Testimony and Fasting

Testimony and Fasting

Happy New Year everyone! 2011 is finally here. I hope everyone had a nice New Year. School is back in session for everyone including me. I guess my scrapbooking project is now on hold again. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve bldg so let me catch you all up to speed. Last week we had our discussion on Testimony from Shelly Fowler. She brought up a couple of questions, what is a testimony? A testimony is something bearing witness to something that you know; a spirit of prophecy, knowing Jesus; a testimony cannot come from a book that we’ve study; it must come from the Holy Ghost. How do you know when you have a testimony? One gets a prompting that testifies of something and you have to share it. A testimony is not something that is rehearsed. Who can strengthen us? People around us can strengthen us, hearing other people’s testimony. When should we bear our testimony? Whenever we feel prompted or feel the need to share with others. When should we begin teaching our children about testimony? When they are young. We should encourage them to bear their testimony to their families and in testimony meetings.

Now on Sunday, Joni Bunker gave our lesson on Fasting, lesson 25 in the manual. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, take some time out for yourself and read it. There is a lot of good stuff for us. Joni started off the lesson by sharing with us her favorite hymn, Love One Another on page 308 in the hymnbook. “As I have loved you, love one another. This new commandment, love one another.” Believe it or not, this does play into the lesson.

How to Fast Properly:
What can we do to make fasting a joyful experience? - Fasting means to go without food and drink. However, it’s more than just starving us and going with out meals, we need to fast with a purpose and concentrate on spiritual matters. Since the beginning of time with Adam, people have been fasting to help them with their trials, to draw closer to their heavenly father, (see D&C 88:76).

We Should Pray When We Fast - While we are fasting, we need to pray. Fasting and pray go together. We read about it in the scriptures. We need to begin our fast with a prayer and close it with a prayer.

We Should Fast with a Purpose – such purposes including overcoming weaknesses or problems we are going through, we can fast for guidance for us and other, for illness, for knowing the truth of things (see Mosiah 27:22-23 and Alma 5:46). We can fast for others, to help them embrace the truth or with their trials. Fasting humble us and allows us to feel his love more and us to become closer to him (see Alma 28:4-6 & Helaman 3:35).

The Fast Day:
Once a month, we have a fast Sunday that is the first Sunday of the month and on that day, we fast for two whole meals. This day is a special day for us to humble ourselves before the Lord, to pray for forgiveness and ask for strength to overcome our weakness or anything that we feel to need to fast for. During this meeting, we have an opportunity to bear our testimony that we talked about last week.

Fast Offerings:
On fast Sunday, we have fast offering. The Lord has asked us to help those in need and this is just one of the ways we can do that. By us fasting, we are asked to give that amount of money that we would have spent on those two meals to the fast offering.

We are Blessed When We Fast:
When we fast and help the needy we are promised with peace, improved health, and spiritual guidance (Isaiah 58:8-9). Fasting teaches us self-control; it gives us strength of character. Fasting gives is strength to overcome weakness and temptations. Fasting is hard. I know I always have a hard time fasting so this is a good thing that we should practice. It’s important to teach our children to fast when they are able to do so. Start them off by fasting one meal then two and so on but make sure they old enough and in good health to do so. If one has health problems, then one should not fast and we know who we are. We also develop faith through fasting (see Alma 17:3). The Savior has said to those who fast properly, “Thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:18).

Fasting is something that we should be doing because we want to. We may not always have a particular purpose to fast for so on those times, we can fast for all of the many blessings that we have. Fasting is an opportunity for us; it benefits others and us too. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us on this discussion. We would love to hear from you. You just might uplift someone who may need to read about your experiences. Next week our lesson is on “Sacrifice” (Lesson #26) taught by Bunnie Kantro…read ahead. Thanks for joining me, until next time…

Kelly