by Washington Allston, 1813, Wikipedia, Public Domain
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Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss one the unheralded, but powerful weapons, that God has given believers in our battle against the demonic realm. I am talking about fasting.
This weapon’s effectiveness was on display in an incident involving Lester Sumrall. Sumrall, who died in 1996, was an international Bible teacher who for several years served as a missionary in the Philippines in the 1950s.
In his book, Bitten by the Devil, Sumrall revealed how God used him to deliver a woman named Clarita Villeneuve from a demon. At the time, Clarita was an inmate at the Philippine’s infamous Bilibid Prison.
On May 13, 1953, a story appeared on the front page of the Manila Chronicle entitled “Police Medics probe case of girl bitten by devils.”
The story involved reports circulating that Clarita was being bitten, with actual bite marks, by an evil spirit. Predictably, many laughed it off suggesting Clarita was either being bitten by other inmates or was biting herself.
This was the opinion even held by Dr. Mariano Lara, the prison’s chief doctor. But that all changed, when Dr. Lara had Clarita in his office and she started screaming that she had been bitten and a bite mark mysteriously appeared on her arm. Some invisible entity had bitten her while she sat in front of Dr. Lara.
By this point, Philippine radio stations were broadcasting recordings of Clarita’s screams as she was bitten.
Like many in the Philippines, Sumrall was intrigued by the story. But then he felt the Holy Spirit tell him that if Sumrall went to see Clarita, that God would cast out the demon.
So he contacted authorities and after several attempts was finally able to meet with Dr. Lara. Lara said that though he did not believe in a spiritual realm, he admitted he was troubled by the strange things that were going on.
He agreed to let Sumrall see Clarita. When Sumrall was led to the prison’s chapel, he was shocked to see that in addition to Clarita, there were about 100 people in attendance including reporters, police doctors, prison staff and even inmates.
As soon as Sumrall entered the room, the entity inside Clarita looked at Sumrall and shouted out through her, “I don’t like you” and then began cursing Christ and Sumrall.
Sumrall had spent time in prayer leading up to this encounter and he began the process of deliverance. Though he had made some headway during the first session, Sumrall knew that the deliverance wasn’t complete. He decided to spend the next day in prayer and fasting and then return.
Reporters in the room also realized that Sumrall had not been successful. One newspaper trumpeted the first day failure with the headline, “The Things Defies Pastor.”
After spending time praying and fasting, Sumrall returned and successfully delivered the woman from her demon. Returned to her right mind, Clarita was finally able to appear before a judge for her charges of vagrancy. After explaining, how Sumrall had delivered her from a demon, the judge immediately released Clarita to a half way house.
Because of all the publicity she was eventually forced to leave the city. But in this classic battle between good and evil, fasting played a role in this deliverance.
The Bible is very clear that our battle is not against flesh and blood but rather principalities and powers. Because of this, Paul writes that our weapons are “not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Corinthians 10:4).
We can’t use physical weapons against a spiritual enemy.
One of the those ‘divinely powerful’ weapons is fasting, when we deprive ourselves of food for a period of time.
Many of us remember how Jesus defeated Satan after coming off a 40 day fast. This is easily the most famous of the over 50 times that fasting is mentioned in the Bible.
But many of the fasts involved partial day fasts, missing one or two meals in a day such as we see in Judges 20:26 and 1 Samuel 7:6 and 2 Samuel 1:12 where they fast until evening. Or a day of fasting such as the widow woman did in Luke 2:37 and when the early church laid hands on Barnabas and Saul and set them into the ministry Acts 13:3.
What I am saying is that fasting doesn’t have to involve multiple days to be effective. As we saw in Sumrall’s case one day of fasting and prayer was enough to deliver Clarita of her demon.
The Power of Fasting
So why is fasting so powerful? What does it do? In the book of Isaiah, the prophet outlines the power of fasting.
But first we need to understand the context behind this verse. The religious people were fasting publicly to show off to everyone how spiritual they were. Even as they were fasting they were oppressing the widows and the poor.
It was hypocritical. It was a joke.
In the midst of this God delivers a word through Isaiah the prophet, where he defines the true purpose of fasting. We read:
Is this not the fast that I choose:
To release the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the ropes of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free,
And break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6 NASV)
While this prophetic word exposed the literal oppression that people were feeling from those who were supposedly fasting, the verse also reveals the intended purpose of fasting in a spiritual sense.
First, fasting breaks the bonds of wickedness
It seems that these religious hypocrites were unjustly using the law to legally bind the people to indentured servitude. But the true purpose of fasting was break the bonds of wickedness off people.
Secondly, Fasting cuts the reins that control people.
A yoke was a heavy wooden frame that was placed on the neck of a large animal like oxen. Because of its weight and constant rubbing it would create open wounds. Subsequently, even the slightest tug of the reins would cause the oxen to turn to release the pain. Fasting was a way of breaking this control.
Thirdly, fasting sets people free
It will let the oppressed go free. It will literally break them out of their prisons.
Fourthly, fasting can also destroy the yokes
And then finally not only will the reins be cut, the yokes will be completely destroyed. In other words, the yoke will never be able to put back on their necks. The burden and weight of the yoke will be removed.
This is the power of fasting. It has the power to set people free from the demonic realm. We have to understand that fasting wasn’t going to do anything in the physical realm, obviously it was intended a spiritual exercise.
So why does fasting work?
In order to understand why fasting works, we need to understand the real source of power when it comes to spiritual warfare.
Remember when the pharisees accused Jesus of casting out a demon by the power of Beelzebub a more powerful demonic spirit. In other words, they were saying that Jesus was able to cast out demons because he was possessed by a more powerful evil spirit.
So how did Jesus respond to this blasphemous accusation?
The Lord said, “But if I cast out the demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 11:20 NASV)
Describing the same story, Matthew added that Jesus cast out demons by the Spirit of God in chapter 12:28.
In other words, the finger of God and the Spirit of God are the same and the Holy Spirit is the one who drives demons out of people.
In Luke 9:1, we see Jesus sending his disciples out to heal the sick and cast out demons. But in order for them to do this, Jesus had to first empower them.
We read, Jesus gave them ‘power and authority over demons and the power to heal diseases.’
While healing only required power, we notice when it came to dealing with demons, Jesus also had to give them authority, in order to deal with demonic. They had to have both authority and power when it came to dealing with demons.
Christ gave the disciples, His authority. They had been deputized, essentially, by Jesus..
The disciples came back amazed that ‘even the demons are subject to us in your name’ (Luke 10:17).
But there were blips. While, Jesus, Peter, James and John were on the Mount of Transfiguration, a man brought his child to the remaining disciples to cast out an evil spirit. They fell flat on their face.
Then Jesus showed up and delivered the boy. Later, the disciples asked Jesus why they had failed, and Christ said that this kind of evil spirit only comes out by ‘prayer and fasting’ (Mark 9:29).
Now some Bible versions omit “and fasting” in this verse, but the translators for the New English Translation provide a footnote on this verse that, “most witnesses, even early and excellent ones have ‘and fasting’ after prayer here.”
But other major ancient manuscripts do not include ‘and fasting’ so some Bible versions have chosen to omit the phrase. But I think there is good argument for it to be included.
So if we need power and authority to cast out demons, then prayer and fasting must in some way increase our authority and increase the power being released through us.
James the brother of Jesus writes quote, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7 ESV).
In other words, as we submit to the authority of Jesus, our authority grows. Then as we resist the devil, he will flee.
At the beginning of this podcast, I talked about Isaiah’s declaration that fasting breaks the bonds of wickedness in Isaiah 58:6.
But in the verse just before this, verse 5, God also explains why fasting is effective.
While the religious leaders used fasting to show off how spiritual they were, this is not what it was supposed to be used for.
Isaiah writes in verse five that fasting was for “a person to humble himself?”
Fasting is a way of humbling ourselves before God. As we humble and submit ourselves to God, our authority in Christ grows. We have more authority. We basically get an extra stripe on our shirt sleeve when we fast properly.
Remember also that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s power is resident inside us.
When we fast, we also make room for the Holy Spirit’s full power to be released through us.
This is why fasting is one of the valuable weapons of our warfare.
I realize certain health conditions prevent people from fasting food, so as an alternative, you could fast TV or the Internet. Extended fasts can also cause health issues, so don’t take on long fasts without first consulting a doctor. .
So consider fasting. Remember it doesn’t have to be long. You can fast a lunch or perhaps the evening meal.
When fasting, you should consider praying when you would normally eat, because I believe fasting supercharges our prayers.
Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will talk to you again.
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