The First Time I Ever Fasted

The first time I fasted was about 6 ½ years ago.  It was during Lent on Good Friday, I think.  For whatever reason, I was really nervous about fasting.  I wasn’t sure why I was fasting exactly, and I definitely didn’t get the spiritual discipline around it.  I went to bed on Thursday night late, just after having a snack.  You know, sort of topping my tummy off, since the next day promised to be a hungry day.  Did I mention that I didn’t really understand why I was fasting?  A bunch of people from my church were fasting that year, so I decided I would fast too.

That night I had some seriously freaky dreams.  I had repeated dreams of bad guys taunting me with food.  They were waving various foods in front of my face, laughing and telling me I couldn’t have any.  I woke up in the morning sort of laughing at how my anxiousness about fasting had gotten into my head, but cringing at how self absorbed my focus obviously was.  I clearly remember praying that the Lord would show me in scripture why I should fast that day, so that I wasn’t doing it just because I thought it was the thing to do.

In that moment, the Lord laid Philippians 3:10 on my heart:  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.  That nailed it for me.  If suffering in such a minor way as being hungry for a day -- not even the teensiest little fraction of what Christ suffered for me --  delivered the privilege of being in fellowship with Christ, then sign me up.

Then this week, Cate was working on her scripture memory in preparation for writing out Psalm 51 by memory.  (This is an amazing thing to me to have that discipline and ability to memorize scripture.)  As I was coaching her through it in a few places, the words that were quickened to my heart were these:

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I

would bring it;

You do not take pleasure in burnt

offerings.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart,

O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:16-17

And that is my prayer as we move into this time of fasting from excess, beginning with food. 

I pray, Lord, that you would take my broken and contrite heart
and knit it with yours. 
Break my heart with the things that break yours
that I might use my excess for your kingdom,
that by intentionally removing excess from my life,
I would make more room for you. In Jesus’ name.