Saturday, August 17, 2019

Fasting

I preached on fasting this morning and invited the listeners to check out this blog for more content.

Lately I've found I have more content to share than time to do it in on Sunday mornings.

In this case the extra content is from a book.

In his book Celebration of Discipline (which I highly recommend) Richard Foster shares the portion of a journal from Elizabeth O'Connor regarding her experience of fasting. I found her progression helpful and fascinating:

1. I felt it a great accomplishment to go a whole day without food.  Congratulated myself on the fact that I found it so easy…

2. Began to see that the above was hardly the goal of fasting. Was helped in this by beginning to feel hunger…

3. Began to relate the food fast to other areas of my life where I was more compulsive…I did not have to have a seat on the bus to be contented, or to be cool in the summer and warm when it was cold.

4. Reflected more on Christ’s suffering and the suffering of those who are hungry and have hungry babies…

5. Six months after beginning the fast discipline, I began to see why a two-year period has been suggested.  The experience changes along the way.  Hunger on fast days became acute, and the temptation to eat stronger.  For the first time I was using the day to find God’s will for my life.  Began to think about what it meant to surrender one’s life.

6. I now know that prayer and fasting must be intricately bound together.  There is no other way, and yet that way is not yet combined in me.”

When fasting progresses from focusing on myself to focusing on God, we start to get it!