February 9, 2012 – Zechariah 6 – 7

We often think that we are fasting for God. Even in the Gospels, this is brought as a question to Christ. Here we see that it is very clear, fasting is not for God, it is for us. How many times to we need to be told that God needs nothing from us. Everything He ask us to do is for us, for our relationship with Him, to bring us closer to Him. Fasting is not going to benefit God or make Him more anything. Fasting is for us, to remind us of what God has given us, remind us that we do not need everything we think we need, to help us pull away from the material world we cling to, and to rely on God for our strength. I do not fast enough. The two times we fast for Lent and maybe one other time a year. We have started not eating meat on Friday as a fast as a family, but I feel fasting should be made a more prevalent part of our prayer life.

By the way, I found a web-site that has audio of (as far as I can tell) the whole Bible. I enjoy listening to the scriptures. There is just something about the spoken word as opposed to reading it. You can’t get all the footnotes, but you can look at those if you have a question. Just thought I would give you the web-site.

http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mcconachie/nasb/Zech.6