Faithbase

If there's a single lesson that life teaches us it's that wishing doesn't make it so. Fasting. What is it? Why do we do it? Do we do it? Should we do it? Is it a thing? Why is it talked about? Why does Jesus mention it? Fasting in like Western evangelicalism is one of like the last lost remaining arts of spiritual disciplines and what I think is super fascinating and interesting about the concept of fasting as a whole is to what it talks about in our understanding of appetites and desires. So when we think of the term fasting if you've never heard of it basically it's the idea of intentionally abstaining from something so not doing something on purpose in order that you could seek God's understanding or God's will for a particular issue or item or subject that goes on in your life and Jesus talks about this idea in the scriptures when he says when you fast do it like this and so what's interesting about his statement is he never assumes that there might be an option that you may not fast. In Jesus's mind there will always be times when we do actually intentionally practice this discipline of fasting and what I love about what it talks about is it reveals in us the things that are important in our lives. If we are willing to actually physically abstain from food right or drink or whatever for a proposed amount of time because we want to be able to hear from God and focus solely on him then that thing is going to be very important to us right and what I've thought a lot about that in my own life is it kind of boils down to a simpler thing it's like the things that I truly and deeply desire. The things that are actually important to me I'm going to make a priority and I'm going to go after and the things that aren't I'm gonna make an excuse or I'm just not going to actually do. And so my thought was when we were making the video for this week was this idea of like what is truly important to you? What are you willing to even actually go without food to accomplish to try and hear from God in God's voice and get God's insight on? What other things are we willing maybe not just like forsaking food but like would we be willing to give up social media? Would we be willing to give up our car and walk everywhere for a month just to see what it was like? Would we be willing to give up other things that are incredibly important to us in a non-lent type fashion right just to see if we could hear from the Lord better? So if you want to talk more about this I would love to hear from you. I'd love to chat and kind of see where you're at with this concept. Is fasting something that you practice? Do you have any tips on it? Leave a comment below or feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. I'd love to connect with you there. Thanks so much and have a great week.