A Slow Look at Fasting: Final Thoughts

posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
Jan. 6 - Intro
Jan 13 - Fasting in Faith
Jan 20 - Fasting seeking Answers
Jan 27 - Fasting as Submission
Feb 4 - Fasting for a Time
Feb. 11 - Fasting for Show
Final Thoughts

Amy asked me on the second lesson if I thought fasting for answers was more difficult than responding to God's call to a fast. I've been mulling that over and, for me, anyway, I think it depends on my desperation level. There've been a couple of crisis points at which I needed an answer...and, not only could I physically not eat, I could actually do very little besides lay on my face and cry out to God. That was a difficult time to live through, but it wasn't hard to fast. On the God-called fast I did last year (which rather indirectly resulted in this blog, btw), I ate what I felt instructed to eat and never really felt hungry at all during the three weeks it lasted. So that wasn't a difficult fast. The difficult fasts for me have been the called corporate fasts...the fasts of submission. That really is an act of personal discipline, and it is hard to stay focused during those times. I know our leadership has felt a call from God for the fast, but sometimes it's difficult to get my spirit engaged just from submission. And, I'll confess, not all of those fasts (there has been at least one every year we've been at our current church) found me in an attitude of submission and obedience. I went through the motions, but my personal results were minimal. Maybe I've just needed to grow some more before I could properly connect to what was happening.

However, there is one scripture regarding fasting that has come to mind over and over again and I think I'll use it to kind of close out this little look at fasting. It's in Mark's record of Jesus casting out a demon that His disciples couldn't budge (Mark 9:14-29). I admit this is a marginal reading in my NIV, but Mark relates that when the disciples questioned Jesus about why they could not cast out the demon, Jesus replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer (and fasting)." (verse 29).

Jesus had not prayed and fasted over the boy; I wondered for a long time just exactly what that meant. But, as I've gone over the scriptures for this little study, and that verse kind of simmered in the soup along with what I was looking at, I had a realization that it wasn't prayer and fasting that gave Jesus power over the demon...it was prayer and fasting that put Jesus into such close communion with the Father that he saw and heard what the Father wanted said and done in order for the boy to be delivered, so that's what Jesus said and did (see John 5:19). And the boy was delivered.

What I've learned is that fasting is a time of listening, of aligning, of focusing on God. And if I want to move from the level where I am to a higher level of service to Him, I've got to be aligned more completely, listening more intently and focusing more exclusively on what He wants said and done in every situation.

So...I need to purpose in my heart to trust Him to take care of me if I follow Him into the desert, seek Him until the answer comes, submit to and align myself with the body of believers and expect that, when the time for fasting has passed,He will do what only He can to to resolve the situation according to His purpose.