Things I learned on my fast

So last week I began a fast, and usually I wouldn’t mention this but the story won’t make sense unless you have the full context!

I have fasted before but this one was kind of random, but I felt led thus I obeyed and started the fast. It was good. Then it was ROUGH. Then it was okay. Then it was tough again. Then I felt great. Then I felt like I couldn’t do it. Then I felt like I could do it forever. All this in the span of a day.

I remember feeling so frustrated and incapable. It was extremely difficult and I was having such a hard time.

On the second day, after the “I can’t do this, I want a cheeseburger and fried rice and pizza and everything else under the sun” valley, I asked my husband to pray for me. He told me I needed to open my Bible but I ignored him. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to eat. Nevertheless I went outside to talk to God. I brought my Bible. It helped. I was honest. We worshipped. We prayed. & the Lord helped me see something.

I am weak.

Not because of my lack of food, but because of my human nature. I am weak.

I thought that was the problem. Turns out that’s just the fact of the matter and when I admit that, everything gets better. When I admit I’m weak and I need God, everything changes. It shifts from my ability to his strength.

I thought I was doing such a terrible job because I couldn’t keep my mind off food and I almost gave up like 6 different times. I knew the point was to occupy your mind with Christ when hunger strikes but that was HARD and honestly I was acting OUT. Self pity. A rising hungry attitude. I wanted my way and my thoughts were not holy no matter how much I tried.

Jesus helped me realize that I couldn’t do this without him. I couldn’t fast without him, but even moreso—I can’t honor him without him. I can’t give him what he deserves without his Spirit. I can’t love him sincerely without him. I can’t have a pure heart without him. I can’t put him first without him. We in our flesh are just not enough. That set me free. I started asking for help and being honest.

Things got much better after that. I realized that I was not going to be able to do this off of experience or sheer will but I was going to have to stay in the presence of God.

There he revealed another problem. The reason I wasn’t running there in the first place when I got weak. I wanted to live for God and keep my life too. An impossible task. In order to die to yourself completely, you must be completely reliant on the Lord. In order to do that you must give him everything. Time. Resources. Heart. Mind. Everything.

I didn’t want to do that. I still wanted to keep my Saturday plans with a little Christ on the schedule.

It doesn’t work like that and neither do our lives. We have to completely submerge ourselves in Christ to have enough strength to obey. This world is tempting. Our flesh wants to rule us. We have to make a choice. Obedience comes with a cost.

Yesterday I read an excerpt from “Upon Waking”, a devotional by Jackie Hill Perry (JHP). It reads,

“There is Noah who was told by God that He was about to destroy everything except his family. Meanwhile, everywhere had a different conviction. To them God’s justice was a million miles away from their consciousness. They were busy with life and the ease that comes with a seared consciousness. They were eating and drinking no and getting married. Noah, however didn’t have the same luxury as the world around him. He was busy working to save his life. You don’t think it took endurance for him to believe that Hodge was telling the truth, especially when it seemed like nobody but him was concerned with God’s judgement? You don’t think he saw the relaxed nature of everybody else’s life and coveted it sometimes?”

JHP went on to discuss how obedience comes with a cost. Moses knew it. Abraham knew it. Every character in the Bible knew that this life to follow God came with a cost.

During my fast, I felt kind of like Noah. A part of me felt relief that Noah felt that same mix of feelings and wasn’t perfect in his pursuit of obedience. Like Noah, I felt envious of the ease and relaxed nature of the lives of those around me sometimes. Were they being asked to die this much? They were just doing whatever they wanted with their time, while my time was not my own. Were they having to pray this much? All their time was reserved for themselves, led by their own desires. They didn’t have to think about others.

It sounds terrible but I wanted to rot on YouTube instead of intercede for those around me. Sometimes I wanted to do what I wanted to do instead of spend time worshipping God.

There comes a time when the world becomes an idol. Our entertainment becomes an idol. This is not to say that there is no space for rest, relaxation or joy. God values those things but too often we allow our desires to lead us into neglecting the call of God. Our own desires become an idol and they must be laid down at the feet of Jesus and repented for. We want things to be forever comfortable but that is not the call of Christ. In fact it’s quite the opposite.

Matthew 16:24-26 says,

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

We are called to deny ourselves for the kingdom of God, in the pursuit of Christ.

Noah’s reality highlighted something else though. It reminded me of the importance of community in this walk with Christ. We are called to be set apart, Deuteronomy 14:2, says, "You have been set apart as holy to the LORD your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure”.

It is not easy to walk against the crowd. It’s easier to just go with the stream. The Lord tells us, “2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” in Romans 12:2.

We are unable to do this without brothers and sisters in Christ. Just the other day, I had a friend over and we were watching one of my favorite shows. The episode that played next celebrated a topic that we are absolutely against, and I told her I was going to turn it off and she encouraged me to do so. Together we stood set apart, saying no to something that the world may have said was perfectly okay. This is the point of the body, to link arms in obedience to the Father so that we may endure and turn away from wickedness.

Like many of us, our inner selves questions, “Why do I have to do this?”. Paige Stitt McBride puts it like this: “there’s this assumption that obedience keeps us from our full potential for joy and that disobedience unlocks access to joy otherwise denied to us.” This is the original mistake in the Garden. Adam and Eve had everything, the Lord withheld nothing from them except that which was not good for them. The same is true today. The Lord gives freely, as a good Father does, but he instructs us in the way of life, cautioning us against the things that will lead to death. The deception today is that our way, our desires, our feelings are what’s best and that the Lord is keeping us from “some greater good”.

I look back at my own life and I look at what unlimited freedom gave me. Doing whatever you want does not produce life, in fact an unchecked desire can burn down everything meaningful in your life.

In Exodus we see the Israelites complained in the wilderness after the Lord delivered them from slavery in Egypt. The Lord was leading them to the promise land, a land flowing with milk and honey with more they could ever ask to imagine but because they were uncomfortable along the way, they complained. “We had all the food we wanted in Egypt” yes and whips on your back to match. “We had everything there was to drink in Egypt” yes and buckets of sweat to go along with the heavy labor they had you doing each day.

We are the same. We are uncomfortable along the path to glory and we complain. We want the freedom to do as we please but at what cost?

Rejoice in the protection. Rejoice in the no’s the Lord gives. Rejoice in the boundaries and restrictions. It is a mercy. It is a gift. It leads to a fuller life in Christ.

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