More than food

 (This post is a wee bit long, forgive me.)

Fasting.

I'm not gonna' lie, out of all the spiritual disciplines, this is one that I have had a hard time grasping.  My southern baptist background, coupled with the seemingly lack of "popularity" for this discipline, perhaps explains why I am just now discovering the beauty, importance, and depth of this biblical practice.  I've always believed fasting to be biblical, I just believed it to be a biblical practice that didn't really apply to me.  It's for the "intense" Christians. 

There has always been this underlying belief that I don't need to fast.  Why fast when I can eat my big mac and pray at the same time? (Funny, but true!) To state it plainly, I had never fasted until now because I never understood how to fast in a God-honoring way.  "If I am going to fast," I told myself, "I'm going to do it with biblical understanding and pure motives, not just for the sake of doing it."  Well friends, by God's grace I now understand (at least I think I do) why it's important and biblical to fast.  This summer we had a speaker who came and spoke on various passages in the Gospel that talk about Jesus going off by Himself to pray...God in flesh, the One who knew the very heart of His Father, went off for extended periods of time to pray and be with the Father.  It sounds simple, but if Jesus chose to do it, should we not also? Am I taking time to be with my Father?  To enjoy Him, to talk to Him? David Platt, our speaker, also spoke on the passage about Jesus fasting for 40 days.  Platt said that fasting is a confession that chooses to believe and humbly declare to God, "I need YOU more than I  need food." 

Holy cow.

This rocked my world.  I fasted for 24 hours for the first time in my life yesterday, and I can honestly say it was one of the sweetest times I've had in my walk with the Lord. It is a discipline that I pray becomes a regular part of my spiritual walk.  I NEED Jesus more than I need food, or anything else for that matter, and fasting is a choice that expresses that truth. When I'm hungry, I pray...trusting and believing that God is faithful to answer prayer, faithful to sustain me, and faithful to satisfy me. 

"But the worst of all is that we have adopted and practiced fasting as a good work: not to bring our flesh into subjection; but, as a meritorious work before God, to atone for our sins and obtain grace. And it is this that has made our fasting a stench and so blasphemous and shameful, so that no drinking and eating, no gluttony and drunkenness, could have been as bad and foul. It would have been better had people been drunk day and night than to fast thus. Moreover, even if all had gone well and right, so that their fasting had been applied to the mortification of the flesh; but since it was not voluntary it was not left to each to do according to their own free will, but was compulsory by virtue of human commandment, and they did it unwillingly, it was all lost and to no purpose. I will not mention the many other evils as the consequences, as that pregnant mothers and their offspring, the sick and the weak, were thereby ruined, so that it might be called a fasting of Satan instead of a fasting unto holiness. Therefore we will carefully consider how this Gospel teaches us by the example of Christ what true fasting is.
The Scriptures present to us two kinds of true fasting: one, by which we try to bring the flesh into subjection to the spirit, of which St. Paul speaks in 2 Cor 6,5: “In labors, in watchings, in fastings.” The other is that which we must bear patiently, and yet receive willingly because of our need and poverty, of which St. Paul speaks in 1 Cor 4, 11: “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst,” and Christ in Mt 9,15: “When the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then will they fast.” This kind of fasting Christ teaches us here while in the wilderness alone without anything to eat, and while he suffers his penury without murmuring. The first kind of fasting, one can end whenever he wills, and can satisfy it by food; but the other kind we must observe and bear until God himself changes it and satisfies us. Hence it is much more precious than the first, because it moves in greater faith."   -MARTIN LUTHER