"Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men."

Now watch this. Everything we have been talking about... the open hands, the generous heart, the releasing instead of grasping... this is exactly what Jesus did.

So what I'm seeing is this. Paul tells us that Jesus, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. That word "grasped" in the Greek is harpagmos. It means something to be seized, clutched, or exploited for personal advantage. Jesus had every right to hold onto His divine privileges. He had every right to clutch what was rightfully His. But He did not.

Instead, He emptied Himself. Not in the sense of ceasing to be God, but in the sense of foregoing the privileges and prerogatives that were rightfully His... in order to give them to a people who did not deserve it. That is you. That is me.

Here's what I need you to know. Paul puts it another way in 2 Corinthians 8. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." He had wealth. He released it. We who were poor received what we did not earn.

Can I just say that this is incredible? Romans 5 tells us that God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not while we were getting our act together. Not while we were trying harder. While we were still sinners. While we were still enemies. God gave what He valued most to a people who deserved the opposite.

That is the heart of God. And fasting... true fasting... forms that same heart in us.

This is why the goal of fasting is not gaining but becoming. Because what we are becoming is Christlike. We are being formed into the character of One who did not grasp but gave. The character of One who did not clutch but released. The character of One who poured Himself out for the hungry and the afflicted and the lost.

So every time your stomach growls and you feel that hunger, let it remind you. "I am practicing the posture of my Savior. The One who did not grasp. The One who poured Himself out. The One who gave what He valued most to a people who did not deserve it."

Church, God is not looking for people who can abstain from food for twenty one days. He is looking for people who are being formed into the image of His Son.

Tomorrow we will see what God promises when fasting does its work in us. The fast that frees produces a future.

Identify one privilege or right you have been clutching. It might be the right to be understood, the right to be comfortable, or the right to be first. Consciously release it today as an act of becoming more like Christ.