FocusSample

Question. What's something you're pretty sure you couldn't live without? Pizza? Ice cream? Video games? Your phone? If we're honest, there are probably many things we act like we couldn't live without, but we could. Sometimes, giving up those things for a little while might even be best for us. There's an ancient spiritual practice called "fasting." Maybe you've heard of it. It's giving something up for a specific time to spend more time focusing on God. In Matthew 6, Jesus confronted some religious people about how they misunderstood and misused fasting. Instead of making their fasts something between them and God, they used their fasts to get attention and praise, but that's not the point of fasting. Whether we temporarily give up pizza, ice cream, video games, or so much time looking at our phones, the point of fasting is to grow our closeness with God. That's the power of focusing on giving something up.