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Prayer and Fasting

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{This is simply the sermon outline. If you click on the title it will take you to the audio file so you can hear it while following along. There is more substance on the audio file than in these notes. Mike} > Prayer and Fasting < Isaiah 58.1-12   (New Testament reading: Matthew 9.14-17 ) Fasting is done for all kinds of reasons, even in 21 st Century America. I think that the reasons we fast expose what we cherish more than anything. Wrestlers, boxers MMA fighters fast to make the weigh-in for the big championship. Models fast to keep their high-dollar contracts, and to get the ooos and aaahs and breathless gasps of their eye-boggled audiences. Patients fast to get a report of good health from their doctors. The oddity is a religious fast. For example, when Muslims fast during Ramadan, Americans call them fanatics and radicals. Its oddness is so far spread that likely most American churches have given it up altogether. So I will need to start at square one: What