Fasting

From time to time, I have friends that will ask me about my take on fasting, if you will. For those friends, this one’s for you… and its also for me.

It wasn’t until my junior year of college, at the age of 20, that I had my first fast. Somewhat surprising due to the fact that I had accepted the Lord when I was in preschool; it shouldn’t take a believer 16 years to get around to a part of the Christian walk that is so vital and helpful. For that year of schooling, I set aside every Thursday to fast and then it would be ended after my Thursday night prayer meeting. That year was definitely a growing year for me as I found out more about fasting; physically, theologically and emotionally.

My head always wants to make sense of these things and make it into a formula. I remember driving to work one Thursday, profoundly frustrated with my fast and whether or not I was “doing it the right way.” The thing that made sense in my mind was to add an element to this particular formula of Thursday fasts. I prayed to the Lord in my frustration and asked “What do you want? Do you want me to just not end it late Thursday night and just go to sleep to end it in the morning?” “No!” He replied instantly. I was quite taken back, because I thought that was the part that I, quite grudgingly, would need to add. He instead talked to me that He didn’t want that, He wanted my heart. So its not some religious practice that I have to do out of obligation? No, it’s a way that our hearts become rendered to His heart and that’s what moves the stuff around us.



When we try to make sense of spiritual things with a natural mind, we become confounded quite quickly. Take prayer for example. A non-believer thinking in their natural mind would say that that is a waste of time. At best, they’d think that there’s a little power in positive thinking, but for us followers, we know that prayer is a lot more than positive thinking. But thinking about it in the natural. You sit, kneel, lay or stand for however long, whether it be two minutes or several hours and you talk into the air. Its not something for the person next to you, because you’re not speaking to them. If you do a biblical model of this, many of your times will include doing this alone, hiding away so that no one can see you or hear you. And you commence talking into the air. Sometimes it seems we get inoculated to realizing that our prayers are in faith. Its not just what we do, because we’re at church or because we’ve done it since we were little. We do it in faith and we do it because it works. Its not a band-aid on a broken leg, its not trying to look at the bright side, its not positive thinking, its not futile. It heals people, its looking at and standing on the true side, its victorious thinking, its powerful. You are talking to the Creator of the universe, the Savior of souls, the Lord with the correct plan for your life, the God who is a Father to the nations. You’re talking to the One that matters. That’s prayer.

And if you want to light it on fire do this thing that makes no sense in the natural, fast. That’s right, set aside a time where you will not take any food and pray out of your hunger for God. Tell Him that He is all that you want. Tell Him that He is all you need. Tell Him that you love Him far more than you could ever love anyone or anything else. See what that does to your spirit and see what His Spirit does in you.

I want to avoid taking my experience and making it the rule for this is what happens when you fast, because I’ve found that so many people fast different ways and receive different things. To be clear, I’m talking about fasting food. Fasting other things is a good practice that the Spirit uses, but I’m talking about the traditional fast which is food. For those who have fasted other things as a decision to do it instead of fasting food, I want to challenge you to do a traditional fast. It may do you good to fast Facebook, because you don’t need it. Just wait till you see what God can do when you fast something that your body relies on. Anyways, I can’t tell you what to expect necessarily from any upcoming fast, because every person is different. Sometimes you receive revelations as you go along, sometimes you fast in silence from the Lord. Sometimes you end it and receive what you were praying and fasting for, sometimes you end it and can’t see any impact that you made. In any fast that is focused on the Lord and time is spent crying out to Him, He’s glorified and that’s what’s most important.

I remember one time a while ago mentioning this to my friend Joylyn and telling her about a week long fast that I was about to start to pray for Awadhi’s healing. Her immediate response was, “oh, there’s so much power in fasting.” Yeah, that’s right. There’s a lot of power in fasting and as I was embarking on my first week long fast praying for something that needed a touch of His power, I know that He moved. He also moved in the subsequent week-long fast that I did a couple months later with Clesi. We received breakthrough there as we received the word of Awadhi’s healing that will take place “from the inside out” as the Spirit said to Clesi. I’ve held on to that word since then and won’t let it go, but hold on to the promise and continue to praise God for the healing of my son.

I did another week long fast while I was living in Long Beach that definitely saw breakthrough in the three things that I was praying for. I was fasting/praying to break soul ties with another person. I was praying for the finances of my fundraising for TOA. I was praying for the Lord to give me direction as to why He had me in Long Beach. At the time I started the fast, I was a confused ball of emotions, I had sent out all my support letters and utilized Facebook, emails and “business” cards in my fundraising with like $200 of my $25,000 having come in. Furthermore, I found myself detached from my closest friends and with minimal income in a city where my only contact was this church that I felt the Lord call me to. I spent the week fasting and it happened to fall from Sunday to Sunday on the week that The Garden moved from the Baptist basement to Cohiba. The Lord spoke to me that week and it was so encouraging.

It ended with the Lord waking me up early Sunday morning with a dream where I received a gift and then the Holy Spirit didn’t allow me to go back to sleep, but instead told me that I was supposed to end the fast, because today was to be a day of celebration. I obliged and grubbed down on some cookies and then was able to fall back asleep. The following day at church was amazing. The Garden was packed out in our first Sunday at Cohiba and those of us that had spent all those previous Sundays at the Baptist church were amazed by the people filing in for our normal 6 PM service. The Spirit was moving and joy was in the air. It was the celebration that the Lord told me about in the wee hours of the morning. The next day I began to receive. As I was driving down to Newport to meet up with Clesi and Jeff, my Long Beach pastor, Darren called me and asked if I was interested in being the children’s pastor at The Garden. Check off prayer item number three and add some personal income as well. I was able to take a big step towards a healthier emotional life away from that person. And the floodgates of my TOA support really started pouring in as I made not only my launching number before leaving the states, but have now raised the majority of my support for the year. Yeah, fasting is powerful.

I want to share that testimony, because there is so much power in fasting and its specifically because we are rendering our hearts to the all-powerful God. He has those blessings, but if we’re not seeking Him, we’re not going to receive them.

So I find myself on Day 1 of another fast. This will be the longest fast that I’ve done before as I’m doing a three week juice fast. I put this fast before me and as I got closer and closer to the date, the Lord has given me things that I need to pray for. Obviously, the number one thing that I’ll be focusing is for God to be at work in my relationship with Melissa as we prepare for marriage. I’m not disillusioned about our relationship. Its blessed, its God-ordained, it has elements of romance, we are a match for one another. At the same time, I haven’t known her for that long and spending the start of an engagement on opposite sides of the world, wouldn’t seem to be ideal. I’m not naïve or at least I’m not trying to be. I know that a lot more can be done in the spiritual realm through fasting than even spending time together could do, so I’m doing what I can to have her and I walk in this engagement in God’s direction and favor and to be prepared for the marriage to start in the summer. So I’m praying for Melissa and a whole lot of stuff that is related to our relationship. I mentioned a big decision that I had to make and an option that I wasn’t previously aware of. I’ve made that decision and I’m waiting to see how it will play out. I’m also praying and fasting in follow-up to what God did in Asia. Its hard to believe that I’ve been back longer than I was there for. It was still such an important trip and I don’t want to miss the ways the Lord wants to move in the wake of that wonderful and powerful experience. I’m trusting God and I’ll be trusting Him with my prayers during this fast.

The Lord is all we need. The Lord is the only source of true satisfaction. The Lord is worthy of our love. He has given us the gifts of prayer and fasting to allow those realities to take place in our lives, for this we give praise.

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The Rundown: Not really a whole lot going on that’s too different. Lauren took off on Sunday so that’s one less friend around Moshi. Then Lydia left for a couple months on Wednesday, so that makes two close friends gone this week. I know the Lord has special things lined up for both of them as they’re visiting in the states. On Sunday, I had another meeting with the leaders at ICC which was good. I’m pretty sure that I’m preaching this Sunday so I’ll be preparing for that today and tomorrow. Your prayers are appreciated. On Wednesday night, I was able to get dinner with a couple friends, Phillip and Scott, from my small group here. The group is back together now that summer is over. Being back together means going from not at all back to spotty from week to week. Everyone’s so busy! Except me apparently. It was good to just hang out with those two. Scott has been working at another children’s home in Moshi and he is always interested in my take on the whole system and all. Its truly complicated to run a children’s home. Right off the bat, its not ideal and then you have all these cross-cultural issues that need to be addressed. It takes a lot of prayer to be sure. The kids are pretty good, except for a few being sick. You can pray for Helena and Justina (tonsillitis) and Awadhi (malaria). He through up yesterday and seemed quite devastated. I held him for awhile afterwards and then when I set him down to go do work, he shortly thereafter made it up to my office crying again and just sat on my lap as I continued my work. Poor guy. But other than that, all is well around TOA. Yeah, so that’s pretty much life right now. All is good. God is good.