It is well with you, my dear Chiwendu. Let me start by saying that in engaging God and spiritual austerities, we have to be mindful not to major on minor things and minor on major things, right?

When we talk about prayer and fasting, first of all, what is a fast? A fast is a time where we deny ourselves of something that is a biological need, a social need, or a mental need in order to, one, develop discipline and power, and two, devote more attention to the Lord.

That's the purpose of fasting. It's not about starving, right? It's about being able to sacrifice certain things for a time and give your belly as an offering unto the Lord, right? And also remove your mind from certain things that normally consume your mental, well, for lack of better words, random access memory, as we use in computational terms, right?

Now a lot of people, you know, fast physically; they won't eat, but during the time of their quote-unquote fasting, they're watching TV shows and programs; they maybe pray for five minutes a day. I mean, what's the point of that, right? You just did a hunger strike. It's not really a time of prayer and fasting. Because what is most important, the major thing about prayer and fasting, is the time that we spend with God, the time that we devote to him, right?

You see, because sometimes you make a religion out of certain things, a case might happen where one is genuinely unable to do something, not saying that God can't heal a person of ulcer. There are a number of people who have fasted and their ulcer was healed, right?

But in general, our health is very important, and a lot of older ministers in this time are beginning to speak a lot about it, on mistakes they made in their youth in the name of heavy pursuit, and they did not regard their health, the body that God is going to use to prosecute his work upon the earth; they didn't regard it enough.

People didn't sleep well, people didn't eat well, and all of those things. And in the latter part of their life, going from hospital to hospital, and you know, it's because of a lot of negligence in certain areas.

Fasting is good. But if there's a health condition, especially one that will require you to take medication, it is advisable that you, at least regarding the consumption of food, not carry out that aspect. But it's possible that you have a time of fasting and you eat, but you leave TV alone. You leave Instagram alone. You leave YouTube alone. You even leave WhatsApp alone. That's also part of a fast.

Because there are so many ways that we can say no to our flesh and no to legitimate cravings in order to give it as an offering unto God. Because that's the first thing fasting is. Lord, this is something that I love. This is something that is desirable to me. And I want to tell you today that you are worth more than this. And so, I'll refuse myself of this thing and I give it as an offering unto you. It's a very powerful spiritual act. Are you getting my point?

Aside from that, it's also a time where we want to have enough free headspace to devote ourselves to God the way we ought to. And so, you might not be able to eat food. Or you can remove your computer. Or your TV show, your program, your reels, or your TikTok. You can remove all of that and devote time to prayer and contemplation. But that's your time of fasting.

So that's something to be mindful of. What's most important in this thing called giving unto the Lord is giving what you have to give. So that maybe in this particular time, you can't really fast for 12 hours and all of that. That's okay. But you can fast on WhatsApp; if you ask me, it's more painful than hunger in this day and time, where we spend more time on mobile phones than food.

I believe personally that's a greater fast. If Jesus Christ were alive in this day, that's a fast he would be prescribing. He'll say, okay, I need you to drop Instagram for seven days, drop TikTok, drop YouTube, and even drop WhatsApp status for the next seven days and seek my face. Yes, that's the one that will prick many people. Now practice that. And that's still fasting. It is very well with you, my friend.