Daily Devotionals

Wednesday Morning Devotion, 3/3/04: Fasting

Put on sackcloth, O priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the LORD your God,
and cry out to the LORD. -Joel 1:13-14

I learned about fasting at a young age. To me it meant fish sticks and macaroni and cheese on Fridays…EVERY Friday. EEIISH! (That means ‘yuk’ in Midwest kid language!) I did not really know why we had to ‘not eat meat’ except that it had something to do with church and Jesus dying on a Friday. When I became independent and out on my own I seem to take perverse pleasure out of eating steak or a hamburger on Fridays. (Yes, rebellion is a word that comes to mind!) Over the years I have known many people who said they were fasting in addition to praying for a particular request. My impression was that this somehow added power to a prayer. I was embarrassed that I never fasted because I could not connect the dots between my childhood experience of fasting and how that could in any way add power to a prayer!

Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’
Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
-Isaiah 58:1-3

And then I read Isaiah 58. God’s words to Isaiah and His people about their ritual of fasting spoke to me and the mist of the past and the fog of my present understanding disappeared! ‘Fasting’ was a sacrament! Just like baptism and communion! Now, before I am hung for heresy…a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward change…God does ‘call’ me to fast. He calls me to turn my heart more to Him, to draw closer to Him. That is going to happen in ‘prayer’ or in conversation with Him, right? I ‘fast’ as an outward sign that my heart is turned completely to God and desire nothing more than to be in His presence and ‘converse’ about what HE wants. Recently, this ‘call’ to fast came as my son was to have surgery. Because I ‘fasted’ does that mean that my prayer was more powerful? I believe that the ‘fast’ turned my heart more toward God as I ‘gave up’ my choice to eat that I day I also found I could ‘give up’ my worry and fear and KNOW that God was in control with all the true answers.

Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city—a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:

"By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."
-Jonah 3:3-10

Did God spare Nineveh because they fasted or because they changed from their wickedness? The fast was the outward sign of their changed hearts. They stopped their narcissistic, me-centered lives and turned their hearts and lives to God and His ways. Am I willing to ‘give up’ so God ‘can do’ in my life?

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help,
and he will say: Here am I. -Isaiah 58:6-9 (emphasis mine)

Jody's daily devotions go out via e-mail every weekday morning.

Previous devotions:

Daily Devotion, 12/5/03


Daily Devotions of Ordinary People - Extraordinary God