This is “Fasting is Hungering For God”. Fasting is hungering for God. It’s hunger that drives you and compels you. But it’s what you feed on that leads you to the place God has for you. In this message with Jentezen Franklin, identify what’s filling your hunger. If it’s not spiritual, it’s carnal. If it’s not leading you toward God, it may be drawing you away. To hear more inspiring messages from Jentezen Franklin, visit http://jentezenfranklin.org/watch?cid…
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>> Welcome to Kingdom Connection
we are in the middle of an
annual time of seeking God,
and fasting and prayer.
And you may say,
“Well, I don’t know about all
that fasting stuff, I don’t even
know if it works, and number two
it doesn’t sound like
it’s any fun.”
Well, I’ll give you the last
point, it’s not fun,
but it is powerful.
And my challenge to you today
is give it a try.
I believe God’s gonna speak
to you about His will
in a brand new year.
♪ ♪
>> “Fasting
is Hungering for God”.
And it sounds so simple,
but I wanna tell you that
when you fast,
some things that you probably
need to expect, that at some
point, the fun wears off.
At some point,
it becomes a grind.
At some point, you begin
to hear the voice,
“What’s the use?
This is stupid.
When you wanna quit the most,
that is the time that the fast
is being most effective.
Not only is God taking
notice of you,
but Satan is taking notice
of you when you’re fasting.
There is in your body something
called ghrelin.
G-H-R-E-L-I-N.
Ghrelin, in the simplest way
that I can say it,
is what makes
your stomach growl.
Have you ever been sitting,
maybe it’s about to happen
now already,
and this growl comes up,
and it’s embarrassing,
it’s an embarrassing noise
that comes from the middle
of your body, and you have
absolutely no control over it.
Well, ghrelin is this —
it’s this hormone,
it’s called the hunger hormone,
that causes your stomach
to growl and it’s also
what triggers the feeling
of hunger in your body.
Nobody has to go around and try
to remember to be hungry,
because you have ghrelin,
and ghrelin assaults you
about once every two
or three hours,
and he will — it grumbles
and it makes you know that
you need to eat.
It’s that growling noise
in your body that will only stop
embarrassing you if you feed it
a twinkie,
if you feed it a cookie,
if you give it a cheeseburger,
it’ll calm down.
And get used to that,
’cause you’re gonna hear it
a lot over the next few days.
Nobody tries to remember to eat,
because you have hunger hormones
that stir you up all
through the day,
and say, “Feed me.
You haven’t eaten lunch.
You haven’t eaten breakfast.
Feed me.”
How many of you have
good ghrelin that works?
Say, “Amen.”
So here’s what
I’m saying to you.
You’re gonna think that God
is recreating the miracle
that He did
in the Book of Joshua,
when He made
the sun stand still.
It’s gonna feel like the day
is not moving,
and you’re gonna look at your
watch, and you’re gonna think,
it’s gotta be 6:30
in the afternoon,
and it’s gonna be 9:30
in the morning,
and you’re gonna be so hungry,
and you’re gonna think,
time has stopped,
this is — I can’t do this,
this is nuts.
But that’s when the fast
is working.
That’s when you will begin
to understand what Jesus
did and what He commanded
that His disciples do in seasons
of fasting and prayer.
And my point is this,
I want God to give you such
a spiritual ghrelin hormone,
spiritual hunger,
for God that all through
this fast, there’s a stirring.
I need to read my Bible,
I need to pray,
I need to worship, I need Jesus.
I can’t have another year
like I had.
I don’t wanna go through
another year where I just kinda
go through the motions
of Christianity.
I want to hunger for God,
and I’m praying
that spiritually,
there’s a growl,
there’s a disturbing thing
on the inside of you that says,
“I need God.
My family needs God.
I need to fast,
and I need to pray.”
I’m praying that that will
become so real,
that you will reach a point
that your spiritual life
becomes as active
as your snack life.
I mean, your snack life,
when that hormone of hunger
gets going,
you’re always looking
for some chips,
looking for some salsa,
looking for some almonds,
looking for this,
looking for that.
I’m praying that your
spiritual hunger for God
is as active as your
hunger for snacks.
When you don’t pray,
you get just as miserable
as you feel when
you haven’t eaten.
And it begins to grip
you at some point,
this fun thing,
this thing, if you start
out with a motive,
“Well, I need to lose
a few little pounds, and so,
I’m gonna go,” —
I promise you, that’s gonna
wear off real quick
and your mind will tell you,
there’s a whole lot easier
ways to lose weight than this.
But when it does,
that’s when all of these
distractions are being
cleared away,
and Jesus is becoming real,
if you’ll let Him,
in your life in a powerful,
new way.
And that annoying,
gnawing hunger that we get when
we don’t eat physical food,
I’m telling you,
that now you’re gonna have
that same gnawing
in the spiritual dimension
for spiritual food.
And I pray that somebody says,
“I want a spiritual
hunger to grip me.”
I wanna ask you a question,
are you hungry after God?
I’m not willing to sit here
and just go through the motions,
because I’m hungry,
and fasting is hungering
for God.
All along in our journey,
we need to show God that
we hunger for Him.
Nothing else can satisfy.
In the Book of 2 Kings 7,
there’s the story,
and the Bible said that the city
was completely surrounded,
and Israel had been cut off,
and all the inhabitants
were under siege.
It was such a crisis that
they had run out of food,
the rations were gone,
and they were in a dire,
dire condition.
They became so desperate,
because they didn’t have
anything to eat,
they become so hungry
that the Bible said things
that would have been
unacceptable for consumption,
now, they’re fighting over.
They’re so hungry that
they’re fighting over things
that normally they would never
even consume and eat.
For example, the Bible said
the people in this city
became so hungry that
for 80 pieces of silver,
you could buy a donkey’s head,
and they would peel the skin
off of the donkey’s head
and cook it,
and that was how desperate they
were to have anything to eat.
And if that wasn’t bad enough,
the Bible gave another example,
and it said the people were so
hungry that for five pieces
of silver,
you could buy a cup
of dove’s dung.
Dove’s waste.
You see, when you’re hungry,
if you don’t consume
the right things, with —
to fill that hunger,
then you will begin to feed
on things you never said
you would consume.
I believe with all of my heart,
if you don’t direct
your spiritual hunger
in seasons to feed and hunger
after spiritual things,
that those hungers,
that if you don’t direct them
toward God and the Word
and worship and a greater
relationship with Jesus,
then those hungers will
direct you to the wrong things.
And you’ll begin to feed
on things on the internet,
and you’ll begin to feed
on things that are carnal,
that begin to leave your soul
lean and empty,
and you’re drying up,
and spiritually, it’s been
so long since you had a touch
of Jesus, because you’re feeding
only the carnal things,
and it’s really a God hunger
that’s crying out,
“Come back to Me.
Come and seek Me in fasting
and in prayer and draw near
to Me, and I’ll
draw near to you.”
But we don’t take time to
ever feed our hunger for God,
and when we try
to substitute junk food,
donkey’s heads and dove’s dung,
I believe that if you do not
address that spiritual hunger
for more of God,
you will start filling it
with more and more —
and we try so desperately
to fill what only God can fill,
and it’s another thing,
another trip,
another entertainment,
another distraction,
another let’s go to the game,
let’s go to the lake,
let’s go to the beach,
let’s go to the mountains,
let’s try this,
let me get that house,
let me get that car,
let me try this new project.
And we keep trying to fill
the God hunger,
but there is a gnawing
and a grumbling inside
that says, “Nothing can meet
the need of God in your life
but seeking Him.”
And when He comes,
when you seek Him first,
then all of these things
are added unto you.
The lepers in —
the Bible said that there were
lepers outside of that city.
In other words,
they were outcast, they were —
I mean, it’s bad
to be inside the city,
literally, where people
are buying and eating
donkey’s heads and dove’s dung,
and these guys were
even more desperate,
because they were lepers,
and that disease would cause
literal parts of your body
to fall off,
and spiritually speaking,
their life was falling
to pieces.
They were outcast.
They were told, “You’re not
even important enough
to be on the inside
of the rest of us.”
But they were hungry,
so hungry that they said,
“I can’t,” —
they asked this question,
“Why sit here until we die?”
See, the only thing that will
move you out of your
comfort zone,
out of complacency,
into the things that only God
can do for you,
this is what the Lord told me to
tell you, He said,
“The only thing that will get
you there is hunger.”
The only thing that lifted
them out of their self-pity
was hunger.
The only thing that lifted
them out of their excuses,
“We might as well,
nobody else is doing anything,
we’re all dying,
so we’ll die here together.”
The only thing that pushed
them was hunger.
The only thing that caused them
to begin to move toward their
destiny and a brighter day
was hunger,
and hunger will drive you
and push you,
and fasting
is hungering for God.
The Bible said that there
were four of them,
and I think probably one of ’em
was sitting there,
and he had tacos on his mind.
One was sitting there,
and he had fried chicken
on his mind,
and one was sitting there,
and he had Krispy Kreme donuts
on his mind.
But one stood up and said,
“I can’t sit here.
I can’t have another year
like I had.
We’re dying.
Why sit here until we die?”
He says, “You know,
if we entered the city,
he’ll keep us alive,
and we’ll live,
but if they kill us, we’ll die.”
Now, listen to this thinking.
Listen to this.
“Now therefore come,
let us surrender to the army
of the Syrians.
If they keep us alive,”
this guy was a college graduate
I’m sure: “We shall live.
If they kill us, we shall die.”
That’s brilliant, isn’t it?
But why sit here until we die?
That hunger began to drive them.
He began to hunger, and he said,
“There’s gotta be more.”
And it was the hunger
that began to move him toward
the direction of the plan
and the purpose
and the miracle
that God had for him,
and I believe with all
of my heart that there
are things that God will
do for people when they
hunger for Him,
when they fast and they pray,
fasting is hungering for God,
and when you begin to hunger
for God, suddenly,
you move up out
of the challenges
and the comfort zone,
and you move up out
of self-pity,
and up out of depression
and hopelessness.
And the hunger began to move,
and they began to take steps,
four of them,
toward the enemy’s camp.
Things even got more desperate
inside the walls of that city,
so much so that the Bible
gives one more astonishing
description.
They became so hungry that
the Bible said they began
to boil and eat their
own babies, their own flesh
and blood, and make bargains,
and say,
“We eat your child today,
we eat my child tomorrow.”
See, we don’t understand hunger.
We don’t understand hunger.
I’m talking about people
who were so desperate
with hunger.
And what I want you
to understand about that is,
is that when people do not
fill the spiritual hunger
for God with spiritual things,
in homes, in families,
in marriages,
when they only feed on donkey’s
heads and dove’s dung
and carnality and think
that’s enough to hold
your marriage
and bless your family,
when you only feed on carnal
things and you don’t feed
spiritual hunger for God
with a hunger for God,
then guess what?
You start turning
on one another.
You start devouring one another.
You start attacking one another,
and the enemy comes
and divides families
and divides homes,
and it’s really a sign
of a growl for somebody who
needs to begin to consume
spiritual appetite and get
a hunger for God that
changes our attitude,
that opens our eyes
to the bigger things,
not just devouring one another.
I’m praying that somebody
will hear me preaching
that will say,
“I cannot have another
year like I had.
I cannot sit in this addiction
for another 12 months.
I refuse to live
like this again.
Something’s gotta give,
I’m desperate,
and I’ve got a hunger for God
that only God can fix
and God can fulfill and God can
do in my family
and in my home.”
The Bible said
in Lamentations 4:9:
“To be slain with the sword
is better than to be slain
with hunger.”
One translation said:
“It’s better to go down fighting
than to sit there and die.”
For good or bad,
hunger drives you.
Esau came home from
a hunting trip in the Bible,
and the Bible said he was
so hungry that he was
almost home, but his brother,
Jacob, came out and he said,
“Listen, I’ll offer you a bowl
of beans,”
spiritual hunger,
“But I’ll offer you a bowl
of beans if you’ll give me
the birthright.”
And in a moment of weakness,
because he did not feed
the hunger for God,
he tried to put carnal things
in for the hunger of God,
and that’s why fasting
is so important,
that’s why it’s not
for people all around you,
but it’s not for you.
This is for you, sir.
This is for you, dad.
This is for you,
business person.
This is for you,
college student.
This is for you.
God says, “There are things
that hunger will take you to
that you will never reach
until you hunger for Me,
because I have it all.
I am the one who lifts one up
and pulls another down.
I am the one,” and you know
what He promised in Matthew 5?
“They that hunger and thirst
for righteousness
shall be filled.”
The Bible said that Esau
lost his birthright,
because he fed that real hunger
with donkey’s heads,
so-to-speak, and dove’s dung,
instead of a hunger for God.
I close with this.
What got the prodigal son
out of the pig pen?
What made him come back
home to the father?
What was it?
It wasn’t the smell
or the stench.
It wasn’t the disappointment
of the friends
who abandoned him
after he had spent
all of his money.
It wasn’t the filth
that he was living in.
None of those things got him
on the path back
to the father’s house.
It was one thing that brought
him back to the father.
In Luke 15:17,
he asked a question.
“How many of my father’s
servants have bread enough
to spare,” listen:
“And I perish with hunger?”
The thing that drove
the prodigal son up and out
of the pig pen and the filth,
back to the beauty and the love
and the grace of the father’s
house, he said it himself.
“I am hungry.”
It’s hunger that will
cause prodigal sons
and daughters, when somebody
is fasting for them,
hunger will wake them up
in the pig pen.
Hunger will wake them up
in their addictions.
Hunger will wake up
the backslider, and if they
won’t fast for themselves,
when we begin to fast,
when we begin to pray
for our families,
for our sons, for our daughters,
when we do that, God says,
“I will use hunger as the force
that drives and pushes them
on to the path back
to the father’s house.”
When nothing else works,
pleading and trouble
with the law and all kinds
of things, and all kinds
of ramifications of that life,
when nothing else works,
Jesus put it like this
in Mark 9: “This kind cometh
not out but by fasting
and prayer.”
There’s some of our family
members, our friends,
our associates, people that
you work with,
people that you do life with,
and they’re lost,
and they’re on their way
to hell,
and the only thing that’s
gonna get ’em out of the muck
and the mire,
and on the path back
to the Father’s house,
is hunger.
And fasting is hungering
for God, and when a church,
with thousands and thousands
of people here and the internet
and at all of our campuses,
comes together
and my stomach’s growling
at 1 AM, but your stomach
is growling at 2 AM,
and somebody else that
has a growl going on,
and it’s like a total irritant
to the devil and demons,
and they — the scripture said,
“This kind of spirit will only
loose and release its grip
on people when people
are fasting and praying.”
[applause]
♪ ♪
>> I love the fact
that every time we preach
the Gospel on television
and now we’re on daily
somewhere, every day
around the world.
I get a chance to give people
an opportunity
to say, “Jesus, I want you
to be my Savior.”
Say that name,
“Jesus, I believe on you.
Save me, deliver me from these
things that are taking the life
out of me.
I need you to change me.
I don’t like the way
that I’ve turned out.
Things have happened,
I’m bitter, I’m angry, I’m mad.
Heal me, Jesus.”
Just say that.
He’ll save you, He’ll touch you.
And if you prayed that prayer
we would love to
hear from you today.
We want you to speak up
and let us know.
Go online or call the number
that’s on the screen
and you’ll be able to go even
deeper with free material
that we’re gonna
put in your hands.
In our closing moments,
I wanna share with you
an opportunity
that you have in the nation
of Israel to be a blessing.
The next step for our ministry
is to keep pouring into
the same region in Israel.
These people on the Gaza strip
are constantly being hit
with rockets.
I’m talking about it’s
a daily occasion.
And so we went to this community
and we spent some time there,
and they said our number one
goal, or our number one need
is to build more bomb shelters.
Our goal is to help them
to comfort God’s people
in the region that is a very
very dangerous place to have
family and children.
But you see, these Jewish people
believe that they’re
fulfilling prophecy,
that they are to stand
and defend that land because
to them it’s more than property
it’s the Holy Land that God
has given them.
And we’re grabbing them by
the hand and partnering
with them.
We’ve already started
we have a beautiful relationship
with our friends
at the Jewish National Fund,
one of the largest non-profit
Jewish organizations
in the world and they do
such a beautiful work,
and we are partnering with them
to build these community centers
that are bomb shelters
uniting the generations
right there in that region.
Thank you so much
for helping us,
every dime that you give
is used for three things.
Number one, is to preach
the Gospel through this telecast
all over the world.
Number two, we just keep
putting out inspirational
programs and material that
change people’s lives,
and thirdly, great projects
like the one in the Eshkol
region of Israel.
Thank you.
Lord, speak to your people today
you know the needs
and we praise you.
Bless every one who says “Yes,
I’ll partner
with that ministry this year.”
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Thank you and God bless you.
>> ANNOUNCER: Imagine living
under the fear and stress
of constant enemy attack.
Jewish communities bordering
the Gaza strip have 15 seconds
to run for their lives
and to take shelter from
the ceaseless barrage
of rocket attacks.
That 15 seconds is the same
for a toddler,
or a Holocaust survivor.
Now you can be a part
of fulfilling Biblical prophecy
in the Holy Land by comforting
Jewish families living
within range of rocket attacks
and incendiary fire balloons.
With your best gift
to Jentezen Franklin
Media Ministries this month,
you’ll help us go above
and beyond to bring comfort
with grace to help these
precious Jewish families
as we join
with the Jewish National Fund
to help build a fortified
bomb shelter in Moshav Ohad.
This community
is a mile and a half
from the Gaza border,
and children and seniors
will be able to utilize
this safe shelter
when the sirens signal
another attack.
As our thank you
for your gift of $50 or more,
you may request the “Rooted”
bundle today as you give
and experience every good thing
God wants to release
in and through you
this new year.
With your gift of $500 or more,
you may request
the “Rooted” gift set.
You can have a place
to write down everything
God speaks to you and does
in your life
with the Rooted journal.
With your best gift
of $1,000 or more
you can experience
God’s best in your life
with this hand picked
“Rooted” collection.
And to show our thanks,
we’ll plant a tree in Israel
in your honor.
You can be a part of the miracle
of fulfilling prophecy
in the Holy Land,
and bring comfort with grace
to God’s people in Israel today.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
[applause]
>> Cherise and I
wanna invite you to join us
on our Holy Land Tour.
It’s an amazing trip,
unlike anything
you’ve ever experienced,
and we’ll be on the trip,
we get on the busses,
our family will be on there,
and I promise you,
it will change your life.
You’ve been thinking about it,
you’ve been praying about it,
this is the year to go.
God’s gonna open your eyes
to things you’ve never
seen and experienced before
in the holy land.
Get signed up today.
>> We hope you’ve enjoyed
this teaching
by Jentezen Franklin,
and thank you
for your continued support
of this ministry.
Your prayers
and financial support
make these programs possible.
♪ ♪