How does fasting (as a diet) make God feel?
6 minute read
A couple months ago, I sat in church as the communion plate was passed. Ohhh, just kidding, we don’t do that anymore because of the co-co, but instead we walk in and grab what might be the greatest invention to emerge from 2020 second only to the QR coded menus (sarcasm - paper menu plz), and that is this little communion-holder doodad shaped like an hourglass. On one side, there is a small piece of bread covered by a plastic, peel-able top, and on the other side, there is grape juice covered by another plastic, peel-able top.
Ok I have to digress and talk about growing up in an Episcopal elementary school. Y’all, we drank real wine from the communal cup starting at probably age 7. Do they still do that? Covid aside, does a first grader still walk up and drink actual wine? I sure hope so. Will an Episcopalian please let me know?
Back to the original story - the communion doodad is in my hand, and I glance at my watch. It’s only 9:30am. I’m supposed to fast today until 12pm. I feel a little bit of panic because I was very into the diet trend dujour of intermittent fasting at this point, and I ask myself - will this break my fast?
The thought to NOT TAKE COMMUNION because it would break my fast actually crossed my mind until I was hit like gong from the Holy Spirit saying, “are you kidding me right now?”
Ok He didn’t say that, I said that, but I have to believe it was an honest check of the Spirit because WOAH.
I was considering skipping one of the sweetest, most humbling, and might I add tangible reminders of what Jesus did for me on the cross because my fasting window wasn’t closed yet?
Gross.
Before we go any further, I need you to hear this: My wise friend Sarah once told me she learned from a pastor that convictions are personal.
So if you’re fasting right now as a diet, I’m not coming at you. I’m simply stating the work God has done in my heart on this particular path and the conviction I personally have felt with how I started to let it warp one of His gifts.
With this in mind, I’m going to back into why I started fasting in the first place.
Over the past year, I started seeing people I admired in the wellness industry talking about fasting, I saw and heard about it among friends, family, various social media personalities, and really anywhere I looked surrounding health or wellness.
I decided to try it because I found fasting to be an answer to a lot of my “problems” surrounding food.
It meant I could eat whatever I wanted. I have a heavily speckled history with food restriction, so diets (or food programs as they’re now disguised) with whole food group restrictions aren’t good for me.
Fasting glorified my gift of self-discipline. If I set a physical goal, I’m probably going to accomplish it come hell or high water. (Exhibit A: I trained for a marathon with a 3 month old baby - competitive, intense, too much - hi, it’s me).
I thought, This could be a 2-fer! I could utilize one of God’s amazing tools for prayer and surrender by fasting for the Kingdom annnnd for my health at the same time. Right?
WRONG. LIKE SO WRONG.
As I dabbled in walking this double edged heart posture mentioned in Exhibit C above, I became acutely aware of my misguided and warped thinking.
In God’s ever-loving kindness, it was a slow trickle though.
First, I felt a gentle nudging asking, “How does this make God feel?”
The verse from Matthew 6 you cannot serve two masters immediately came to mind.
What masters was I serving? Ohhh, cool, self and God. Ouch.
Buuut I still didn’t stop.
While still fasting and wondering whether I could do it for both myself and for God, I continued to ponder that question, and I remembered some of the truths I know:
God doesn’t need me.
God isn’t looking to me for approval.
But He loves me so much - even without needing me or wanting my approval - I get to worship the God of universe. I get to pray to Him because of what Jesus has done for me. I get to seek His face and read His word and learn about who He is.
I get to do those things. Not out of merit, but out of blessing.
So why, why, why would I choose to couple one of the ways in which I can honor Him with a way to honor myself?
That’s just not how it works.
One thing I’ve noticed about the Holy Spirit is that He typically warns me or nudges me of a conviction before the hammer comes down. It might be because He knows how sensitive I am to criticism (stay tuned for a blog post on that!), or if I take myself out of the equation (yes duh please remove yourself Narcissistic Nora), it’s because He is gentle and kind and my helper.
With this in mind, the slow trickle question of “How does this make God feel?” came to where the rubber meets the road while on a walk with my unabashedly believing friend and mentor one Saturday morning.
A couple weeks prior we had planned to meet for breakfast, and the day before, I texted her saying, “I’m fasting, so I’ll just be having coffee, but you eat all you want!”
Even texting that I felt a check - she’s gonna ask you why you’re fasting - but she never did. How kind of her and of God. I wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
However, on this particular morning walk, it came up. My helper, the Holy Spirit, had been nudging me for weeks so I was ready for it.
She gently asked me if I was still fasting.
I said something along the lines of feeling convicted about fasting and how I think my propensity to do it was a lot of old self baggage (body image, need to be thin to be valued, placing my worth in my appearance), and it just kinda reared its ugly head again.
I went on to say I wasn’t sure it was right to use this gift He gave me to honor and draw nearer to Him... to simultaneously honor myself through thinness.
She gently said, “I was curious about that. You need to write about this. I think it will help people.”
So, well, here I am writing about it, and I think it’s a good place to remind you of my statement of convictions being personal, so if this sounds whack to you, I get it. That’s where the Holy Spirit, your helper, will shine brightly and help you discern!
In the same vein, I’ve heard some whack stuff other people are convicted by that I just cannot even:
Music is the devil! Secular music has beat counts that are ordained by satan to warp you into worshipping him!
Yoga is satanic! Even doing it without saying the sanskrit names is glorifying lucifer!
Disney is murderrrrrrr. Watching Disney means you hate Jesus!!!!
Ok I’m obviously exaggerating some of these, but I hope you see my heart here. If music has a hold of your days and you wake up pumping Metallica and say “Jesus knows my heart!” then well… maybe that’s some bondage.
If you’re doing yoga everyday rather than spending time with the Lord, yeah well, maybe that’s some bondage.
I don’t know how to relate the Disney movie watching to bondage - OH YES I DO - this is a line straight out of Conspiracy Theories 101, so if you’re obsessed with finding conspiracy theories and trust virtually no one- well, you might be in some bondage.
SO.
For me, fasting was bondage.
The day of my walk with my mentor, I laid down fasting and haven’t looked back. I’ve felt a lot of freedom. I’ve also had to look some pretty big “old self” baggage in the face (for the people in the back… body image, need to be thin to be valued, placing my worth in my appearance), and it hurts.
Not gonna sugar coat it. It’s hard and it hurts, but for some reason, God has placed this battle in my life, and He keeps pruning me to take further steps to lay it all down.
Pruning hurts. But it’s a hell of a lot better than being stagnant.
If you are in bondage to something, or if you don’t know if you are, here are some practical tips (you KNOW I love me some tips) to either decipher if it’s bondage and/or how to get out of it.
First, ask yourself if the main objective behind {insert activity here} is bringing glory to yourself > God. Honestly I could fit a lot of things in this box, but the point is to just acknowledge it right now and ask for help.
Next, if the answer to the above is yes, you’re gonna think I’m nuts, but maybe consider a FAST from whatever the thing is!
Crawford did this with golf recently, and I’ve noticed such a shift in Him. Fasting from something that occupies a lot of your head and heart space can be such a beautiful way to surrender to the Lord. Also, if the answer to the above IS fasting like it was for me… maybe consider a fast from fasting! Take a week (even a day!) where you stop watching the clock (notice how often you do watch it), and then when you eat when you’re hungry, you can even say out loud, “God I’m doing this because I love you!”
Because you will be! To look at something in the face and say - nope, you don’t control me, my God does - is out of love, obedience and humility.
Pray through lies and discomfort as it comes. Journal it! If you start to feel weak or like you can’t do it, maybe this will motivate you:
Think of how much satan wants us to find our comfort and our joy in things of this world: achievements, thinness, success, pleasure… I’m not saying these aren’t blessings!!! But when they become the main focus of your worship - whew boy we gotta problem.
As I write this a lie keeps creeping in I want to address:
Mary Clay, because you’ve stopped fasting, you want everyone else to stop.
I’d be lying to the lie (is that a thing? ;) if I said that wasn’t totally true (Calvinism 101, anyone?), but the real truth is more nuanced than that:
I’m broken. I have mixed motives and feelings, but deep, deep down I want anyone in bondage to anything - especially if it’s body image related because that’s a heavy cross I carry - to know they’re not alone and that they have the choice of freedom!
Do you know what Freedom in Christ is? It means we are no longer slaves to anything of this world. Approval, success, work, training, eating healthy, working out - all good things - but they’re not the focus of our lives. We are free to remove ourselves from the equation of a+b=worldly success, to stop striving, and let Him drive.
For the record… I HAVE NOT FIGURED THIS OUT. IF I HAD, I WOULD BE IN HEAVEN WRITING THIS SENDING ACTUAL ANGEL KISSES AND NOT JUST ON MY FRECKLED FACE.
BUT I do know there’s a hope greater than anything I could do myself and that one day, all this striving to be who the world says I need to be will be gone.
So until that day, I will do my best to let Him lead to where I need to spend my time, effort and talent while praying to yield to the Spirit with any painful pruning because I know pruning is out of love for me, and I GET to love Him back.=
To wrap up the fasting portion of this, I want to be clear on a couple things:
Is fasting as a diet a sin? No.
Is simultaneously fasting for the Lord and for myself a sin? I can only answer for myself, but yes it is for me.
Is fasting for the Lord a wonderful act of obedience and a sweet way to draw closer to Him? Yes.
I can’t answer for you where this hits home, but I do hope it brings something to light that might be taking up more head and heart space than God wants it to. It’s my prayer this doesn’t cause anyone to stumble, and I also pray that at the end of the day, this simply helps you fix your eyes a little more on Him.
Father God, all-knowing, all-powerful, almighty! You know our hearts. You know every thought. You are not mad at us, you are not repelled by us, you love us! We come to you humbly asking for our hearts to look a little more like Christ’s. If there is something in the way of that - we know there are probably a lot of somethings because we are sinners, Lord - but we do ask you to gently nudge us to start making less room for that thing. In the process Lord, we pray for your gentle lovingkindness and for your name to be glorified! We know pruning means you love us God. We humbly ask for you to prune back where we’re caught in the weeds so we can bear more fruit for the glory of your Kingdom. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Scripture Suggestions for the Week:
Sunday/Monday:
Matthew 11:29-30
Look up the definition of a yoke. How does the image of you being yoked to Jesus make you feel?
Tuesday:
Ephesians 4:17-24
What old self patterns to you need to ask the Lord to help you lay down? What does it mean to be renewed in your mind by the Spirit?
Wednesday:
Matthew 6:1-18
Pray the Lord’s prayer and really think about each line.
Thursday:
Matthew 6:19-24
What “masters” other than God tend to take your attention? Pray through and confess them.
Friday:
Matthew 6:25-34
Choose a verse out of this passage to memorize this week.
Saturday:
Jeremiah 29:11
Do you believe this verse to be true? If so, praise Him for it. If not, do business with the Lord to figure out why not.