While I am a little belated in posting this, you can listen to the message I gave at Brooklife Church on March 28th (Palm Sunday) entitled "The Cross...What It Demands of Me." This was the third of four messages in a series at Brooklife called "The Cross." I was speaking from Luke 9:23-26, where Jesus …
Facing the Tomb
This past weekend I was reading through the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mount Moriah. It’s one of those stories that throws me for a loop every time I read it. God tells Abraham to kill his son who was a tangible promise of God’s goodness and blessing. Why would God do that? It …
Fasting: Words from Church History
Here are some words from the past two-thousand years about the topic of fasting. I found these words alternately challenging and inspiring. The Didache, a first century document relating core teaching of the early church, “prescribed two fast days a week: Wednesday and Friday” for early Christians; this was seen as a regular part of …
Fasting: Is It Just from Food?
In the midst of all the posts on fasting, a few people have asked me if fasting is really all about abstinence from food, or is it broader than that. I think this is an important question for us to consider within this whole topic. In an earlier post, I defined fasting as "voluntary abstinence …
Fasting: A View from the New Testament
Here is an unedited list of references to fasting from the New Testament with brief comments about what we can learn about fasting from these references. This list is a companion to my earlier list from the Old Testament found here. Matthew 4:1-3 – “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to …
Matthew Erickson 