Living a fast; when our food becomes God

From the author of the blog, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet: I was asked through a comment on an earlier post to write on fasting. While a topic very close to my heart, I have to admit it's intimidating to "put myself out there" in regards to it. For a few reasons: First, I had a very real struggle with eating and my weight through high school and college that even showed itself again twice afterward. I've since had deep healing in this area, but I want to handle this topic with kid gloves as I know there are readers who still walk where I've walked. To receive the real fruit of fasting, the line between fasting food and weight manipulation can't be crossed. (Fasting food is not for those who are actively struggling in this area. More on this at the end of the post.) Second, I've "failed" over and over again. I may have broken more fasts than I've completed. My point in sharing this is not because I believe God desires for fasting to be perfected and that, to write about fasting, I need to be good at it. But to the contrary, I want to carefully communicate that fasting produces a "success" that isn't measured by how it's executed. I've learned this through my many fasts broken a few days or hours early ... and God's response. ***************************** God met me at my weakest moment - in fact, I think that provided the entryway for our true introduction. I had a relationship with Him for years that was built primarily (though not solely) around a construct of success. God gave me "my best life now", I thought. He added to my impact.  And the accolades which came as a result of that impact only fueled my conception that life with God translated into promotion. Then, the naive prayers I prayed when life was good were answered. God slowly, but mercifully, began to unravel my success. He allowed trials and subsequent pain that didn't fit my paradigm of Christianity. He uniquely leveraged circumstances to draw out the fears and insecurities which my success had served to mask. He undid me. And then He wooed me. He met me. He engaged with my pain and applied the kind of healing that only a Father can. He bandaged my wounds, and in the meantime my cold heart started to thaw. For these years, I felt like I was living a fast. The things I relied upon, even just the momentary pleasures of life that remained through all those trials, were drained. My food became God. I needed Him to get through a day, even just an hour. Most mornings He was the only reason my feet hit the floor beside my bed and didn't stay nestled under the covers all day. In this place, I couldn't really understand people who were lamenting about going through a whole day and forgetting to acknowledge God. My circumstances - and a new awareness of real depravity in my heart - had left me leveled. I was faced with the reality, day in and day out, that I was nothing without Him. During that time, He began to reconstruct my understanding of Him in such a way that I actually relished my weakness - because it was the very thing, the only thing, that brought me into the safety of His fatherhood. Voluntary weakness. That's what fasting is. Putting ourselves in a position to need God, in a way that runs counter to our daily life's cravings. So my stage was set to seek more of this, when life wasn't so hard. Circumstances began to fall into a better place and my heart felt the benefits of real emotional healing. I found myself noting, like those others I couldn't understand before, my days passing without an encounter with God, much less a recognition of Him. I wanted the "glory days" back when my flesh was weak but my heart was alive. I wanted the personal touch of God laced through my day. Enter fasting. Periods of time, sometimes days, others weeks, others just hours, where I said "no" to what I craved and "yes" to the weakness that invites Jesus. The form didn't really matter - at times I had a grace from God to fast all but water, and other times I fasted things like sweets and meat or solid foods - it was my resulting weakness that provided the entryway. I wanted to put myself in a position where I recognized my gaping need for God. Resisting the little things that provided for my daily highlights, made it so that only God would (and could) be my highlight. And somewhere in the awkwardness of being cranky, depleted, uncomfortable and hungry, His Spirit inside of me begins to take the wheel. My flesh takes a backseat. Cognitively, it makes no sense. On the days I fast, it feels like my productivity plummets, but somehow the sweet power of God trumps my weakness. So much so that I want to do it again the next week. It is good and so bad, all at once. I dread fasting days, but love what comes of them. Things I've prayed for (for months, oftentimes) take wings just after those fasts. And the ugly parts of my flesh, the part I plead with God to remove, not surprisingly lose steam after prayer and fasting. I get a taste of stepping off the treadmill of cycle after cycle after cycle of the same struggles, the same fears, the same sins. Fasting, somehow, produces breakthrough. God brings freedom when I have no strength to implement a victory plan. His ways are just so counter to this material world. And yet, I don't really like fasting. But I love what it produces in me. And the key is not being a "good" fast-er. The kingdom of God doesn't advance solely through discipline, in my perspective, but the eye of the father is on the one - like me - who falls seven times but, yet again, gets up. Fasting takes the intangible truth that God is strong and we are weak and infuses it into our soul. It is utterly humbling because it reveals how much our lives depend on things that aren't God. Like chai tea lattes. And regular meals. To fast is to desperately need God to carry it through. I broke a fast once by scarfing down a family-sized bag of peanut M&M's. It had probably been a year at least since I had even one. But they tasted so good (for about 5 seconds until my empty stomach was ready to revolt). And God told me to press delete, and start over. No shame. Get back up. Fasting isn't about self-will, it's about putting yourself in a place to receive desire. So even "failure", just as long as you don't quit, can produce heart-level results. For those of you who share my history with eating struggles, but haven't yet had victory (or those of you who are pregnant or nursing moms or who have health conditions which preclude you from fasting), there many things to fast beyond food. Television. Internet. Email. Phone. Just the noise of life that can be a crutch. Those things that, if removed, allow us to acknowledge our emptiness. It is in weakness that He found me. The years where I got the props from other people for my ministry and my impact and received regular kudos for my faith paled in comparison to the dark nights where Jesus met me in the barren field. And the ground that was taken in my life during that time was so vast, that I refuse to wait for another set of circumstances before I position myself to receive more of Him like that. In weakness. God speaks into our void. Fasting creates the atmosphere where reliance on that Voice is the only option. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days. Luke 5:35

"We have already succeeded."

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

-William Cowper, 1774

"What About the R.O.U.S.?"

from the mildly annoying yet still profoundly true allegory, Hinds Feet on High Places:


"Here are the two guides which I promised," said the Shepherd quietly. "From now on until you are over the steep and difficult places, they will be your companions and helpers.... They are good teachers, indeed, I have few better.... This," said he, motioning toward the first of the silent figures, "is named Sorrow. And the other is her twin sister, Suffering."

"....I can't go with them," she gasped. "I can't! I can't! O my Lord Shepherd, why do you do this to me? How can I travel in their company? It is more than I can bear. You tell me that the mountain way itself is so steep and difficult that I cannot climb it alone. Then why, oh why, must you make Sorrow and Suffering my companions? Couldn't you have given Joy and Peace to go with me, to strengthen me and encourage me and help me on the difficult way?"

Let Sorrow do its work, send grief or pain;
Sweet are thy messengers, sweet their refrain.
If they but work in me, more love, O Christ, to thee,
More love to thee, more love to thee.

"Humiliations galore..."

"The pattern of Christ, as set before us in the New Testament, is in every case a pattern of humiliation, suffering, sacrifice." "In every case." This made me search for confirmation or otherwise of so strong a statement, though I knew that the writer (Westcott) would not have made it unless he had been sure that it was true. Perhaps the question comes, We have common work to do (gardening, sewing, cooking, and so on), what have these three great words, Humiliation, Suffering, Sacrifice, to do with us?

Humiliation: Do we like to be praised? Do we find it difficult if mistakes are shown? Which matters most to us--that the work should be well done or that people should know that we did that work? Is our "I" in the dust?

Suffering: When we stand for truth are we ever misunderstood? Then what do we do?

Sacrifice: What comes first in our choice--our Lord's wish or our own?

If we answer these questions honestly I think we shall understand how we can begin to learn to follow the pattern set by Christ our Lord. He must have begun to follow that pattern when, to the eyes of the village, He was just a boy in a carpenter's shop.

--from Edges of His Ways, by Amy Carmichael

"I hate waiting."

And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you...blessed are all they that wait for him." (Isa. 30:18.)

We must not only think of our waiting upon God, but also of what is more wonderful still, of God's waiting upon us. The vision of Him waiting on us, will give new impulse and inspiration to our waiting upon Him. It will give us unspeakable confidence that our waiting cannot be in vain. Let us seek even now, at this moment, in the spirit of waiting on God, to find out something of what it means. He has inconceivably glorious purposes concerning every one of His children. And you ask, "How is it, if He waits to be gracious, that even after I come and wait upon Him, He does not give the help I seek, but waits on longer and longer?"

God is a wise husbandman, "who waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it." He cannot gather the fruit till it is ripe. He knows when we are spiritually ready to receive the blessing to our profit and His glory. Waiting in the sunshine of His love is what will ripen the soul for His blessing. Waiting under the cloud of trial, that breaks in showers of blessings, is as needful. Be assured that if God waits longer than you could wish, it is only to make the blessing doubly precious. God waited four thousand years, till the fullness of time, ere He sent His Son. Our times are in His hands; He will avenge His elect speedily; He will make haste for our help, and not delay one hour too long.--Andrew Murray

There is more of God to be had

The key to suffering rightly is to see in all things the hand of a merciful and good and sovereign God and "to live upon God that is invisible." There is more of God to be had in times of suffering than any other time. [John Bunyan said:]

There is that of God to be seen in such a day as cannot be seen in another. His power in holding up some, his wrath in leaving of others; his making of shrubs to stand, and his suffering of cedars to fall; his infatuating of the counsels of men, and his making of the devil to outwit himself; his giving of his presence to his people, and his leaving of his foes in the dark; his discovering [disclosing] the uprightness of the hearts of his sanctified ones, and laying open the hypocrisy of others, is a working of spiritual wonders in the day of his wrath, and of the whirlwind and storm. . . . We are apt to overshoot, in the days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be, when the trying day is upon us. . . . We could not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit, because there is no winter there.*

So Bunyan begs his people to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God and trust that all will be for their good. "Let me beg of thee, that thou wilt not be offended either with God, or men, if the cross is laid heavy upon thee. Not with God, for he doth nothing without a cause, nor with men, for . . . they are the servants of God to thee for good. (Psalm 17:14 KJV; Jer. 24:5). Take therefore what comes to thee from God by them, thankfully."

*We can include in Bunyan's sufferings the early, almost simultaneous, death of his mother and sister; the immediate remarriage of his father; the military draft in the midst of his teenage grief; the discovery that his first child was blind; the spiritual depression and darkness for the early years of his marriage; the death of his first wife leaving him with four small children; a twelve year imprisonment cutting him off from his family and church; the constant stress and uncertainty of imminent persecution, including one more imprisonment; and the final sickness and death far from those he loved most. And this summary doesn't include any of the normal pressures and pains of ministry and marriage and parenting and controversy and criticism and sickness along the way....

--by John Piper from http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1480_To_Live_Upon_God_that_Is_Invisible/

Trust Him, then

To have a sympathizing God we must have a suffering Saviour, and there is no true fellow-feeling with another save in the heart of him who has been afflicted like him.

We cannot do good to others save at a cost to ourselves, and our afflictions are the price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who would be a helper, must first be a sufferer. He would would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have been upon a cross; and we cannot have the highest happiness of life in succoring others without tasting the cup which Jesus drank, and submitting to the baptism wherewith He was baptized.

The most comforting of David's psalms were pressed out by suffering; and if Paul had not had his thorn in the flesh we had missed much of that tenderness which quivers in so many of his letters.

The present circumstance, which presses so hard against you (if surrendered to Christ), is the best shaped tool in the Father's hand to chisel you for eternity. Trust Him, then. Do not push away the instrument lest you lose its work." --from Streams in the Desert

Sing and dance in the compassion of God

"May all your expectations be frustrated.

May all your plans be thwarted.

May all your desires be withered into nothingness that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the compassion of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

Amen."

--Brennan Manning

Greater than raising the dead

"The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11.)

This was a greater thing to say and do than to calm the seas or raise the dead. Prophets and apostles could work wondrous miracles, but they could not always do and suffer the will of God. To do and suffer God's will is still the highest form of faith, the most sublime Christian achievement. To have the bright aspirations of a young life forever blasted; to bear a daily burden never congenial and to see no relief; to be pinched by poverty when you only desire a competency for the good and comfort of loved ones; to be fettered by some incurable physical disability; to be stripped bare of loved ones until you stand alone to meet the shocks of life--to be able to say in such a school of discipline, "The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?"--this is faith at its highest and spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer.--Dr. Charles Parkhurst