Fasting was a major means which God used to draw me back to Himself when I was living in complacency and compromise. I could barely recognize the life of compromise I was living in (it was partially denial) when God started to highlight the everyday Christian discipline of fasting as a grace He wanted me, and all His Church, to enter into. I realize, looking back, that this was a beginning point of Him convicting me of living in blatant immorality and idolatry as a Christian. As clouded as my mind was by what I term the "compromise cloud," my weak love for Jesus was not false in His eyes. I'd like to share part of God's redemptive work in my life personally through fasting that you may be encouraged and provoked to enter into the grace and the normal Christian discipline of fasting.
It was clear to me as I graduated high school in May 2004 that I was not to attend college, but that there was something else the Lord had for me. He had given me faith to believe He Himself would equip me with whatever skills or knowledge I needed for where He brought me in life. I had always been enamored with the verses in the gospels about loving God with all your heart soul mind and strength and how it tied to the second commandment, loving your neighbor as yourself.
August 2006
After waiting nearly three years for direction into the Lord's promises for my life I, like the Israelites in the desert, got pretty restless and looked for my own solution to end the waiting period. I assigned myself ministry to those the Church rarely touches, the party people. I was not given this by the Lord, but decided that surely I was to be the one who loved them (my neighbors) as myself. I submerged myself in a lifestyle of partying and was soon walking in the same brokenness the ones I came to serve were. I had my defenses up to God because I was walking in disobedience, but I had real zeal for His love to be shown to these. I had no tools or empowering of the Holy Spirit for this ministry. I learned in a hard way, why obedience to God's ways is vital.
August 2007
I jumped into a local christian liberal arts college for lack of being able to hear God's voice clearly and moved in with a party friend. Weekends were crazy and sometimes weeknights just as much. Only by God's grace, in a moment of clarity, my roommate and I opened our Bibles and read through Romans and discussed it one late Sunday night end of October 2007. The next morning we were up at 7:00am for breakfast (a rarity for party girls) to read 1 Corinthians. During that breakfast we agreed to fast all week, only eating at breakfast as we read the Word together. We had no background knowledge or understanding of the rewards of fasting except that, "God is better than food and we need more of Him." Interestingly enough, we made it through the week by asking God to fill us with Himself every time our stomachs complained. We returned promptly to the party scene that weekend. God had subtly awakened hunger for righteousness in our spirits without our recognition of His sovereign hand drawing us deeper and deeper into His heart while cleansing and delivering us of idolatry and immoral lifestyles.
March 2008
I transferred schools at semester because of the restlessness in my heart for more than the average 20-something's college experience. It was at a school where I knew no one that God really started to get my attention as my previous roommate and I partnered in across-state weekly fasts as we had in the fall 07 semester. I spent more hours alone with God in those three months than I had done in the last two years combined. As I read the old testament, His story of love for the people He created spoke to my hardened and complacent heart. He highlighted Abraham's radical obedience, and Noah's bold faith that God would faithfully do what He had promised them. I was being delivered of unbelief and idolatry through the vehicles of fasting and prayer. He was showing me where I had clung to dead loves like alcohol, tobacco, drugs, shallow relationships with men. He confronted the unbelieving thoughts that had been victimizing me with His truth: He is faithful to do what He's promised. His love did not and would not fail me. He was calling my heart to remember the first things, loving Him with all my heart soul and mind. My heart had been softened through this gift of hunger for righteousness. Repentance came rushing from the depths of my heart. I heard Him clearly tell me to pack up and leave college as soon as possible and that He would greatly bless a heart of obedience. I returned home to wait for His promises and lean on His goodness. He is still fulfilling His promise to me with the rewards of most raw continual encounters with His tangible presence, deliverance and revelation of Himself in His Word...more than I had ever experienced in the 22 years previous.
