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The Lost Art of Fasting

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Fasting isn’t a popular topic. The moment the subject is broached you almost see people become physically uncomfortable. The conversation switches rather quickly.

We live in a world where we worship pleasure and entertainment. We are forever on the quest for what feels good, what we want to do, and what is fun for us. Enjoying life isn’t wrong. God loves a joyful spirit, but when our focus rests predominately on orienting our worlds around what we want, then we know we are out of line with the will of God.

Fasting reorients our will with God’s will.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Matthew 16:24

A follower of Jesus is instructed to deny himself before bearing the cross. We can’t pick up a cross while carrying our self-pleasing, flesh-serving desires. There is a proper order of operations. Deny first, pick up second.

To deny yourself is to humble yourself. To realize you don’t sit on the throne of your own life. To choose to put yourself behind your desires for the pursuit of pleasure and entertainment.

Only then, in this state of humility, can we possibly receive the strength to pick up the cross of Christ and follow Him. The cross is a symbol of sacrifice over selfishness. It’s a sign of humility over pride. It’s a sign of service of meism.

To pick up the cross is the ultimate act of humility. When we fast, we are laying down our pride and choosing a posture of humility. It’s a choice to deny ourselves of what we want.

My first fast was a 24 hour food fast. The closeness I experienced with the Lord, the mental clarity I received, and the restful soul I embraced caused me to extend my food fast another 24 hours. The Lord gave me a dream that night. I remember realizing how much I’d missed out on all the years I chose to disregard the gift of fasting.

I tried writing a list for you of the benefits of fasting. It was too long and I deleted the entire list. I decided I want you to discover the benefits for yourself. Each fast reveals a new reason to set regular seasons of fasting.

Instead of giving you all the reasons I find fasting of great value, I will share my top four.

4 Benefits of Fasting:

  1. Self-control. Choosing to go without something forces me to exercise self-control in an area I don’t normally. But what I’ve found with fasting is that like muscles that are exercised regularly, they strengthen with repetition. When I fast, I become more disciplined in all areas.
  2. Mental clarity. When I fast, I quickly realize how much I think about myself. All day long I’m thinking about what I want to enjoy, what I need to relax, what I want to do for fun. I would never have believed I thought about myself so much until I took things out of my life that took up mental space. When that mental space was cleared and I was released of the burden of thinking of myself so much, my thoughts became clearer. I began to think deeper rather than on the surface of my desires.
  3. Soul rest. Feeding our selfish desires is tiring. It wears a soul down more than we realize. It’s a beautiful gift to our soul to break from what we think we want and need. Inside a calmness settles in.
  4. Strength. We can do hard things. When we choose what is easy, we become weak people who can’t handle the bumps of life. Fasting is hard. Hard grows us stronger.

4 common types of fasts:

  1. Most obvious is food. This is also one of the hardest. When I fast from food, I enjoy a deeper, richer prayer life. I am face to face with my weakness all day long. When my stomach aches, I turn to God and pour my heart out to Him. It’s a beautiful way to connect with His tenderness and allow Him to actually be my bread of life and my living water.
  2. Social media. I do this a couple times a year. Each time I wonder why I don’t make it permanent.
  3. Alcohol. I just did an 8 week alcohol fast I plan to share about with you in more detail. If you are a christian who drinks alcohol, I think this one is an absolute must.
  4. Sugar. Incredibly hard if you have a sweet tooth, but so rewarding.

Challenge:

  1. Choose a type of fast. Be sure it’s not an easy one. Don’t fast from chocolate unless you are eating it A LOT! Choose something that is hard. It’s worth it.
  2. Choose a period of time. 24 hours, 7 days, 1 month.
  3. Set start and end date.
  4. Tell your spouse or an accountability partner so they can pray for you during your time of fasting.
  5. Dedicate your fast to the Lord. Pray without ceasing. Be open to what God reveals to you.

Maybe Our Best Gifts Shouldn’t Be On Social Media

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Listen to the audio recording of today’s post here

A couple of weekends ago, I had 3 full days to myself in my own home. I can’t remember ever having that much time to myself. It’s a real gift to the introvert. The days approaching I dared not allow myself to get excited for fear plans would fall through.

The moment my family drove away, I pulled out my spray bottles of vinegar and peroxide, my dusting cloths, brooms, and mops. And I got to work. I cleaned the house from top to bottom with no distraction knowing it would stay spotless for days. All my household duties were complete by lunch and I now had the gift of time ahead of me.

I’m a productivity lover. I fill every pocket of time with a task. Sometimes I hate that about me. I resist rest because there is always work to be done. I never sit in the evenings. After the kids go to bed, there is always work to be done. I tell myself I will sit down and rest when everything is done. The problem is that it’s never all done. So I fall into bed exhausted every night.

I had a choice to make with my free weekend. I could do what I always do. Get stuff down. Work through my long list of never ending tasks. Or I could be wild and crazy with my time. I could do nothing but rest.

I battled only briefly when I decided that God was giving me a gift and I wanted to receive the gift in full. No one likes to give a gift and feel the person they gave it to didn’t really appreciate the gift fully. They half used it because they didn’t see the real value it held.

My soul was in desperate need of a gift. The gift had been given to me. I had a choice. Resist the gift or receive it in full. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for our own soul is to receive fully the gift of rest when it’s offered to us. 

For me to accept a gift of rest isn’t easy. To rest, I had to battle guilt. Guilt over not working through the tasks. Guilt over sleeping later than normal. Guilt over reading a book for hours when that simply felt too luxurious.

It’s not just my task list that taunts me. It’s the good things even. I could use that time to write, to work on women’s ministry. The list of ways I could serve grew long. And the guilt clung tightly.

I am well familiar with the person I become when I’m serving or working on empty. When I don’t pause for a soul refill, I become a person I don’t want to be around. Bitterness creeps in. I’m quick to judge others who aren’t serving to the same capacity I am. I become a flaw pointer, noticing everything that’s not right in the people around me. It’s ugly. And it loves to rear its head when I’m in desperate need of rest and soul filling.

I’m an all or nothing kind of person. So when I made the decision to fully accept the gift of rest, free of guilt, I went all in. God did the rest. I didn’t plan one second of that weekend and I couldn’t have had a more beautiful weekend.

The first evening I spent with my dear friend, mentor, and prayer warrior. She was steps inside the door and I was captivated by her stories. I could sit and listen for hours. In fact, that is just what I did. When I finally stood up from listening, I felt lightheaded and dizzy. How long had I been engrossed in her life’s story? When I looked at the clock, it was hours past my normal dinner. A gift. How often does food in my home revolve around clocks and hungry boys? How delightful to find myself lost in her stories, losing sense of time completely. We continued sharing stories for hours over shared salads, chocolate cake, and hot tea. Bedtime was not dictated by a menacing schedule waiting for me.

The following morning I woke leisurely, which never happens. I ordered the guilty thoughts to go back to where they came from so I could wrap my arms around the gift of this very moment. Enjoying the quiet morning watching the dawning day break through the curtains.

The rest of the day I spent on my screen porch reading. Hours upon hours of reading. Finishing one book, moving on to another. A gift I had never received before. Dinner out with a friend, back home to curl up and read for another round of hours.

By the time my family arrived back home, I felt like a new person. I had nothing to show for my weekend except a smile and a settled heart. My soul felt full again, ready to serve and give and love. I was ready to be all in again.

In 13 years, I’ve never had a break quite like that. I didn’t post on social media how much I was relishing in my rest. There were several moments I found myself so grateful for the rest and felt that urge to shout it from the rooftops, which typically equates to posting on Instagram or Facebook.

I refrained. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it was that I wanted to keep my gift a secret for a time. I wasn’t ready to give up the intimacy of the moment or to invite others into the privacy of that time. Maybe if the world came in, the rest would escape.

Maybe it was that I realized that in 13 years I’d never had a moment like that, and to share those moments would only breed discontentment and jealousy to a mom who is hanging by a thread. How often have I been hanging by that very thread only to scroll through social media and see pictures that made me want to question my own life?

Maybe a part of me thought posting those moments was such a far stretch from my real life that I couldn’t bring myself to put them out there.

I’m not exactly sure. But there is something that felt so right about holding those moments close to my heart that weekend. Sharing them with only the real live people I interacted with. Cherishing the full gift for those brief moments, afraid if I shared them, they’d slip away. They wouldn’t be a sweet gift just for me anymore.

As we head into Mother’s Day weekend, may we hold our moments close to our hearts. May we cherish the intimacy of the gifts we receive rather than share them with the world. May we remember that in our excitement over our moments, sometimes we create deep pain and discontentment in another women who isn’t currently showered with love. Or a woman who has never had an opened womb or a completed adoption. Or a mother who is working through healing relationships with her children.

Maybe the kindest gift to our soul this Mother’s Day is to fully receive the gifts we receive….and to keep it a little secret. Not inviting the world into those secret places. There’s something to treasure about the little sacred moments and gifts in a see-all, share-all world. And there is something to behold knowing that we didn’t unintentionally hurt a women who is in need of a gift but didn’t receive one.

 

When We Stop Trying To Figure God Out

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Before I began writing, I was a CPA. I still have that side of my brain, the part that wants to analyze, categorize, and finalize.  I want to look at life and see the full circle.

Typically, whatever I’m experiencing, I’m looking for what God is doing in it and through it. “Oh, that’s why that happened.” “Maybe God is doing this so that….” “I think God allowed this so that…”  Basically I’m trying to figure God out all the time. I want to understand God’s work in my life.

Sometimes I see how the different pieces of my life fit together, but sometimes I don’t. I look for what He is doing in the life of my children, my husband. I look at the problems we face, and I look for the reasons, the pieces that when put together can make it all make sense.

When Steve and I were younger (we’ve been together since middle school), he was quite the jokester. He still can be that way. But I was gullible and believed anything, and he got a real kick out of seeing what he could get me to believe. Then we would laugh at my naiveté. We’ve grown up. A little.

When he wanted me to really believe him, he would say, “Just trust me.” Not once did he ever ask me to trust him when he was actually kidding. He honored that phrase and held to his word.

Because he never broke my trust when he asked me to place my trust in him, he earned my forever trust.

God asks me to trust Him every second, every minute, every hour of my life. Unlike a boy or a man, God is incapable of lying to me because God is truth. God is faithful.

At times trusting God is easy. At other times it seems near impossible. The task is too large. The problem is unsolvable. The history is too extensive. The wounds are too deep.

No matter what we face, God whispers, “Just trust me.” Just trust me.

It’s simple, right? All we have to do is trust. He does the rest. Might not look the way we planned, but He is always good and right. The pieces might not fit the way we are attempting to fit them together.

A few weeks ago, my soul seemed more restless than normal. I could sense God telling me to still my soul, to calm my anxious mind, to simply trust Him with every detail of my day.

Maybe that is how my soul gets still. When I stop trying to figure God out. When I stop trying to see how all the pieces of my life fit together in one neat, tidy picture. I can’t see what God sees. Some of my pieces fit into the lives of others I can’t see, and so do yours. On our end, we will have incomplete pictures, but from God’s view, it’s a perfectly complete picture. Beginning to end, what we can’t see.

I vowed to stop the constant figuring out of God and to begin trusting Him more. On my own power, I can’t last long. Each morning I’m asking Him to help me simply trust Him. To hold up my hands in surrender to the analyzing ways I’m prone to and go back to the days I believed anything, but this time I want to believe that with God anything is possible. Even trusting Him with every detail of my life.

Isaiah 55:8

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

 

Romans 11:33-34

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?

Max Lucado writes in Before Amen, “In our desire to understand him, we have sought to contain him. The God of the Bible cannot be contained.”

I think I’ll stop trying to figure God out now. Like a simple, once gullible girl, I’ll choose to simply trust.

Trusting Him leads to deep soul rest. Deep, deep soul rest. I can let go of the need to understand, for only He sees it all. I don’t need to understand everything. I just need to trust Him. He is God, and I am not.

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