The Fasting Practice - Week 2
Readings for this week: September 23 - 28
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Growing in Holiness
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes) Scripture Reading – Ephesians 5:1
It cannot be denied that there are many health benefits to fasting. It can reduce your weight, increase your metabolism and strengthen your immune system. It can reduce your heart rate and slow your body’s ageing process. Fasting helps cleanse your body of its many accumulated toxins, as well as aiding your body in protecting against (and in some cases reversing the effects of) many diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many neurological disorders too. Fasting is good for us and good for our body. Health professionals have been touting the benefits of fasting for a very long time. And many people are catching on to these benefits, as the rise in popularity of practices like intermittent fasting, and other health and dietary disciplines, shows.
All of this is good. But as followers of Jesus, when we engage in fasting, we do so as a spiritual discipline. The aim of the practice is to draw closer to Jesus, to grow a deeper connection with him, and grow in holiness. We do not do it to lose weight or improve physical health - although these things may very well follow from it. But as Pope Benedict says, “In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning and taken on, in a culture characterised by the search for material wellbeing, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting certainly brings benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a “therapy” to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God.”
Question to Consider
What is required from us in order for fasting to move beyond being merely a physical endeavour and become a spiritual discipline?
Prayer
Lord God, drawing closer to you and becoming more like you is what being a disciple means. Help me use every tool available, every opportunity there is to do so. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – Struggling for the Body
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes) Scripture Reading – Romans 7:15-24
This is possibly one of the most relatable passages in the Bible (or is that just me?!). Paul says it loud and clear: what we want to do, we don’t do, and what we don’t want to do is what we end up doing! This sinful cycle of death is still a reality, even for those whose bodies are now part of the “temple of the Holy Spirit”. The process of renewal and restoration is not instantaneous in us, not through lack of power on God’s side, but because of a lack of will and the presence of sin on our side. We can’t separate out our spirit from our body, our will from ourselves, because we are a whole person.
Our struggle is not against the body, our struggle is for the body and against the flesh – the sinful, destructive desires that rage within us. We fight to restore order to our body and soul and life – to purge ourselves of harmful, unbalanced, unrestricted desires and drives. We have instinctual drives and desires because we have been made this way. As God-created human beings, the desire for food, sleep, sex, self-preservation, and for more abstract things like safety, security, power, control and esteem have been implanted in us, but too often they overpower us, turn our heart and will away from God and towards ourselves – like the problem of misdirected love we saw in the “Good God” series. It is not that all these desires and drives are all bad, it is that too often they are disordered, unrestrained, and uncontrolled. Practices like fasting are a way in which we reorder ourselves and recalibrate our desires to God’s wavelength.
Question to Consider
How do you understand Paul’s use of “flesh”? How is it not just a reference to our body’s material nature? Why is this important?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, each day, each minute, with every thought, help me submit my desires, drives, instincts and motivations to you. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – Fighting Against Sin with All We Have
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes) Scripture Reading – Hebrews 4:4-13
Fasting is a way to turn our body into an ally in our battle against “the flesh.” When we engage ourselves in the fight against sin with our heart, mind and body we will find the battle – and ourselves – transformed. And it is a battle! Fasting is hard as we are essentially picking a fight with our flesh and denying ourselves something that is necessary for life. But we do so in order to signal to God that he is the most important thing in our lives, he is the one who ultimately sustains us, and he is the only one with the power to conquer sin and reorder our being into conformity with the person of Jesus – the one who is the goal of our fasting. Nothing else will do it, only the power of God set free within us.
But that doesn’t mean it’s only up to God. We have a part we must play too. Spiritual practices like fasting are how we do what we can do in this fight against sin. They give us the disciplinary tools to open our mind and body to God, so that the Holy Spirit can do what in us what we cannot do: break the chains of sin. The self-denial of fasting, like everything else we do, is not something designed to be done alone, and is not something we can successfully “achieve” ourselves. We do what we can – faithfully, obediently and prayerfully – so that we are in the best position for God to do in us what we can’t. We fast, offer our bodies to God, and let him break sin’s hold on us and reform our desires as part of our ongoing formation into mirror images of Jesus.
Question to Consider
Why is self-denial necessary for a follower of Jesus? How does it bring us closer to Jesus and holiness?
Prayer
Gracious God, rather I deny myself than ever deny you or the life you are calling me to. Grow my humility; lessen the call of my own selfish desires. Make me more in the image of Jesus. In his name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – Take Up Your Cross
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes) Scripture Reading – Matthew 16:24
Part of being a disciple of Jesus is growing in holiness, being more and more conformed to his image, more and more renewed in spirit, mind and body as the Holy Spirit works in us to transform us in ways that we cannot do ourselves. Just as fasting is your body’s way of purifying and purging your body of the unhealthy things that are killing you, so too is fasting your soul’s way of cleansing and refining your whole person of cycles of sin and shame, of the unhealthy desires and unbalanced drives that limit and deform us. Fasting is a way to “sanctify” your soul, to set it apart as holy, and dedicate it to God for his special purposes. Holiness and wholeness - unfettered growth into the image of Jesus.
The way of Jesus is the cruciform way, the way of the cross: of daily taking up our cross and following him. To grow in holiness is to open your whole person up to the Spirit of God, in open submission, and to let him form you into a person of love and goodness. What we truly long for is to see God, to behold the beauty and majesty of the Good God. But holiness is not a formula. God is a person, not an equation, not a checklist, not someone who can be manipulated or forced to bow down to whatever checklist we try to impose upon him. He is a person; he is relational and compassionate in his very being. We must approach him openly and honestly, utterly dependent on him and stripped of all pretension – something that fasting is superbly designed to do.
Question to Consider
What does taking up the cross daily look like for you? How might fasting be a part of that?
Prayer
Loving Father, help me follow in your footsteps to the cross. May I carry the cross boldly and sacrificially for others. May they see you in me and my actions. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – Self-Control, Self-Discipline...Self-Mastery
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes) Scripture Reading – 2 Timothy 1:6-10
Fasting draws upon the power of God to overcome sin, to help us reorder our desires, something that is very hard – impossible, actually – for us to do ourselves. Because the only real tool we have of our own is our willpower, and I’m sure we all know that our willpower is often effective in small doses but less so over time. Eventually it gives out, or we get tired or complacent or whatever craving or temptation or desire we are battling becomes just a little bit too much more enticing for us to resist. Fasting teaches us how to do the right thing, even if it’s hard, and how to find contentment in self-control – how not to be slaves to the things we want.
Fasting allows God to work deeply in our person, right at the bedrock of who we are. God, by his Spirit, does within us what we cannot do ourselves – but he does not leave us unchanged. Fasting helps us grow in self-control (saying no to something we want) and self- discipline (saying yes to something we don’t want but should!); it helps us develop and grow our willpower and get our willpower back under control and functioning healthily. But willpower, however well developed and exercised (which we should always be doing!), will never be enough. We need to draw on God’s power. When we humbly give our weaknesses to him, he gives us his strength. We aim for self-mastery, yes, but a God-given self-mastery offered back to him, so that he can grow in us, help us grow more like him, and grow more of his heart for others in us.
Question to Consider
How have you grown in self-control and self-discipline lately? How is God helping you change?
Prayer
Almighty God, you are the great gift-giver and you have given me life. Help me live the life you want of me; give me self-control and self0discipline so that can fully play my part in your kingdom. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)