The Challenge (Fasting IV)

What are some areas for fasting? We simply need to look to God’s good gifts in the world. Remember, fasting is detaching, for a season, from the good things to which we’ve become (or might become) overly attached. It’s recognizing and correcting over-dependence. As Tim Keller says, idolatry—the great sin of Israel which serves as a warning to us—is making any good thing into an ultimate thing.[1] It’s bending our knee to something and asking it do something which it was never meant to do. Take food, for example. Enjoying food is a good thing, meant to delight our souls. But over-indulging and abusing it—trying to make food our emotional savior—can be crippling. A relationship with a spouse is a good thing, meant to shape us and teach us about God’s love within a covenantal relationship. But when we make that (or any other relationship) the place from which we get our sense of identity or our ultimate emotional security, it can put a strain on the relationship which ends up corrupting the relationship itself.[2] We are meant to have an inner sense of self in God which frees us from finding our identity elsewhere. 

Unfortunately, our human hearts will often wrest (or try to wrest, anyway) a sense of security and stability from good things, trying to make them into ultimate things. Here are three basic categories for good things we are meant to enjoy but which we might also misuse.

Food and drink  

         including alcohol, sugar, junk food, and so on 

Technology 

including screen time, social media, and various forms of entertainment 

Shopping and spending 

         including anything we don’t really need 

These three categories are not definitive nor do they cover everything from which we might fast, but they do cover quite a bit. You might fast from food for a day, or you might fast from sugar for a month or more. You might adjust your diet to eat only fruit and vegetables and proteins for a time (though consult with your doctor before doing so). You might limit or fast from consuming media—the TVor the Internet, for example. Or you might put down your smart phone except for using it to communicate with others (the original use of a phone before they became super-computers available to us at all hours). You might fast, as I said above, from buying anything non-essential for a period of time.

But again, these categories are not comprehensive. I remember, at one point in my life, being so concerned with reading and study that I was perhaps becoming overly attached to it. Then I read the words of Ecclesiastes: “…my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out.”[3] Not only did I read these words of Scripture, but they also read me; they pierced me, and I took a period of time to fast from reading. Reading, of course, is a great thing, but I was becoming so attached to my process of study. I was overly concerned with sounding smart, and it was crowding out space in my soul.[4]

Fasting from reading is an unusual fast, and indeed, you might need to choose an unconventional fast that is specific and meaningful for you. This, too, takes discernment and listening to God’s Spirit. While our hearts are uniquely the same, the shape of our souls is different. Whatever the case, the goal, above all, is to experience freedom in our soul, such that we experience God’s nearness and are empowered to love as He does. To that end, look over each of the three areas above, as a starting point, and take a moment to note the place(s) in your life where you most incline toward hedonism. Write it/them down in the margins of this page. 

Now, here’s the challenge: choose one thing from which you will fast in the next month.

You get to set the parameters—what and how and for how long. Make sure it’s something that’s a challenge for your soul. Something that will make you a bit (or a good bit) uncomfortable. Set the time when you will begin and end, in advance, and when the times comes, engage the fast with commitment and curiosity. Commit to see it all the way through, which will create self-confidence, and engage it with curiosity, to see what you learn during the fast.

Finally, while you are fasting, notice each time you are gripped by the longing for the thing from which you are fasting. When that happens, just notice, without judging, the impulse. And then, ground yourself in prayer by saying: “I want X (whatever X may be), but I redirect that energy and longing to You, God. You are enough for my soul. Help me become open to you.” Repeat this process over and over: notice your desire, then release it, directing your energy back toward God. As you practice this, you will expand the capacity of your soul to walk in trust before God. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Keller, Timothy. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope That Matters. Viking Press, New York, NY. 2009. See Chapter 1.

[2]Our ultimate sense of self cannot come from any other human being. It must come from a source that transcends any person. In Christian thought, transcendence comes in experiencing love or beauty, which are signs pointing to the ultimate Love and the ultimate Beauty, God. 

[3]Ecclesiastes 12:12.

[4]To fast from reading then was fasting from the lust and hedonistic pleasure of wanting to appear smart. Cf. 1 John 2:16.