Jonathan Roumie
speaker
264 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Jonathan Roumie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Lent begins today is 40 days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving leading up to Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, the day Jesus Christ died on the cross and gave his life for humanity. Two days later, three days later, we say, if you include Friday. Easter Sunday, Jesus resurrects from the dead, and original sin, the stain on mankind is lifted through our belief in Christ. And so...
Lent, you know, for me, Lent is a time to, I think, simplify. And it's a time to sacrifice. And it's a time to draw myself closer through, you know, the way of the cross. Basically, the theme of Hal's Pray 40 Challenge this year is called The Way. And it's the way of surrender, you know, the way of Christ, basically. Yeah.
And everything that he did leading up to his passion death and resurrection is something for us to meditate on in that 40 days. Typically, we try to... we try to make some sort of meaningful sacrifice. Some people say, oh, it's a time to give up chocolate. Well, if chocolate is something that gives you joy and happiness, then yeah, that might be a good thing for you to give up for 40 days.
And it can be really hard. For some people like me, it'd be coffee. For some people, it's alcohol. For some people, it's cigars or cigarettes or something. We do asparagus every year. Yeah.
Does asparagus give you joy? Because if it doesn't, Tucker, I would think you may want to revisit.
Well, I start typically by going to mass, getting ashes, which I have not yet done. And then fasting on, well, especially Ash Wednesday, but typically, and it's not an obligation, but I like to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sometimes it's nothing but maybe water. Sometimes it's just no meat. Fridays and Lent especially, no meat. Fish, soups, broths are even okay.
It's like fasting from the flesh. You're denying the flesh. You're denying yourself. It's about denial. And it recalls Christ's 40 days in the desert prior to the start of his ministry when he denied himself everything, food, water, the temptations that he was faced with in the desert. He held steadfast and came out ready to basically start his ministry.
And the practice of fasting is, spiritually speaking, is super powerful.
I mean, if there's obstacles or challenges that you're experiencing in your life that just don't seem to be resolved through traditional prayer, you know, Jesus himself was confronted by the disciples at one point, I think they were trying to cast out these demons in their community and it wasn't working and they had been given the power to do that.
He comes up on them and they basically said, we tried everything. We tried, you know, cast them out in your name and everything. It didn't work. Why didn't it work? And he said, paraphrasing, some demons can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.
And so that's, there's an extra, it's like an extra superpower level that you get given when you commit to denying yourself the things that the body needs. with the intention that you are offering something up to God.
Yeah. Yeah. I've, um, there have been decisions that in my life that I'd really been, or not even people, I'll go, I'll go even more personal, um, people that I prayed for that were, um, we're sick we're in like a comatose state and through prayer and fasting remarkably on a particular day that I did this, came out of it. And they, for like weeks, just unresponsive.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a game changer.
Yeah. In fact, in fact, so to tie it to, to, to part of the reason why I'm here today, it's on Fridays in this prayer challenge on hallow, Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt handle the fasting portion of the challenge. So you go through this challenge seven days a week.
And on Fridays, which is the day we typically fast from meat, they get into the spirituality and the psychology of fasting, but the potent spirituality of denial and what that means. And it's super powerful, man. It affects change like few things do.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's something that I would pray about. Like if, for some people, having just bread and water is extremely difficult. Right. or even just like a bowl of soup or water, or like, you know, there's the, the church Catholic church has, uh, sort of, uh, as, uh, suggested guides.
So it's essentially one meal and like partial meals, not, not a full second meal, I believe is one meal a day. But if that's If that's too easy for you and you're like, well, that's not, I don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything by just one meal. Like I want to go no food at all and maybe just some water or a couple of pieces of bread, you know, bread and water. then that becomes your fasting.
So I think it depends, but it's always something that I take to in prayer first. Lord, how do you want me to approach this fast? How can I deny myself? What do you need from me in this fast? And how can I serve you better through this fast?
Well, I also find like even the Middle Eastern Christians, like the Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, they're much more culturally rigorous when it comes to fasting. Right. not just meat, but no dairy. And same thing with Muslims, no dairy, I believe no meat, no dairy, no oils.
There's a number of different levels, but the same thing with the Christians and my family, like, wow, we don't do, the Catholics don't do the no dairy thing, but yeah, you're right. I mean, here in the West, it's... It does make you wonder if... You say you're fasting, people say, why? Then you got to explain, you know, it's foreign.
Showing 41–60 of 264 · page 3 of 14
← Previous
Next →