A Prelude To Lent!

Why Do We Fast?

It has been six years since I last fasted a complete Lenten season. Six years ago, the fasting experience was new to me and what came from that very sacred time has forever changed how I view and approach Christian disciplines. While fasting is a very personal time between God and the individual fasting, I do believe that it should also be a time of great witness. Anytime a Christian can relay positive experiences of grace and mercy from God to others in their influence, God is glorified!

So, why do we fast? Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline, shares that, “God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving His grace! The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that He can transform us!”

The idea is that we as Christians must seek our inner righteousness. This inner righteousness is most definitely a free gift from God who desires for us to work on our inner-self. This gift from God cannot be obtained through human efforts or even the greatest of will-power and determination. Only God’s grace and mercy can deliver such an abundant gift! When and only when we have allowed God to work on us from the inside, can we then be an outward witness to others! Paul said it best in Romans 5:17, “Those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness shall reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ!”

Fasting Must Be God-Centered, God-Initiated and God-Ordained! Even Jesus Christ warned others about incorrect motives of fasting. The idea of using good “religious” things to promote one’s self is always a sign of false religion. We must be careful not to allow the allure of ‘blessings and benefits’ to muddy the waters of pure intentions and God-directed journey! (That is why I must walk carefully over the next 46 days of sharing. The idea is to witness to God’s grace and mercy, keeping God in the forefront and myself in the background of this sacred journey.)

Why Do I Fast?

For years I felt that I made many sacrifices to God, leaning on the affirmation that I was doing just as much as my fellow Christian brothers and sisters! Then, one day, I came across a statement from a theologian that said, “We must come to the speedy realization that all half-way sacrifices to God are of no avail! “Where your heart is there will your treasures be also!”

Can you just imagine if Christ had made a half-way sacrifice for us! A visual comes to my mind: I see myself on my journey to heaven and getting half way there and all of a sudden my journey stops. I am just suspended halfway between my earthly home and my heavenly home. Not quite able to get all the way to those pearly gates because only half the job was done on my behalf! Thankfully, Christ sacrificed his whole self for us! Calvary was an altar, God’s altar! Christ laid himself on the altar of God at Calvary and shed His blood for you and me.

It was at the point of reading this theologian’s statement on sacrifice that I looked into my own faith and sacrifice and discovered that I needed to be willing to make full-sacrifice to my Lord and Savior! Halfway was no longer an option.

I am drawn to a familiar chorus often sung in my church:

Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.

Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.

Fasting allows me to give my all to God. It allows me to look into my own-self and examine the authenticity of my heart, my faith and my religious practice.
The last reason I fast at Lent is very simple. It allows me another way to worship God! Lent comes to remind us that ‘self-sacrifice’ is part of life lived in the light of the cross. It is the ‘LIGHT’ that prompts me to worship God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my love!

Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the Name,
Earth has no higher bliss.
--Fredrick W. Faber