Written by Bridge Church Elder Dave Norbeck
Note: This is the third blog in our series following the season of Lent.
We have a tendency of giving ourselves treats. We deserve it, right? Nothing wrong with that! But have you ever noticed that with all the evil in our world, all the pain, that we are often imbibing more and more? That reflex to balance out our pain with pleasure. Seems just right, doesn’t it?
Only problem is, we are all a little (or a lot) bent on this side of eternity, broken in our judgments and prone to excess. Just a look at our scales tells us a story that cannot be true. Our waistlines and pant sizes don’t lie. We like to ignore that message that tells us our screen time this past week, or how many episodes we binged on Netflix.
“Hey, there is a pandemic, haven’t you heard!! It’s ok…”
...Or is it?
For millennia folks have discovered the value of feasting and celebration, but also the need for denying ourselves from time to time. There is a time for everything, says the writer of Ecclesiastes. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, mankind has been prone to excesses that need to be brought under control with self-denial. During this season leading to Good Friday and Easter, we would like to help with some thoughts on the process of denying self.
The Bible refers to this process as fasting. It was a spiritual process that put aside the physical needs for food because of a greater need for God. A desperate human desiring only to hear from God for deliverance from enemies, or healing from disease or a comfort in loss; a need for the sense of God’s presence, where nothing else was important. We see evidence of this in the Bible with leaders calling on their people to give up food to focus their attention to God: Israel in Judges 20:26, 1 Samuel 7:6 and 31:13; 2 Samuel 1:12; Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20:3; Josiah in Jeremiah 36:9; Ezra in Ezra 8:21; Esther in Esther 4:16; David in 2 Samuel 12:16 and Psalm 35:13-14; Joel in Joel 1:14 and 2:15; and even the King of Nineveh in Jonah 3:5. Jesus fasted at the beginning of his ministry for 40 days. God told the Israelites in Leviticus 16:29-34 and 23:27 that the people were to fast on the Day of Atonement with the Hebrew word meaning “afflict yourselves.” It was the idea of self-denial to focus all of yourself on your need for God and how you had fallen short.
Now as with all things that are done with repetition, solemness can be replaced by rote tradition where the act becomes mindless and meaningless. Also, a sense of abandonment of yourself to the Lord can be replaced by a worthiness because you are following God’s decrees. Both types of false fasts happened with the Israelites as both Isaiah and Jeremiah condemned in Isaiah 58 and Jeremiah 14:12. In the post-exilic period the people were now fasting in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months of the year remembering various events of the fall of Jerusalem and mourning it. Over time the religious leaders in Jesus’ day had transformed fasting from one day a year to repetitive times (twice a week-Luke 18:12) and did it with impure motive to bring attention to themselves. Jesus condemned this. Motives matter. Jesus thought it proper for His followers to mourn and fast when He was taken back into heaven (Matt 9:15, Mark 2:20, Luke 5:34).
So where does all this leave us? Should we fast just because we should? Did Jesus command us to fast? The answer to that one was no, but He did expect his followers to put Him first before everything else: Matthew 10:39, 16:25; Mark 8:25; Luke 9:24-25, 17:33; and John 12:25. Our problem is, as mentioned above, that we often fail miserably at this! And like the Day of Atonement for the Israelites, we need to take some time to “afflict ourselves,” to deny ourselves so we can focus more purely on Christ and where we need to shore up our relationship with Him, the things we can do to walk more closely with Him.
So how do we fast? Well, certainly start with something small and doable for you. The Jews would fast from sunset to the following sunset, meaning you would eat dinner and then skip breakfast and lunch (and snacks) and eat dinner the next day. If you feel light headed or dizzy from lack of calories, you can always take some fruit juice to keep you going. But you can also give up all kinds of other things like: Netflix, Fox News, TV, video games, shopping, movies and on and on. Whatever it may be that has taken up too much of your attention and has left little time for God. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what is holding you back from walking closer with Jesus. He will! Then have the courage to act on it. Ask Jesus for that as well!
That’s the practical side. The bigger point is not just denying yourself but filling that void with something. Something that will draw you closer to Christ: prayer, reading Scripture, acts of service, journaling, worship by singing or meditating on God’s attributes. These are all called the spiritual disciplines because they take discipline during a time of “afflicting yourself.” You may initially feel like a failure as all you are thinking about is your hunger, or your need for whatever it is you are denying yourself. That’s ok. Stick with it. Keep going and ask God for help. Tell him your heart’s desire is to grow closer to Him. He will meet you in your struggle. Remember to him who seeks, he will find; to her who asks, she will receive; and to them who knock, the door will be opened (Matt 7:8, Luke 11:10).
Now in the words of our vernacular, “Just do it!” “Get er done!” “Go for it!” “You can do it!”
What do you have to lose? Or more importantly, what do you have to gain?
Dave Norbeck
Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden on Unsplash