Fasting: Where Breakthrough Begins — Shane Idleman

Fasting as a Spiritual Discipline

I don't know what your view is on this topic. Many of you know I've been going through this for about a year, pretty consistently. The reason, I believe now, looking back, is putting this book together that is finally out.

The title is Feasting and Fasting, What Works, What Doesn't, and Why? And before you have to write a book like that, you have to go through it. And I think that's what God was doing in my own life. We've been hearing from people, believe it or not, from Iran, South Africa, Scotland, from people being changed from the message of fasting and denying self and different things.

So I don't think I'm gonna keep having to beat this drum too often. Now that the book's out, now that you have the resources you need, I'm hoping to just touch base maybe once a year in January or summer, just to call the church back to this area.

And I believe fasting, more than any other spiritual discipline, will reveal what controls you. Right, spiritual discipline. Worship, okay, that's not too hard. Bible reading, I'm not doing too great, but I got it.

Prayer, yeah, but you get to this spiritual discipline. This is where the rubber meets the road, when you have to tell your flesh that you are going to not eat something, you're not gonna consume something.

And a couple different things, as I was pondering this message this week, really the difficult part for me was not being able to get through everything, and what I wanna say. That's why there are a lot of different sermons in the book.

If you get the e-book version, you can click on the sermon, and it'll take you right to that sermon title. And the e-book right now is free. We're hoping to keep that free, except on Kindle, the lowest they would go is 99 cents.

So there's not much we can do about that. But you can download the e-book, you can take copies as you're leaving, and give those to friends and family to try to get them to better understand that our health makes a big difference, and how we take care of this gift that God has given us makes a big difference.

Stewardship of the Body and Physical Health

Listen, I'm going to different hospitals, visiting people. I just went to the hospital homes today. One of the hospital homes, I went to City of Hope Saturday, and UCLA Medical Center as well. And a lot of the sickness that we're seeing does not have to be what it is to the degree it is.

I believe a lot of it can be hindered. A lot of disease can be hindered if we take better care of our bodies. I've seen it. There's some medical studies out there that support that as well. So let me just talk about a few different things.

The title is Fasting Where Breakthrough Begins. Fasting Where Breakthrough Begins. And many of you know what a breakthrough is, but let me just repeat it for those who don't. It's a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development.

So fasting from a biblical sense, and one of the challenges, again, from a biblical sense is not being able to share all the biblical stories from Ezra to Nehemiah to Esther to David to Moses, all the different, Elisha, just keep going, all the different examples of when men and women fasted, God moved.

And it's ironic as well that we love to quote the verse, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, that I will heal their land.

I will hear them. Now it's ironic, the ironic part is that fasting meets all of these conditions. Fasting is humiliating. It humbles ourselves. When we fast, we pray. Fasting and praying involves seeking God and it involves turning from sin.

So fasting is at the heart of repentance and humility, not only in the Old Testament, but we see it throughout the New Testament as well. So what a breakthrough involves is when you stop going through the motions.

Do you know that going through the motions rarely produces change, right? It's a no-brainer. This isn't gonna be a lot of new stuff. It's gonna be a lot of stuff we need to reinforce. To break a bad habit, to get back on track, we have to get out of that daily routine.

We're doing the same, do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing, but expecting different results. So breakthrough involves, okay, I've gotta stop this. I've gotta get on a different track.

I need to break this routine in certain areas. And I'm gonna give you some scriptural support. So first I'm gonna talk about the spiritual breakthroughs, the spiritual benefits, but then it's important to know the physical.

And what I like about God's Word is anytime you do something in the spiritual, it will benefit you in the physical. Anytime you do something, and I just ran into a guy today. He said he feels so much better, he's not a Christian, I'm whatever.

He said he feels so much better when he meditates, right? Well, that's a biblical principle, as long as you're meditating on the right thing and on the right person that has physical results. When you seek God, when you pray, fear is relieved and your body feels better physically.

So the spiritual often affects the physical. Conversely, the physical often affects the spiritual. Now, not all of the time. Some of the people I've visited at the hospitals are actually doing better than ever with God.

They're focused on God, they're loving God. This debilitating disease or whatever it is has got them to a point of full surrender. There's tremendous joy in the Lord. So that's not a blanket statement.

But often how we take care of our physical body will affect us spiritually. When we're addicted to certain things, when we're not overcoming certain things, when we're falling and failing and we're not doing what God has called us to do, it can affect us spiritually.

Because part of being filled with the Spirit involves obedience, a word we don't like to use too much in church. But when we are obedient in this area, I believe that God will honor that. So let's look at first at the spiritual benefits.

Fasting, Self-Denial, and Spiritual Breakthrough

A spiritual benefits, and really fasting, if I could sum it up, is a physical response to a spiritual problem. It's a physical response. I'm going to respond physically and it's going to have spiritual ramifications.

The physical affects the spiritual. We just talked about that. Fasting ignites a hunger for God and provides direction. The fuel source of our addiction is starved. And that's really, in our day and age especially, Paul's day, Jesus' day, they didn't deal as much with addictions as they do now, as we do now.

I think we can all agree on that. To go get some honey, you had to go to the honeycomb. You had to climb that tree. You had to go after the bees and you have to fight for that honey. Or you had a little store.

Now it's in every corner. And it's magnified. It's all these things. And people say, well, but God gave us these things. No, man altered it. Man changed it. And it has ramifications on our physical health.

So fasting ignites a hunger for God and provides direction. So to break a bondage, we must pray. We must seek God's grace. And we often must starve the flesh. This isn't Old Testament. This is biblical in the New Testament as well.

To starve the passions of the flesh, to crucify the flesh, you often have to stop feeding the very thing that is fighting you. It's almost like we're giving fuel to the enemy when we feed and we feed and we feed and we don't starve the flesh.

Discipline is part of the Christian faith. We will crave more of what we feed. Fasting silences the voice of the flesh. Now, I'm gonna get into a few scripture references here. But first, this is a huge disclaimer.

And I know you've heard me say this before and I think it needs to be said again because some of you weren't there. But fasting, the big misconception is it doesn't make God love us more. You know, God's not saying, boy, that Shane, he really fasted, I love him more than my other kids.

It has nothing to do with God's love. It's because of the cross, because of what Christ did, we are forgiven, we are loved. God embraces all of his children. But there is a different thing, or a different way of looking at this when it comes to favor.

God will put certain favor on children, this children he can trust. Certain blessings will flow into a life of a believer who is obedient versus one who is not. I think we can agree on that, right? We have our own children.

We love them the same. But are you going to give the prodigal son the car? Or the son who's going to college and making a difference and working hard and going to church? Because I love you both, but I can't invest into that lifestyle because it might ruin you.

You would sell the car and use it to buy something else. So although I love both, my favor, my blessing is going to rest on those who can steward the gift more efficiently. This is all biblical. So God doesn't love us more, but I do love him more when I fast.

You draw closer to God. And I don't know this dynamic, to be completely honest with you. I don't like it. I wish, right after a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving, I would be so close to God. After a big dinner, I wish I could sit down with the Bible and a good book.

And I wish it was possible. After stopping and getting Krispy Kreme and some chocolate or coffee, I wish I could just, oh, I just feel so close to God. But part of that is we're feeding the flesh. Now, food is good and God-given.

God gave it to us. It's to be a blessing. We entertain people. We feast and enjoy one another's company. Actually, communion is taken in remembering Christ and it's done with food. So there's nothing wrong with food in itself.

It's when we give it its proper place. So I wanna just throw out a question. Are most of you, I think you would agree with me here, are we awaiting the return of the bridegroom? Are we awaiting Jesus's return?

I think no matter where your view is on eschatology, the end times, I think we can all agree on that we can come together. Well, Jesus said, when he was challenged, he said, why do your disciples not fast?

And Jesus said, because the bridegroom is here. But when the bridegroom leaves, they will fast. And he goes on to say, I believe it's Matthew 6, when you pray, when you give, and when you fast. So personally, I'm a little nervous to take that one out.

I'll pray and I'll give, but not this third point. This one is where it hurts a little bit. And that's what people do. Men of God I respect, I look up to in theology in different areas, it's almost like these strange arguments.

Well, it was for the Old Testament, and it can really turn into a monastery movement, the monks, and I'm like, are you just enjoying your hamburgers? I mean, you're trying to twist what gets clearly evident throughout scripture.

Paul fasted. Jesus fasted. Jesus was led into the wilderness. Now, I don't think that's just an accident there. I don't think that, hey, by the way, he fasted, he just decided to. There's something about starving the appetites of the flesh to be filled with the Spirit.

And it's ironic, there's no kids in here, right? Oh, there's some kids, okay, well, I'll be careful here. When you starve the flesh, other areas of fleshly desires are starved as well. Other appetites that are not healthy are starved as well because you're going to the root of all addiction, you're going to the root of all ungodly, lusty flesh, you're starving it at its source.

You're not giving it any fuel anymore. It's also interesting, looking at this, I looked at this topic a lot writing this book, but you see that Daniel was rewarded for fasting with vegetables, and you see the children of Israel were rebuked because they lusted for meat.

So sometimes these certain foods have animalistic impulses that it will cause in us as well when we consume certain things. It does something to the body. And that's my big beef with caffeine, especially with children and different things.

This is a very potent central nervous stimulant that affects all areas of your heart rate, your attention span, your irritability, are you ever anxious, are you angry? You're actually fueling those things by taking these substances.

I call it Christian crack. Okay, I'm going to get out of that one real quick here. Through fasting, our body becomes a servant instead of a master because, and again, as someone who's struggled with their weight many years, when I was younger, it was hard for me, and it's still hard because I want to eat more than my body wants to burn.

That's really what being overweight is. I'm taking in more units of energy than my body's wanting to burn. So that has been an issue. But when fasting, your body becomes a servant instead of a master because what we are mastered by begins to control us.

Do you ever say, I just can't stop the cappuccino, frappuccino, chocolate, whatever it is. We all have our little, you know what it is, that thing that just draws you in every day, and it calls your name, Shane.

Come dip me in peanut butter. You know, come go by Starbucks and buy this, you know, and it's just drawing. So fasting, and let me just encourage you before I forget, you're not on a spiritual high most of the time when fasting.

You're not walking, oh, this feels wonderful, this feels great. You're walking around going, this stinks. This is hard. I don't like this. And then the mind starts to work against you. Yeah, just start tomorrow.

Yeah, one piece of pizza, what's the big deal? And you start to compromise. So see, this really isn't, the whole point of fasting is to starve those fleshly appetites that want to master you. And as we all know, if you give in to that master, it's not a, it's a cruel task, master, isn't it?

That one serving becomes three. That one donut becomes four. That one, we just keep giving in to these things. So I truly believe that God wants us to be disciplined in this area as well when possible.

Now, nobody does this perfectly, right? We had a birthday party last night for one of my kids, and yeah, it wasn't perfect. You know, there's, things are going to happen, so you don't want to beat yourself up.

You're not always going to be on a spiritual high. So here's usually what works with fasting. It's just my personal opinion. We are so addicted to the chemicals, the sugars, the caffeines, the different things that when we try to fast, it's impossible because we're actually having withdrawals.

So the first step is to get cleaned up, to get your diet clean and to get weaned off of these things because a caffeine withdrawal or a sugar withdrawal is very difficult in and of itself. Mood swings, anxious, irritable.

You just want to kill somebody. You want to strangle somebody, and now you're going to stop having food? So I think it's a very, it's much more challenging for us unless we get our bodies in the right frame of mind.

So that goal should be, okay, in the next couple weeks, I'm going to start weaning off things. I'm going to start getting rid of those things that are counterproductive, that are not healthy. The energy drinks and the things that we have and consume.

If I had time, I could really depress you, but I'm not going to because we are, we're at a crossroads. We're seeing a lot of disease in children, obesity levels now. Look at, just go online. Psychiatrists, America, they're asking, how do we do, how do we handle this?

It's an epidemic that's growing, not decreasing. And they're looking at the health charges for medical, you know, insurance. They're already having medical and different things. But the rate it's going to the fund this with our sickness, as our sickness keeps, you won't be able to fund it.

You won't be able to have medical insurance because it wasn't designed for everybody to be sick. All the time, it's there for those who truly need it. And there's just so much happening in the physical.

Prayer, Fasting, and Spiritual Warfare

In Matthew 17, 21, Jesus said that a certain evil spirit does not go out of a person except by prayer and fasting. Matthew 17, 21, you Bible scholars will say, well, that verse isn't in some translations.

And it's correct, I've talked about that before on where we got our different translations. But I will tell you this, as God's word is my witness, that this principle is found throughout scripture, that fasting applies pressure to the spiritual realm.

When Daniel started to fast, 21 days later, he had the breakthrough. And God said, Daniel, from when you set your heart to fast, I started to answer you. But I was held up by the prince of Persia, this demonic realm, and I don't know how that works.

That is just very interesting, if you take the Bible literally, which we do. That somehow, some way, Daniel's prayer was held off while he was fasting, there was a spiritual battle taking place, and that we see throughout the Bible that fasting applies pressure to the spiritual realm.

Arthur Wallace said this, often, pressure has to be maintained before there is a breakthrough in heavenly warfare. You as a Christian, you need to know this. Pressure has to be replied. Gone are the days of microwave Christianity.

Gone are the days of the five-minute devotional. Gone are the days of the quick little prayer to work. You've gotta contend, you've gotta fight, you've got to battle. It's constant pressure against the demonic realm that is wanting to pressure you.

We have to get into that mindset. If you're desiring a breakthrough, you must apply pressure. What I recommend is you confess it as sin and you hit it head on. You have to apply pressure to the spiritual realm.

Now, I'm gonna use an example here. I don't know if I'd use it on Sunday morning, but maybe I will. When I was growing up, I'm gonna date myself here. Do you remember this guy called, I think it was just out of high school, Iron Mike Tyson?

That's how you need to fight the devil. He would just get in the ring, and it was like a bulldog, first round knockout, boom, boom, boom. When they interviewed him, he said, I fear no man, I'm going to defeat that, I'm gonna come in like an animal, and I'm going to destroy.

That's the mindset of warfare. That's how we have to, I'm gonna apply pressure, I'm gonna keep hitting the devil, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna fast, I'm gonna seek God until he is crushed. Because what he's doing is waiting for you to fail and fall and to give up and say, forget it, I can't do this anymore.

I'm not fighting this fight, forget it. This is pointless. So you have to apply pressure in the spiritual realm. Do you just wake up all the time wanting to pray? Try this, husbands and wives, beginning tomorrow, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna pray for a half hour.

You watch the hell that tries to break loose. You have to apply that, we've done it before. And she'll text me, do you feel like praying? I say, I do not feel like praying this morning. I have no desire, I'm in a bad mood, I shouldn't have checked emails.

I shouldn't have turned on my phone. But we're gonna pray. We need to do it, we need to break through, we need to apply spiritual pressure to the spiritual realm. So Jesus said, so we learn, when you fast, Matthew 6, 16, Jesus said, when you fast, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.

James 4, 5 reminds us that our spirit has envious yearnings. Do we yield to these yearnings or do we give in to the pull of the flesh? Do you know what your spirit longs for? The Holy Spirit in you, it's yearning for the things of God.

What are the things of God? Your spirit wants to worship. I want to come to the morning worship. I want to read my Bible. I guarantee everybody in this room just about is saying, amen, I need to do that, I want to do that.

The Holy Spirit is yearning to do that. Oh, Shane, that sounds great. But I've got this other junk in here that doesn't want to do that. So fasting will starve that other voice. That's why I don't give limits because some person, a person fasting half a day and just seeking God is just as beneficial as somebody, when we start to put, okay, well, you're real spiritual if you go three days, okay?

You're not quite there, you're not as spiritual as me. If you go a week, and we start to label things. Now granted, I am a big proponent of the longer the better. Jesus is a good example of fasting, but I believe God will also direct you.

I talked about a fasting experience that I did. It was 22 days, and I couldn't do it all water, but I did, I think, four days water, five days water, and then finished with nine days of water. And it was the most difficult thing I've ever done, but it was the most fulfilling thing I have ever done.

Eyesight improved, back problems, joint problems, root canal, all these things, the body starts healing itself and I was driving home, I'll never forget this day. I'm driving home, I just get over the hill, and I just felt released.

I'm like, I feel like having dinner. I feel accomplished. God's Spirit is the presence, the power. It just came on me, tremendous peace, because I didn't know how long I was gonna keep doing it and what God's direction was.

So I believe that God will lead you. He will direct you. I don't wanna alarm anybody, but I do know people, there are people that have fasted for 40 days with water. We just can't even comprehend that, can we?

It's just like, it doesn't even, but here's the thing. After three or four days, you're not really as hungry. So I could've kept going 10, 11, 12, 13 had I not just had that peace to keep. So your body doesn't, because usually you think, day one, I'm starving, day two, I'm really starving, day three, I am three times starving, day four, I am quadruple starving, day five, I can't even think about it.

It doesn't work that way. Your body, once it says, okay, this joker's not gonna eat. See, I can dress different and talk different Wednesday night. This guy's not gonna eat. Okay, let's just stop bothering him as much.

Let's go back now into how God designed us to start feeding off of that stored fuel that we have, and your body goes into ketosis. It starts breaking down ketones from your fat storage as your primary source of fuel, and it's very clean-running fuel.

That's why you sleep well, you feel great, your mind functions even better on ketones, fat, than glucose, sugar, because the body was designed to do that. You can look in the book, I reference it. A man in Scotland fasted over a year on water only at the Scotland University.

I think he went from 450-some pounds to 185. People say, well, he's not starving. He's switching his fuel source. See, that's why people say, why are you starving yourself? Well, I'm starving myself.

I'm not starving myself. Starving is what they looked like when they liberated the concentration camps in World War II under Hitler. That's what a body looks like when it's starving. That's not healthy, it's not good.

Kids in third-world countries that we see, I've had friends that would go and visit, and they'd come back in tears because they can't, they don't have enough food to help these kids that are starving.

You start to see the skeletons come through. You start to see the stomach out, and they just look like they're about ready to die. That's starving. So fasting isn't starving. It's switching your fuel source, and your body loves its sugar and glucose, glycogen, and it loves that, and that's why, that's why it switches, or that's why you feel hungry, because your body's craving that.

But once you get through that craving, it starts to burn the fat as fuel. Now, granted, muscle is also a readily available fuel source but your body goes into something called protein-sparing mode. I'm going back and forth between the physical and the spiritual.

So your muscle is protected. How, why God designed it that way, to spare the muscle, it's important, but to go primarily into body fat reserves as fuel. See, it's how God designed us. So it's not starving.

It's not weird. It's not Old Testament. It's actually how we were, I believe it's how we were created. I, I, and this is one thing I would change from which I used to teach. I used to, I used to teach, eat every two and a half hours.

Right, every, small, frequent meals keeps the metabolism going and different things. Now, there's so much research out there showing that you should actually, you can avoid breakfast, and it's not going to hurt one thing because you're already fasting, aren't you?

That's why it's called break fast, break fast. You're already breaking the fast. So the most experts suggest going longer in the day and allowing, because what happens when the body is not given food, now it can heal itself because digestion, assimilation, assimilization of food takes a massive amount of energy.

50 of your body's energy is used in breaking down food. There's also called cellular activity. At the cellular level where your body's actually being damaged by breaking down this food. Why, because kids are taking in Captain Crunch.

Your body goes GMOs, harmful additives, refined sugars, food coloring. I don't know what this garbage is. What in the world are we gonna do with it? Let's detox the body. Now, the liver, the kidney, all these organs are working extra hard to remove this thing that is not healthy for the body.

So that brings extra, extra damage to the body, to the health of the individual. So I'm gonna get on that in a minute, but let me just finish here. But some argue fasting is too extreme. I think I hear that the most.

And I would agree, but aren't we living in extremely difficult times? To me, desperate times call for desperate measures. Listen, is the opiate crisis going to get better? It's skyrocketing. The alcoholism, food epidemic, obesity levels, all these things are an epidemic.

And I don't say any of this trying to make people feel bad. I say it to try to help people. To help, they'll feel so much better, and they'll have so much more energy, they'll be more active, they can do more of what God's called them to do.

So I personally believe that extreme measures require, well, what did I say? I said that backwards. Oh, we're living in extremely difficult times. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So yes, we have to make a difference.

We have to fight against this. So my goal in this whole thing is to really fuel the desire for fasting. I'm sure there's a lot of questions right now. That's why we have the book available, Fasting and Feasting.

So you can take that, you can look at it, you can look at all the scriptural references I have in there for fasting. I even break down what diet is best looking at all the biblical text. Oh, is it the meat eater's diet?

The vegan? The vegetarian? The raw food crowd? The paleo? The paleo? The ketogenic diet? What's going on here? Well, how did God design us? You want me to tell you real quick? You knew you would say that.

Well, here's the problem. Here's the problem. I actually threw down books. Like, this is ridiculous. This guy says this, this guy says this, right? Dr. Axe, eat a lot of meat and dairy. Joel Fuhrman, very, very well respected in his field, says no, not a lot of meat and dairy.

This guy says no, meat and dairy. This guy who runs a fasting clinic only eats fruit and hasn't been sick in 25 years. So what is going on here? Well, we look at the biblical text. If you just look at the biblical text, we know, I think we can all agree, that we were created to consume life-giving food from plants.

They're actually called phytochemicals. That's what a plant food is. Phytochemicals, antioxidants, all these things. The food in plants actually helps to restore and renew and regenerate the body and heal it.

It's interesting that in Revelation, the tree is given and the leaves for the healing of the nations. So we see that that's how clearly how God designed us. I could take you to the benefits of mushrooms.

Amazing, amazing. What about curcumin and turmeric? Those things, one is the root, one is the chemical in the root. The phytochemical in the root. Both of those have huge healing properties. What about onions, asparagus, blueberries, strawberries?

All have different phytochemicals that affect the body differently and can bring healing to the body. And with true stories, I've told you before, but it might fit in right here. My daughter was not breathing well at night.

Like that, at night. She'd wake up, oh, hold on, I can't deal with this too much longer. I'm worried she's gonna die in her sleep, right? So we take her to a nose, ear, and throat specialist. He's like, oh my Lord, she's way up here on a 10.

You gotta get her down to Children's Hospital, get the adenoids removed, the tonsils removed. She's not gonna be able to, I mean, this is not gonna get any better. Want me to schedule it? You know, MRI, all sevens, okay, hold on, hold on.

So we just went back home, and I'll just admit to you, we were not being very good on her diet. You know, friend's house, family's house, different places, and okay, eat this, whatever. We changed her whole diet, everything changed.

Everything changed. Because we're now giving the body what it needs to heal itself, not a bunch of garbage. But see, that's my thing with, I love physicians. I have doctors I could name, Garrison Medical, Dr. Chowdhury, cardiologist, Dr. K at Joshua Medical.

A lot of these guys are friends of mine. I can email them, and they'll have my blood work done. I can read my own blood work, and I love doctors. We need them, we need nurses. But many of them are not trained on how the body works.

So here's a pill to take care of this versus going to the root cause and having the body prevent it. People say, Shane, high blood pressure, this. Here's a statin drug, which is $100 billion a year industry versus, hey, hold on, let's take a look at the diet.

Let's look at their cardiovascular activity. Are they, can they lose 25, 30 pounds? Can they start cleaning up their diet? Can we get them off of medication rather than put them on? But so doctors, to their credit, are actually trained to help the person by relieving the symptom.

Here, take this, this'll fix it, but it doesn't usually get to the root problem. Most doctors I know drink way too much coffee, eat the wrong foods, and they don't know a lot about this area because they think they have four hours, Jamie, four hours of training in nutrition for their whole career in schooling.

Four hours. And we're treating the body with things that actually, when you give somebody something, that is a toxic thing. All drugs are toxic. Go on to and look at, I think it's Cipro, the antibiotic Cipro on WebMD.

It now has black box warnings because it actually messes with your RNA and your DNA. And they're like, oh, we shouldn't be having, there's black box warnings. But now doctors just prescribe, hey, take this for a week.

Let's see if this helps. Let's see if this helps. This is dangerous, toxic things that we're giving to people. Now, is there a time and place for it? Of course. You know, if you've got, hey, I've got staph infection.

This is not getting, I need to heavy-duty something to wipe it out. Okay, I'm not saying that. What I'm talking about is using wisdom in these areas. And actually, I took a long rabbit trail. I forgot where I was.

Oh, what the diet was. You're wanting to wait to get to that. All right, so now, with that as the background, right? Knowing how we were designed, knowing how we were designed, we were designed to eat life-giving food.

So most of the things that we eat, including me for many years, have no life-giving benefits, do they? Come on, guys, Doritos and a Coke? You show me one ingredient, one ingredient in Doritos and Coca-Cola, or you stop by Subway and you get a sandwich with sodium nitrates, bicarbonates, partially hydrogenated oil, cheese that's not pasteurized.

It's tons of toxins. And we eat these things, and we, well, let me get the Sun Chips because they say natural on them. And we think, oh, and the lemonade, which has 40 grams of sugar, and working with the IGF, the insulin-like growth hormone factor one that they've linked with cancer, and we're just taking all these things in with nothing that's giving us life.

Really, if you think about it, watch, put the broccoli on your kids' plates, that will still be there when dinner's over, won't it? The things that are so healthy that are actually the things we don't want.

Is that so true in the Christian walk overall? The things we need the most are the things that are the hardest. So just to answer your question, I believe that our primary food must be living plant life, from anything, you name it, from everything I just named.

Vegetables, fruits, beans are very healthy, in my opinion. Anything ground-originating, here, make it simple for you. Does it come from God or man in a factory? What is it? My wife tries to trick me sometimes.

But Shane, it's the organic Doritos. Organic Doritos. All right. I won't break down the label for it, but that is a better choice than the normal ones, but still not a good choice, right? Just because any time they have to put natural, enriched, vitamin C, calcium-fortified, it means something's been taken out, and that's not really good.

They're trying to promote their product more. So we have to be wise as consumers. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it's challenging. People say, but it's too expensive. Well, so is the Starbucks habit. I mean, where do we, and if you shop around, I found big, huge organic strawberries for 2 .99 at Vons, if you hit the right places.

Blueberries are big for 2 .99. So you can find it if you look. And what I mean by organic, I don't get weird, like new age movement and different things. All I'm saying is I would like a carrot without pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides sprayed on it.

And actually, now they're putting the chemicals into the soil and into the fertilizer, so it's called GMO, genetically modified organisms, and they begin to take the DNA of wheat, the DNA of something else.