Prayer Practice: Fasting and Prayer

from my message on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014, from Matthew 6:1:, 16-18

Fasting.  Fasting is going without food in order to get closer to Christ.

It is not the Christian diet plan.  You may lose weight, but that is not the point of fasting.
It is not to manipulate God...or the government...or another person.
It is not for everybody.  If you have a medical condition like pregnancy or a heart condition, don't fast.  I don't recommend fasting for children. Don't fast if you are doing it on a whim.  Only fast if you are called to do it.
It is not done for show.  That's the warning that Jesus gives in this passage.  We don't fast in order to show others how holy we are.

For me, it is always fasting and prayer. Prayer and fasting are always linked.  The hunger we feel in our bodies reminds us to be hungry for God.  One church member here calls fasting, biofeedback.  Our body helps us remember to turn to God in prayer.  We fast to clear out, to make room for God to move in our lives.

It is an ancient practice.  We pick up our Bibles and find Moses the lawgiver fasting, King David fasting, Elijah the prophet fasting, Queen Esther fasting, the people of Nineveh fasting, and Anna the prophetess fasting.  Of course, our prime example of fasting is Jesus.  As he began his ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days of prayer and fasting.  At the end of that time, the Tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, change this stone into a loaf of bread."  And Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."  What we are really hungry for is a relationship with God.

We get our 40 days of Lent from this example of Jesus.  We prepare for the holy mystery of Easter by taking this time for prayer and fasting, to clear out the clutter of our lives, to grow closer to Christ.

I invite you to  a season of fasting and prayer.  You could begin by missing just one meal a week. That's what our Disciple Bible Study is doing this Lent.  Ten people skipping one meal for 6 weeks, we are going to take the money that we would have spent on that meal and pool it together.  We will amass a few hundred dollars that we will give to a mission.  My wife Cathy reminds me that more than the money, there will a freeing of time.  We will save the time we would have spent buying the food, preparing the food, and eating the food.  We will find 1 to 2 hours a week that we can redirect to prayer.

You might try a Danial fast.  Our associate pastor, Jim, put me onto this a few years ago.  You can read about it in the Old Testament book of Daniel, just 12 chapters long.  Daniel has been taken captive in Babylon.  He wants to show that his God, the LORD, is better than the gods of Babylon.  He goes on a 3 week fast, where he eats no delicacies, no meat, and no wine.  Basically, he is a vegan, eating only  fruits and vegetables, nuts and berries.  He comes out much healthier.  But the point was to show who really is God.

Cathy and I have practiced a Daniel fast in the recent past.  We did with a specific issue in mind.   What we found was that we grew less anxious and less invasive about this issue.  We were able to let go of our control and give it over to God.  It is good to fast with a purpose in mind, something you want to turn over to God, to show who really is God.

You could also fast from some distraction, like forgoing watching TV, or going on the internet, or getting hooked to social media or playing video games.  You could use that time for prayer.

You could also fast from some behavior.  I once had an associate pastor who used the season of Lent to fast from cursing.  You may not believe it, but we pastor can cuss.  After 40 days, she found that God had removed that tendency from her.

You may need to fast from overfunctioning, trying to do too much, overbooking.  I had a spiritual director who said that for Lent, she was not going to take on any new thing.  Of course, she was asked to lead a group to Rome and other holy sites in Italy.  She answered, "No."  What a powerful word.

Our fasting and prayer may reveal our deeper motives and desire and agendas.  It is a powerful spiritual discipline.

You may think that you are giving up something.  Thomas Merton came from a wealthy, privileged background.  He felt a calling to become a Trappist monk.  His friends thought he was crazy, giving up all that money and activity.  He thought of it as liberation, being freed up to worship God.

That is the point of fasting and prayer, simply to focus on God, to grow in relationship with Christ.  That is the good news I have to share.