On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (03/09/22), Hank continues talking about fasting, which is one of the spiritual disciplines that transform us, and all too often gets neglected. In considering the subject of fasting, one cannot help but think of one of the most wicked cities of antiquity. Its wickedness so pronounced it had become a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty. Thus, God commissioned the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh. There he proclaimed that the great city would be utterly destroyed. In sober response, the Ninevites proclaimed a fast, “and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.” “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:5, 10 NIV). And the great Assyrian city is not alone. Many nations throughout history have fasted and prayed for the mercy of God, including the United States of America. The normal human mode of existence depends on the ingestion, digestion, and metabolism of food and water. As Jesus makes plain, however, there is an alternate energy supply. This He referred to when He spoke to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” Shortly thereafter, “His disciples urged him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about’” (John 4:13-14, 31-32). This was the way of the Master. Communicating spiritual realities by means of earthly, empirically perceptible realities—what might best be described as living metaphors.