“A Hunger For God” by John Piper.

First off, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know we did. Our Son who is in the Military was able to come home for Christmas, and having everyone home means more to me than any material gift.

As most of you know I have been on a quest to understand and apply Fasting to my life. I have read some great book on the benefits of prayer and fasting such as “The Hidden Power Of Prayer And Fasting” by Mahesh Chavada, which is an excellent book! But I need to understand the ‘why’. I can go through the motions, but to understand why will make it much more appreciated and applicable. So I was reading The Passion Translation Bible, (his insight and understanding of Scriptures is jaw dropping,… literally!) trying to learn more about prayer and fasting when I came across Mark 9 where the disciples were not able to cure a boy tormented by a demon. As usual verse 29 stood out to me, but let’s start with verse 28, The Passion Translation, 28. “Afterwards, when Jesus arrived at the house, His disciples asked Him in private, “Why couldn’t we cast out the demon?” 29. He answered them, “This type of powerful spirit can only be cast out by fasting and prayer.” b

Footnote b is where it gets very interesting it says, “b 9:29 As translated from the Aramaic and some Greek manuscripts. Many reliable Greek texts leave out “fasting”. However, the word fasting was found on a fragment going back to the third century. (See also Isa. 58:6.) Our lives must be saturated with the Presence of God through prayer and fasting in order to conquer the evil that is in the world and hiding in the hearts of mankind.”

This is the part that caught my eye, “Our lives must be saturated with the Presence of God through prayer and fasting….” So fasting and prayer help to saturate our lives with His Presence!

So I did another search on that topic, prayer, fasting and The Presence of God,… and I found a book called, “A Hunger For God” by John Piper, that focuses just on that. In fact, the search also brought up the e-book! (Although I purchased a hard copy on Amazon quickly after reading some of this.)

Here is the link, if any of you want to understand prayer and fasting as I do. 🙂

https://document.desiringgod.org/a-hunger-for-god-en.pdf?ts=1446646561