Fasting Forward – part three

I grew up very contentedly on a diet heavy in crispy bacon, rich slabs of pot roast, and made- from- scratch mashed potatoes. I prefer my veggies to be swimming in cream sauce or anointed with cheese. As for sweets, hey, even at 50 + I still consider them to be a major food group. When we moved back to the Midwest from the Cape eight years ago, my going-away party featured a gorgeous life-sized Hostess cupcake, complete with cream filling and a giant white squiggle on top.  My friends know me well.

So how does a farm girl switch to a diet – for 7 weeks anyway – limited to fruits, unadorned vegetables, whole grains, and water?

No one needs to convince me how healthy it is, but health alone wasn’t enough of an incentive for me to adopt a Daniel fast diet during Lent this year.  As I shared last time, I want to hear from God.  Before a comment is posted stating the obvious, of course one can hear from God no matter what they are – or in my case are not – eating. It’s not about the food.

Precisely. So what is it about fasting – the intentional decision to embrace an ancient biblical discipline – that has so changed my life this past month?

All I know is that when I stopped focusing on what I want and what I thought I needed, God has given me what I truly wanted and didn’t know how to get. Unlike my husband, who is the most physically and spiritually disciplined person I know, I have been neither.

Healthy diet? Nope. Consistent time in the Word? Hardly. Regular exercise? Occasionally. Daily journaling? Now there we’ve had progress, but even that has been a struggle.

But not this past month. Somehow the discipline of fasting has jump-started something else in me: a desire to say no to the easy and convenient in favor of embracing something more.  More time with God, more time on the elliptical and in the Zumba studio, and best of all a renewed dedication to persevering through the books of the law as I’m reading through the scriptures chronologically this year.

Heaven forbid, quite literally, if this sounds like boasting. There’s nothing praiseworthy about doing that which I should have been doing all along. I’m eligible for AARP, for goodness sake. This passage from Isaiah 58 has been feeding me this week:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

“Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

When it comes to fasting forward, I’ve got a long way to go.

Fasting Forward – Part Deux

Between 40-50 hours each week in the office, family needs, pastoral care with Mike and my personal speaking and drama ministry, life already moves at warp-speed. So why do I want to fast-forward my spiritual life?

I’m hungry to hear from God, is all. Sometimes when you’re that hungry, the only way to be fed is to fast.

 In my last post, I mentioned that the month of February held two significant firsts: my first book tour as a publicist, and the beginning of my first real fast. Like lots of people, I’ve fasted for brief periods of time in the past. However, I’ve never taken it seriously as a spiritual discipline.

 Jesus did, though, and in His public ministry He taught His followers what to do when, not if, they fasted.

 Mike and I decided to begin a “Daniel fast” together on Ash Wednesday, and we’re now in our fifth week.  When it comes to spiritual maturity in this area, I’m a toddler, but this I know to be true:

• We don’t fast to bend God to our will but to discern His. We’re the ones who need to change. He does not.
• Self-deprivation is not an end in itself.  We don’t fast to please God, appease Him, or to chalk up spiritual brownie points. We give up in order to get. More of Him, and less of ourselves.
• We don’t have to totally understand a discipline like fasting in order to practice it. All I know about the computer I’m typing on is that it works.

 Mike and I both recently read a book that has supplied terrific practical helps for our Lenten fast: The Daniel Fast, by Susan Gregory. Susan is a popular blogger (http://danielfast.wordpress.com) whose journey into the discipline of fasting was borne out of her own need to hear from God.

 “Daniel fasts” are named after the Old Testament prophet Daniel, who asked King Nebuchadnezzar that he and his companions be allowed to forego the feasts of the court in favor of a simple diet of  “pulse” (food that originates from seed, including fruit, vegetables, and whole grains), and water. Unlike a normal fast when only water is consumed, a Daniel fast is a partial one, restricting meat, sweets, dairy products, and all leavening agents.

 I’ll share more in my next post about our personal journey into an extended Daniel fast, including the food products that have been a welcome discovery.

 As Susan Gregory demonstrates so effectively in her book, “Sometimes you are so hungry, the only way you can be fed is to fast.”

Fasting Forward

What do a book tour and a Daniel fast have in common? Both can be spiritual experiences, and I had my first taste of each last month.

During the heart of the month of February, I had the privilege of traveling with author and Bible teacher Beth Moore on a four-city tour to promote her new book So Long, Insecurity. Tyndale’s marketing department had set up book signings for Beth in Atlanta, Houston, Birmingham, and Nashville, and my role was to coordinate the store events on site along with media interviews and travel arrangements.

Beth is one of my all-time favorite people as well as an extraordinarily gifted writer and teacher with a heart bigger than all of Texas. Working with Beth and her colleague Michelle from Living Proof Ministries was a blast, but what blew me away was meeting, greeting, and talking with the thousands of women – plus quite a few guys buying books for their beloved wives – who came to the nine store events. These were not just readers waiting to meet their favorite author, but students coming to thank a cherished teacher.

 I was deeply moved watching Beth greet each person waiting in line by name as she signed their books, and she never turned down a request for a hug or a photo. Many women were in tears at the opportunity to personally meet the teacher who has done so much to encourage them to follow hard after Christ. Others needed to relate a personal story to the woman they know so well through her public ministry. Time and time again Beth would stop, hold a sobbing young woman close and pray for her while stroking her hair gently like the mother that she is.  When I returned to the office I told my colleagues that this was not a book tour; it was a ministry tour – a profoundly spiritual experience.

Ash Wednesday marked the start of another new experience for me last month: my first Daniel fast, so named after the foods requested by the biblical character Daniel in the book that bears his name: fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains, and water. Mike and I decided to observe the Lenten season together this year by undertaking a Daniel fast. It’s not a diet but rather an intentional decision to forego the usual foods we eat in order to focus on spiritual disciplines. Jesus assumed his followers would occasionally fast in conjunction with prayer; I am chagrined to think of the decades that I have ignored this discipline. Odd to think that you can fast-forward your spiritual life by actually slowing down and allowing God to speak to you in new ways.

 We’re now three weeks into our Daniel fast. I’ll share what we’re learning about “fasting forward”  in my next post.