I Love Fasting. Well, Kinda. - Encouragement Café - October 1, 2014

I LOVE FASTING. WELL, KINDA.

Café Menu for Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Today’s Special is: My Love/Hate Relationship with Fasting

Carefully prepared just for you by your friend, Alyssa Woollard

Main Ingredient:

So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer.

Ezra 8:23 NIV

Entrée:

Confession time. I have a love/hate relationship with fasting. It’s not easy ya’ll. The sugar and caffeine withdrawals alone can be brutal. But oh, how I love what fasting does in me.

How it turns my attention away from the comfort of food (and the cheap fix of cookie dough ice cream that might leave someone’s pants two sizes too small) and draws me to my knees in desperate prayer to my Savior.

I admit it. I once threw a two year old baby fit over not being able to eat a soft baked pretzel. I know it was just a pretzel but it smelled so good and my blood sugar was in the tank. Don’t judge me.

But sometimes we need to shift our focus from the immediate to the eternal. We need to hunger God more than food. We do not live by Auntie Ann’s alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, remember?

According to John Piper, Hunger for God

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

Ouch. Did he just step all over your toes too?

In fact, when I told my husband I was writing a devotion on fasting do you know what he had the nerve to say?

He said,

I don’t think you can write a devotion on fasting without fasting.

I won’t tell you what I said.

But guess what, he was right. And so I am. Because I want to hunger and thirst for righteousness more than anything else. I want to want God more than any earthly thing.

Don’t you?

Maybe you should consider fasting too. Maybe (gulp) we should make ahabit of fasting. Maybe we will. I know. Let’s fast and pray about it. I will if you will.

Take Out:

There is no better way to draw near to God than to fast.

Dessert:

Lord, please forgive us for craving food more than you. Forgive us for craving anything more than you. Lord redirect our hunger. Be our God. Open our eyes to the benefits of fasting. Open our hearts to you like never before. Give us the desire to turn to you with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our strength. May we no longer live by bread alone but by every word that comes from your mouth Oh LORD. Teach us to fast so that we might hold fast to you. In Jesus Name, Amen.

© 2014 by Alyssa Woollard. All rights reserved.

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