Fasting 2
April 8, 2010
What do you do when you are faced with sorrow in and around you? What happens in your soul when you encounter tragedy or experience a sacred moment? There is certainly no shortage of pain and hurt in our world, in our lives. And if we live attentive lives we are bound to encounter divine sacred moments or events in life. What responses are appropriate for such a time as these?
Often the Bible joins prayer with fasting as a way to respond to life’s not so happy side. Prayer is natural in such times because of real helplessness when facing such unhappiness or grave event. The psalmists, for example, often lament life’s miseries, attacks of enemies, and the distance they feel toward God. Prayer is spirit/Spirit conversation.
Fasting, on the other hand is body talk. It’s our body responding to grief and sorrow, to sacred moments. Scot McKnight says in his book on fasting that at the very core of fasting is empathy with the divine or participation in God’s perception of a sacred moment. When death occurs God is grieved. When his people sin, God grieves. When his people are oppressed God experiences sorrow. Fasting is our participation in the grief of God and of others. It is important to get at the truth that fasting is a response to events or circumstances that already happened. Fasting is not an instrument to get what we want from God. In fasting, we are gifted with the opportunity to pay attention to God, feel the compassion of God for us and for others, and live in the freedom or grace given to us to serve God by doing his will.
To illustrate how fasting is a response, consider the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement that Leviticus 23:27 speaks of. On that day Israel confessed its sins, God covered (atoned for) their sins, the temple was purified, and reconciliation occurred.
So here we see that a “grievous sacred moment or event in the life of the people of faith. On that day they confessed sin and found atonement [covering, erasure] and forgiveness.” On that day the people of God practiced a form of denial of themselves. That means they afflicted themselves or “afflicted their throats.” This is fasting: afflicting ourselves by withholding from our throats the comfort of food in response to the grievous sacred moment. The third element in fasting is the response that is the repentance that is represented by fasting bodily.
Why all this talk of fasting? Because the Church in North America is facing such a need to call on God in prayer and fasting in response to grievous sacred moments in our present day society and church. Our litany of sins is too long to number. But the Holy Spirit has a handle on that and in our groaning our Lord Jesus will intercede to the Father on our behalf. In order to enter fully into this sorrow (the prevalence of sinfulness, the lack of a desire for holiness even in the church), we are called upon, as the Israelites had in the past, to respond in prayer and fasting (humbling ourselves before God). Our Day of Atonement is ever present. Shall we not enter where many before us did, even our Lord Jesus Christ?
Would you consider joining me in responding to our lack of holy living or grievous sacred moments, with broken hearts? If you are able, and have no medical cause not to, would you set aside one day a week (Sundown to sundown. If that is too much, aim for one day every two weeks or a month) to fast in response to the situation we find ourselves in? I will set aside Mondays (Sundown Sunday to sundown Monday) of each week to pay attention to God, to see and feel compassion for our plight in the church and the world, and to act and receive the grace or freedom to seek God’s favor in our land. I am inclined to think that if God would answer our prayers (fasting is praying with our bodies), cover our sin, and heal us with holiness by his Holy Spirit, fasting would be part of our response.
Make us alive again to your presence, O God. Give us the vibrant faith we need to live holy lives. Give us one and all in your church to become robust sharers of the Good News and disciple making servants of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In our dire strait, awaken and transform us for Christ’s sake. Amen.
N.B. If you are reading this and wish to respond to this call to fast in response to the grave situation in the church and society today, would you be so kind as to comment by saying “I will do my best with God’s grace to join others in fasting and prayer.”
Fasting 1
April 8, 2010
The Role of Fasting in Spiritual Awakening
Most exhorters to spiritual awakening like to mention the duet instruments of prayer and fasting. These Siamese twins are prevalent in revival talk. But how does fasting work? Biblically that is?
Confusion about fasting abound. Many writers consider fasting as an instrument to get things from God or to get God to act in response to something we need: direction in life, some answer we need desperately. In the case of revival some Christians call on us to fast in order for God to favor us with revival. This is of course well intentioned. However, it is a biblically an inaccurate reason to fast. This is not wrong per se. But to be true to the Scripture, fasting is not about getting things from God. We may get results that come after fasting but not because of it. There may be an outcome to fasting, but the outcome, whether there or not, is not the same as the reason to fast. We don’t fast in order to get something from God. Rather, biblical fasting is mainly about responding to something God is doing or to something that has already happened in life.
That something is a key to understanding the reason for fasting. I am convinced that those through whom the Holy Spirit of God used to usher in His awakenings, revivals, and transformation knew what biblical fasting is. They knew to fast because they knew the reality of society and church. They did not fast to bring revival; they fasted in response to what they saw in society and in the church. Their intended goal was to respond rather than to make things happen. Fasting to make things happen is like making deals with God: “I fast, you dispense revival.” Well, God is not in this business of making deals.
Biblical fasting is always in response to life and to God’s actions. A life well lived is never short on sacred moments, tragedies, and sorrows. A life lived in the presence of God cannot but respond to such pain. The most natural response we humans have at our disposal to deal with life’s sacredness, and pain, its joys and sorrows, is to abstain from food. Tragedy or sorrow always demands a response. Notice how we refrain from eating at the death of a loved one or in case of serious injury! Often in Scripture the response to such life events is prayer and fasting. Not for results but as a way of entering the sorrow of our lives and that of others.
We have such a prevailing condition in our society today as well as in some of our churches. A tragedy of huge proportions has taken place over several decades in our country and our churches. The situation has become intolerable. Sin is rampant in and outside the church. Our dropout rates are phenomenal. Life completely sold on God (regeneration) is rare in our midst. It’s not the norm. Many of the people who are called by God’s name are not living up to that name.
Shall we not enter into this sorrow? Shall we remain aloof to this tragedy? Shall we not embrace our divine call to enter into the action of God and respond by prayer and fasting, as our Jewish/Christian heritage teaches us to do?
The first aspect of a call to fasting is to see the reality, the bleak reality of nominal Christianity (Christian in name only). The reality that says I can call Jesus savior but never mind him as Lord. The reality that says I’ve got my ticket stamped for the train whose destination is heaven, but never mind the ride there. I’ll just grin and bear it, if I can. Cheap grace is living without self-denial, without willful sacrifice, without intentional dying to our selves. This is the broad path and gate.
Spirit of the Living and Loving God, fall fresh on your Church!
Spirit of the Living and Loving God, fall fresh on me!
Melt the dross of my sin and cleanse me from within.
Give me eyes to see, the brokenness in and around me.
And seeing, help me to enter into the sorrow, the tragedy,
In fasting response to Thee.
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