posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
'Get to Know Him' is the theme for the 21 day corporate fast we are entering at church this week, and I thought I'd take my 'Something Bible Study Related' Tuesday posts and do a little discussion of fasting in general.
See, I grew up in an independent Baptist church in the middle of Indiana farm country. There was a joke going around years ago about a teacher who asked each student to bring in something that symbolized some aspect of his/her faith...and the Catholic child brought a rosary, the Jewish child brought a menorah and the Baptist kid brought a casserole dish. That ain't far from the truth...fasting wasn't something even mentioned in that congregation.
The Southern Baptist church we were in for 20-something years after we moved south did have a few (very few...maybe 2?)fasts in the time we were there...but they were only of the one-day variety.
So fasting as a discipline was not something that I was terribly familiar with when we came to our current church. We've been here for 7 years now, and I'm really just now beginning to get what it's about.
But, one thing I haven't done yet is to do a serious look at fasting in the Bible. So I'm going to have a go at that for the next few weeks...who fasted, why did they fast, how did they fast...I'll be looking for answers to questions like that.
Since this idea just hit me last night, and I've been running errands in the rain all morning and haven't had time to really sit down and work through a syllabus, I'm going to make up a syllabus off the top of my head. It will, therefore, be subject to change, but here's what I'm thinking right now:
Jan. 6 - Intro
Jan 13 - Fasting in Faith
Jan 20 - Fasting seeking Answers
Jan 27 - Fasting as Submission
Feb 4 - Fasting for a Time
This is even farther out of my comfort zone than the Advent study...maybe because I need it myself?
Should be interesting.
If you want to read a great book about fasting, look at "When Ye Fast" by Joy Haney. I think that it would be great supplement to any Bible study that you are doing on this subject.
ReplyDeleteAmy
I might check some books later, but right now I just want to see what's in the Word for myself....I guess that's a holdover from the my days in Bible Study Fellowship in which we were instructed to not check outside sources until *after* we'd done our own study. Part of what I want to do with the 'Bible Study Tuesdays' is encourage folks to dig into the Word for a personal revelation...hope that makes sense! But I do appreciate the recommendation! ;)
ReplyDeleteI'll be checking back in on this one no doubt! I've grown up with the idea of fasting, though with my kids we don't fast food (no pun intended) due to low blood sugars and what not. This time we're giving up TV, video games that kind of thing so that all the kids can take part in it. I can't wait to read your next post. :)
ReplyDelete~Jess