me. Because I'm a morning person. I like to get up early. Usually before Sue or Connor are awake. That used to be just before Sue was awake. And for a while, it's hard to beat Connor because he was up all the time.

But now he's sleeping a little later. I get up in the morning and I fix my coffee. And I sit and I drink coffee and I study my Bible for a half hour. And it just happens without me thinking about it. Sometimes I have to stop and say, Okay, make sure you've drank enough that you're awake when you read. Because it's easy to zone out, but at least I have a time and a place that I'm going to do it.

Now, you might not be a morning person. You might say, That would never work for me. You might take a portion in the middle of the day. Some people who work in offices will take part of their lunch break and say, I'm going to sit at my desk. Or it might be when you get home, similar to when you had homework in school. No TV until after you've done your homework. You might say, I get home from work, I'll do certain chores, and I'll sit down and read my Bible before I get to go do fun stuff.

I'm not saying what the time has to be or the place. It could be the kitchen table, your office, the comfy chair, wherever works for you, but find a place and a time that does work. And so you do it on an ongoing basis. We want to study our Bibles every day, hopefully. Just like if the Word of God is like the bread spiritually, then you want to eat every day. And you can eat more than one time a day.

So as I said, I don't want to go into too many methodologies. And it's hard to say, like with prayer, we used to say, I'll spend a half hour and pray prayer, but sometimes you pray longer, sometimes less. So with Bible study, but if you sit down and you read just one chapter, sometimes that's not going to do you that much.

You want to get into it. Usually I find that I have to cut myself off because I get interested in, well, actually, when I had to go to work to an office, I'd be there at a certain time, then I knew to put it away I'd got to get there. But it's worth considering, as I said, different styles. I talked about that in our motivation, but there's nothing wrong with just reading. And that's what I do most of the time. And I found, as I said, you read it a half hour every day, you start knowing what's in there, and it'll stick in your head, and I'll go back and forth.

It made sense lately, I'd been studying so much about Christ crucifixion and the Passover. I said, well, it makes me want to read Acts, because I want to see what happened next. So I started reading through the book of Acts. And I might spend some time with Paul's epistles, but then I'll say, well, it's time, you know, I want to study a different type of thing. Now, you can decide to study a particular subject. Often, if you have a question or you're dealing with something, you know, study a subject, and the church has a literature that's very useful for that.

If you're not sure where to study, get one of the booklets that can lead you to the Scriptures that'll deal with that. And, of course, the Bible study course is very good for that. And there's also, you could do a word study. You can say, I want to know about repentance.

Well, one way to do it is get your concordance, or nowadays it's all electronic. I use a...there's one called BibleGateway.com that I use because I can do more than one word at a time. But it'll show you every Scripture in the Bible that has a particular word or phrase. So what does the Bible say about repentance? Well, I can see exactly what it says. That's not a bad way to study.

You know, you want a varied diet when you're doing that kind of thing. There's also what some people call meditative study. Meditative study, that has a lot of syllables. But it basically calls for stopping and thinking about what you're reading as you're reading. Not just reading through to get to the end, but stop and consider. This can be very effective, especially when you're reading what we call the wisdom literature.

Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. And of course, since I already brought up meditation, that's the next spiritual tool that we want to discuss that should be part of our routine. Meditation. Now, I think, partly because the Bible, we talk a lot about Bible study. We talk a lot about prayer. We don't talk a lot about meditation. And maybe it's one of the more neglected and misunderstood tools in Christianity. And I suspect some of that goes back to the 1960s, when meditation took on the meaning of transcendental meditation. And you think of someone wearing a loincloth and sitting with their legs crossed.

And some of you are smiling. I figured the kids are looking at me saying, people did that? But the goal with transcendental meditation was try to empty your mind and go into a trance. Not think about anything. Hoping to attain a higher consciousness. That's not what we're talking about when we say meditation.

When I say meditation and when the Bible says meditation, it means focused thinking. Directing your thoughts. Pondering. Giving deep consideration to something. Turning ideas over in your head. And I'll say, that's getting to be something that's very unusual in our society. Partly because we're losing the opportunity and the skill of focused thinking. Nowadays, mostly we process information, it comes in and we get it from a screen. And our brains don't have to be very active to do it that way.

And that's something, I guess, when I was in education I thought about that a lot. I read a book by Neil Postman, I think. Postman or Poston? Called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And he cited various studies that showed that information that's taken in from a screen by images and sounds is not that it's worthless, but it doesn't engage our brains in the same way as reading. And he says, you know, you could say, well, they're just different from each other. His thesis was that they're not only different, one was better than the other. Now, people might argue against that, but we can prove that your brain is more active when you're reading.

And it's more active still when you're directing your thoughts, when you're meditating. You're getting engaged and you're deciding what to think about. And it can take some effort. It's easy to just drift off. And like I do sometimes when I'm speaking, you go off and you're talking about something else. So what was I talking about? Now, what is it you're going to exert so much brain power on? What will we meditate about? Well, David gave us some examples in the Psalms. We can go to Psalm chapter 1.

We'll see some examples. But I'll mention there are a lot of things we can meditate, but of course meditate about God, how great He is, the good things He's done. Talk about or meditate, think about His laws, His way of doing things, His creation, your relationship to Him. Those things alone are worth pondering, giving some thought. Psalm 1, beginning in verse 1. Now, this should seem very familiar, especially if you've been in the church a long time. Blessed is the man, it seems like I should have the word happy in there, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of the sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law He meditates day and night.

And if you think, if you remember the notes, Meditates on it day and night. You know, just some of you are nodding. Maybe I didn't sing it very well, but we've sung that, some of us, hundreds and hundreds of times. Oh, it's talk about meditating on the law. Well, if we look back at God's law, there are ample things to think about. There's a lot of these statutes and judgments. Some of them you could say, well, thou shalt not kill. Oh, yeah, why not? Well, you can get to it pretty easy, but you could spend a fair time discussing, considering that.

You could also get to some of the statutes and judgments. There's various ones, if your ox kills somebody else's ox, then you have to sell your ox for money and divide the money, and then you cut up the meat from the dead ox and split it.

Why in the world was that? Well, they had to have a law because there were people with oxes, and sometimes you could delve into it. Now you could wonder, well, we don't have oxes. What do we care? Now, is there a principle that applies to us today? And start considering, well, okay, what if my car hits someone else's car? It's about taking responsibility and things like that. So it's interesting. You can look at a lot of these various laws and start to see, ponder them, and understand why did God do certain things? Why is it a certain way? Let's go to Psalm 77. Psalm 77 will begin in verse 11.

Here he says, I will remember the works of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old. I will also meditate on all of your works and talk of your deeds. I like that. He starts off saying, I'll remember. That's an act of thinking. Call something to mind, the works of the Lord, and then meditate on it.

I was having a discussion with Lisa McKinney downstairs yesterday. We were discussing the plagues and discussing whether swarms of flies should have been interpreted as wild beasts or whatever. But I could tell she'd given some thought to that and meditation. Understood. What were God's works? And then you think, okay, we brought these plagues and why and how. Consider all these things that God has done. You bring them to mind, you remember, and then think on them.

That's valuable to us. We learn what God does and start to consider why. Psalm 119, moving from front to back, you can tell. Psalm 119, verse 97. I'll say how many chapters in the Bible have 97 verses, but this one has a lot more than that. Psalm 119 and verse 97, once again, I wanted to include this, although I could have read it after the first one.

Oh, how love I your law! It is my meditation all the day. David might have wrote this while he was still a shepherd watching over his parents' flock. And in some ways, what a good job, because he sat out there with a sheep and had time to think. There's something good about that.

We say it's great to have a job where you're engaged and you're focused, and it is. But I remember having a discussion with a friend of mine when I was in college. I remember, in Big Sandy, I had an unusual student job because I was the only student working at the water plant. I had two full-time employees and then me. And we did things like we had a water purification system, and we treated the sewage, and we were rebuilding water pumps, driving the garbage truck. I mean, it was interesting and active.

I learned a ton of stuff. Then I had a good friend who worked at the golf course, and he spent most of his time riding a lawnmower. Not a lot to do, but we were discussing. He said, I love it because I have time to think. I have to be focused on my work. I can think about the stuff we were discussing in class, and I can ponder things. So it was great having a mindless job.

I had a good friend years after that who lived north of Columbus who had a job where he loaded trucks and did different things. And he said, I love it when I can do my job without having to think too much about the job because I can think about other things.

And this is a fellow I'll tell you. He's a thinker. He and I have had some very fascinating discussions, not because I instigated them, but he said, I was thinking about this. What do you think? And we have this wonderful conversation that he started because he's been meditating on God's law and on his ways. Let's go to Psalm 143, Psalm 143, verse 5.

I think I'm beginning to repeat myself here, but he says, I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your works. I'm used on the work of your hands. I spread out my hands to you. He goes on, so I meditate on your works. Think of what God's works are. If you've ever looked at a flower and said, wow, look at how that's put together. You were meditating on God's works. If you go out in the night sky when it's clear and see the stars and start thinking about them. So, you know, you could be interested in history and philosophy, but also if you're interested in science, if you're interested in biology, it's just fascinating, musing on God's works, thinking about what he did and how and the intricacies.

You know, it's fun to do. Now, these are descriptions, general descriptions of meditation and things to work on. I wanted to mention also that these different tools can work together. Meditation can be a great way to enhance your Bible study and your prayer. They can work together. I mentioned earlier, meditative study of the Bible. That's where you might read a passage and spend time thinking about it. Start asking the questions, and if you're not sure, think of the five W's. The what, why, where, when, who. And I think of the study we've been doing in Jeremiah.

There are places where I hadn't spent as much time doing that there, but since I had to do the discussion questions, I'd read a section that said, wait a minute, who's talking in this? Am I sure? And it's worth discussing and considering. Why are they saying this? Who are they saying it to? So you can do that in many parts of the Bible. As I mentioned, the Old Testament laws are good ones to read one little thing and then spend time meditating about it.

Christ's parables are great for that. He gave these parables, and you could say, who are you trying to get a moat out of your brother's eye and you've got a beam in your own eye? What? Why did he say that? You can't have a beam in your eye. Well, he was making a point and we could consider and learn from it. The proverbs are really good for this kind of analysis, because the proverbs pack so much meaning into so little space.

And that's why the proverbs are hard to just read through, because it's not a story. There's just a lot of little things, verse after verse, with profound meaning, and they just blur together if you go through them too quickly. So one of the things you might consider doing sometime is a process that... Actually, I got this from Mr. Stiver. He called it dating the proverbs. It doesn't mean going out on a date, but his idea was there are 31 chapters in the book of proverbs. Most months have 31 days.

So what you can do is say, today's April 14th. Well, today my study is Proverbs chapter 14. And I'm going to spend a half hour only on that one chapter, or maybe longer, because I'll read one of the proverbs and then I'll think about it. What's it saying? I'll turn it over in my mind and try to get every bit of understanding I can out of it. And you can do that with Psalms, with Ecclesiastes. Try it with the Song of Solomon. Because you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out, what in the world is he saying?

Your teeth are like a flock of goats. There's more to it, but it could take a lot of study to understand that. And there are some parts that I'm still mystified. I've seen a lot of different interpretations put on the Song of Solomon. But it gives you a good reason to keep studying. If you don't know it, you can go back at it. Meditating can also give us a boost in our prayer.

How many times have you said, well, okay, I've got to go pray. And you get down and you say to someone, well, hi God, how are you doing? I'm okay, I guess. If you're at that point, you might take some time first to start thinking. Meditate. What's going on in my life? What's going on with other people I know?

Turn it over, start preparing, and then say, well, I need to talk to God about this. You know, you spend a little time meditating before, you can really... It might give you an idea of what to pray and be more sincere about it. And of course, all three can go together. As I mentioned, maybe reading a section of Proverbs and thinking about it, and then praying and saying, God, I've been reading this and I think it says this.

My understanding is maybe you're trying to get me to understand this, but did you mean possibly something else? And talk back and forth with... well, not back and forth as much. I guess the back and forth is from the Bible and you talking to Him.

But those three can accomplish good things. I did have a note I also wanted to mention. Meditation is also... can be valuable in things other than Bible study and prayer. Sometimes just in stopping to look at your life. In our life we're so busy and we constantly want to turn something on to talk at us.

And I'm guilty of that. I get in the car, I turn on the radio or the CD player at home, I might turn on the TV or get online and surf the Internet. Sometimes you need to unplug those things and just think. And it can help you sort things out. My favorite way to do it often is because I like to run. And you can't take a computer with you when you're running. They're probably developing one that you can.

But I find that a great time to think and turn over ideas. I don't know how many sermon-ep topics I've developed while I was running. And sometimes speeches for work or just deciding. I've been pondering staff for summer camp a lot lately when I'm running. It's like I've got this person, I've got this activity, and who knows if I'll ever get it put together.

But it's given me a lot to pray about. Meditation can be a very important part of doing what the Apostle Paul called bringing every thought captive to Christ. That's 2 Corinthians 10 and verse 5. I'm not going to turn there, but we can turn to Colossians chapter 3. Colossians 3 and verse 2. Because we're talking about our thoughts and learning to take control of our thoughts.

And this happens by doing it on a regular basis. Now with prayer and Bible study, I talk more about do it daily, do it so often. With meditation, I don't think of that as necessarily a daily thing, although it can be. But it's good to be getting involved in spending some time, at least 2 or 3 times a week. Even if not a long time, but unplugged and focusing your thoughts. Colossians 3 and verse 2 says, set your mind on things above, not on things of earth. That's focusing your mind.

Setting your mind on something. You decide what to think. Now I'm not saying that it's easy. Sometimes it's going to be very difficult to control your thoughts. And that's where, sometimes when that's the case, we need to turn to that fourth tool, that fourth part of a routine that we want to bring in. And that's fasting.

Now it's interesting, one time it crossed my mind, maybe you should give a sermon on fasting. I thought, nobody wants to hear a sermon on fasting. I don't want to talk about it for an hour, but we do have to talk about it sometimes. It's not fun, but it's a valuable spiritual tool. It helps us become better people. And we want to clarify the definition.

Fasting means going without food or water. Because there are some religions that say, well, we'll go without a certain thing for a while and call that a fast. And I believe it's official doctrine in Catholicism, during the period of Lent, 40 days before Easter, they go without red meat. And that is, on their doctrine, considered a fast. But we don't think of it as a fast unless it's total abstinence.

Now, the only time that we're commanded to fast is on the Day of Atonement. That's the day, God said, anyone that's not afflicted in their soul is cut off. So that's a time when we know when we're going to fast and how long we're going to fast. From sundown to sundown. It ends up being slightly less than a full 24 hours because the days are getting shorter at that time. And at that time, we're really glad. But there are other times we might want to fast, and the Bible doesn't tell us exactly when or how long.

So that's something to keep in mind. We should fast...well, the question could be, do we have to fast more often than once a year? I think so. I think it should be part of our routine. The Bible doesn't tell us when exactly. But, if you say, why should we fast any other times? It's because when God's servants want to draw close to God, they fast. Let's go to Matthew 9. Christ didn't talk a lot about fasting, but He did make an interesting statement here. Matthew 9 and verse 14.

Of course, then the disciples of John, that's John the Baptist, came to Him, Jesus. And I said, why do we, John's disciples fast, and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don't fast. What's the deal? We're fasting, and you're supposed to be all godly, and your disciples aren't fasting. And Jesus told them this. He gave them a little parable as an answer. Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. Now, in this parable, He's in the place of the bridegroom, and the disciples were there as His friends.

And so He says, you don't do this when He's here, meaning we fast to draw close to God. Well, they were pretty close to God. They were right there walking down the road with Him, eating and all that.

He said, when I'm gone, they're not going to be close to Me, and then they're going to fast. He didn't say they might fast, but He said they will. And that's us. We're Christ's disciples. We want to draw close to Him. So how often will we fast? Well, Jesus didn't say. We probably... well, I shouldn't say probably. I say definitely. We don't fast as often as we pray, or as often as we study our Bible, or probably even as often as we meditate.

I think fasting is like a powerful medicine, and you can't take it too often. You know, it's like if you've ever used steroids for something, they tell you, use it for a brief time, and then we want you to get off of it. You know? And that's because it could do you harm if you do it too long. I guess, well, fasting. If you do it too long, you'll die. And that's part of the lesson there. It helps us to humble ourselves, because as you're going along, and you've all been there, you get to hour 23 on the Day of Atonement, and you're thinking, I'm going to die.

I know, for me, it's funny, I've gotten to where it's not the food I miss so much as the water. But, you know, we're learning that we're not God. We're not self-sufficient. So we need to fast. Now, it's worth spending a little time looking at our attitude and how we fast. If you'll turn to Isaiah 58, that tells us more in this one chapter about the attitude we should have in fasting, than I think anywhere else in the Bible.

Isaiah 58, beginning... Actually, we'll begin in verse 2. No, actually, I want to read in verse 3. I'm sorry. My notes, I had verse 4, and I knew I wanted to start before then. But here, people are addressing God, and they say, why have we fasted and you haven't seen?

Why have we afflicted our souls and you take no notice? So they're calling out to God, saying, you're not telling this and you're not noticing. And He gives us an answer. He says, in fact, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exploit all your labors. They weren't fasting for the right reason. He says, indeed, you fast for strife and debate, to strike with the fist of wickedness. You're not fast as you do this day. He's saying, I don't want that kind of fast.

To make your voice heard on high? Is this a fast that I've chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul, to bow down his head like a bull rush and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Is all that a fast, acceptable, an acceptable day to the eternal? So He's making a point. You don't do it, one, to make God listen. We can't make God do anything, so we shouldn't think, if I fast, God will have to give me what I'm asking for.

We fast to help us listen to Him. And we don't fast to make a big show. Christ later talked about how the Pharisees they disfigure their faces and they get the reward because people say, oh, how holy He is. He's fasting. The disciples don't do that. Wash your face, shave. He said, anoint yourself. It's funny, we don't anoint ourselves.

But then again, I thought, well, I put this stuff under my arm that helped me not stink. Maybe that's a type of anointing, and we do that. We don't want to stink or look ugly when we're fasting. We're fasting so God will see. But not to make Him listen, we're fasting to help us listen to Him. He carries on. Is this not the fast that I've chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, undo heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free.

Often the oppressed that's referring to is you when you're fasting. You might be oppressed by something that's troubling your mind or a bad habit you're trying to break, and fasting can help free you from it. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and what you bring to your house? And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out?

Here's referring to the fact that you're not eating, you could share that food with someone else, make you a more generous person. Then your light shall break forth like the morning. Well, I'm skipping ahead there, but you're going to get some good results from fasting if you do it with the right attitude. Now, there's a lot in this. It's worth coming back to study, but remember I want to talk about making it part of a routine.

So we can look and say, well, how often should you fast? Now, that's a trick question. How often do you need to draw close to God and humble yourself? Well, probably a lot more often than you'll be comfortable fasting. So don't worry that you're going to fast too often. Now, I've heard of men who, as a matter of fact, I know a pastor who I had great respect for, that I heard him mention in a sermon that once when he was younger, he was dealing with a situation and he decided he was going to fast once a week until he had it in control.

And he said it went on for several weeks, but he got a resolution. So that's a good thing. Now, most of us aren't going to do that. But I would say we could all benefit from fasting three or four times a year. Now, I know I've heard some say that once a month is a good deal. Now, it probably is, but I've got to say I don't really feel like fasting once a month. No one will criticize you if you want to fast once a month, but I'd say just think of the minimum. You're going to fast on atonement.

I try to make it a point to never come into the Passover without having fasted within a week or two before. That's a couple times. Two seasons of the year. There's two other seasons. At least one of those would be good to fast. Once again, talking about summer camp, I don't like the idea of going to camp where I'm going to be serving without having fasted beforehand. So that's a part of becoming a routine of me to help get me ready to go and be a servant and not seek my own will.

Now, last year was a challenge. I went to three different camps. But I didn't fast before. I had two of them in the summer and one in the winter. But you'll have other things come up. Do you have a big decision? Are you applying for a job? Are you thinking about moving, considering marrying someone or not marrying someone? Big decisions. It's good to fast to humble yourself and ask God for guidance and ask Him to help you accept whatever guidance He'll give you.

Now, I want to talk, as I said, about the routine. One of the things I'll mention is that it's hard to fast on a regular basis and hold down a job. That's a challenge. It's hard... You can't go to work and be very effective. Now, we discourage people from fasting on the Sabbath unless they think it's really necessary because the Sabbath is for rejoicing and fasting isn't a way to rejoice.

Now, sometimes you have to, and I would never criticize anyone who says, well, I needed to fast and this is the day I could do it. I will just mention, though, one thing that helps is to remember that on atonement, we're told when to start and when to stop. If we're fasting on a day we choose, the Bible doesn't say when you have to start or stop. And that was an interesting realization to me. I discovered that when I had a job in the office and I had to be there a certain time, I started developing the habit of starting my fast at midday.

And that worked fairly effective. I'd go in, I'd take my lunch break a little early, have lunch, and then start a fast at noon or 12.30. That way, I'd been productive in the morning. Since I just started the fast, you know, the rest of the day, I was still pretty good, getting thirsty. You know, I missed my 2 o'clock coffee break. But, you know, I was okay. And then I'd sleep that night. The next morning, not all that productive, but able to do some routine tasks. And then, you know, a little late, take a lunch break and break my fast.

And it's amazing how quickly you're right back on your game. You know that from any other time you fasted. Just an hour or so after that first glass of water, you almost forget you did it.

So, what I'm saying is, keep in mind you can find a way that's worthwhile. It's also worth considering that, of course, the Bible doesn't say, you know, the minimum length. You can fast sometimes 2 or 3 days. Sometimes you'll be fasting and you'll feel like you've got the resolution you were looking for. If you're fasting about a problem or you're looking for an answer, you might, if you get the answer, nothing says, well, I can't eat now till sundown.

If you're fasting for a certain reason and that reason is resolved, break your fast then. It's okay. Or, especially if there's health reasons. And I was talking to Mr. Grounds this morning after the sermon. He mentioned that Mr. Armstrong said a number of times, you might fast for 6 or 8 hours in a particular case.

So there's different ways to do it, but humbling yourself through fasting should be part of our routine. And that's what I wanted to get at. Fasting is what we do to maintain our spiritual health. We do a lot of things for our physical health.

All of these spiritual activities we've been discussing are meant to help us maintain health by doing them on an ongoing basis, regularly. Our physical bodies need a balanced routine. We need a certain amount of exercise. We need a proper diet. We need rest and sleep.

So our character also requires a certain routine to build and maintain a relationship with God. We need to pray. And we need to pray daily, and hopefully most times, several times a day. We need to study our Bibles. And that should be at least daily. We need to regularly focus our thinking on the things of God, and control our thoughts, and practice doing that.

And use meditation to aid your Bible study and prayer. And every so often, not quite as often as the others, but sometimes we need to humble ourselves through the powerful tool of fasting. These are all part of our routine. As I said, Christians just do these things. So I'll encourage you. Let's do them, and let's have good spiritual health.