Women's Bible Study- Prayer and Fasting Part 2

All right.

So.

I want to go ahead and begin here.

And so let me pull up the study guide for today and back up through my notes here.

Always end with the questions and then back up.

So let's see here.

OK, so we're in part two and we're going to be looking at, like I said, Isaiah 58.

So if you have your Bibles open, that's what we'll be looking at.

Susan quoted John Piper several times, and I really appreciated the quotes that we have in here.

And she asked some questions with this.

So I want to start with this as we jump into this.

She says in his book, A Hunger for God, John Piper says this.

If we don't feel strong desires for the manifestations of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied.

It is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied.

It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world.

Our soul is stuffed with small things and there is no room for the great.

And she asked this question, is there room in your busy life for the great? And that's a capital G meaning for God.

Do you set aside times throughout your week to pray and to fast? So these are things you don't have to answer in the chat.

I just want you to think about this as we go through this and consider these things privately and personally between you and the Lord.

She mentions Matthew 9, verses 14 through 17, and I want to read this to you.

Then the disciples of John came to him, came to Jesus, asking, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, Can the attendance of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment and a worse tear results.

Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined.

But they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.

So we see that even in the New Testament that there's a distinction here that some of the disciples are seeing, you know, the Pharisees fast, which usually they fasted two days a week.