Fasting with Ease

After hearing a sermon yesterday about letting God come into our lives and clean out some areas that we may have been keeping from Him, I decided to put it in practice.  I had been planning on fasting on Wednesday, which is the weekly day of fasting and prayer at my church, but after the message I felt the need to start right away.  I didn’t want to, and tried to convince myself that Wednesday would be fine.  I’d do the handover tonight, recommit to God, and fast on Wednesday.  No dice.  No matter how much I tried to convince myself, I just knew that I had to start today.  If was really giving it over, this was a way to show my commitment.

Funny enough, I’ve had no real problem keeping the fast.  This is only my fifth or so time fasting, I’d never done it before moving to DC.  I’m learning that it’s something that definitely takes discipline and will, and a certain amount of training and experience help.  Though like yesterday’s morning prayer, I think God was helping easing me into the practice.

Halfway through the day I took some time to pray.  I’m quite blessed with where I work.  It’s a huge concrete complex of offices and shops that cater to busy businessmen (junk food, convenience stores, Starbucks, etc.), but there are also some interesting little mini-parks landscaped into the area.  These places are completely empty and unused.  Nobody takes advantage of them, even though they do actually provide a nice break from the stress of the office.  I’ve singlehandedly cajoled more people into the tables and benches than the place has probably ever seen.  One of the mini-parks makes for a nice, calm, tranquil place to pray, both because of the environment and the fact that there’s never anybody there.  People don’t even walk by.  But hey, so much the better for me 🙂

Near the end, though there was some considerable temptation to break the fast.  Someone brought in incredible homemade fried chicken.  It looked and smelled amazing, and everyone was telling me that it tasted even better.  Of all the days to not only get free dinner, but a homemade meal!  Fortunately, however, God did take away what would have been the worst temptation of all.  On Monday evening, as I was leaving, I noticed someone brought in homemade brownies.  They were gone by Tuesday.  Those I would not have been able to resist!

7 thoughts on “Fasting with Ease”

  1. Have you tried fasting for several days? I haven’t fasted much in the past few years. But before that I did it for 3 days once. The interesting thing is that the first day was the most difficult. The further you go, the easier it becomes.

  2. ahhh fasting I’ve thought about it a lot. It seems like giving up food for me is too easy so it doesn’t seem like enough of a sacrifice or something. On the other hand makes me worry that I will start loosing weight haha! btw good job on blogging 🙂

  3. No, I’ve never fasted more than a day, though I’d like to try at some point.

    Giving up food, for me, is no easy task. It’s actually ridiculous how much food rules my schedule! It takes a lot for me to look at sweets, for example, and just say no.

    Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Come back soon!

  4. Well, you can look forward to our time in New Jerusalem, where we will not sleep, get married (no sex), eat or go to bathroom. Neither will waste time on getting sick, going to doctors, or using slow vehicles for transportation.

    I have often wondered why so much of our daily life is wasted on simply taking care of our bodies. Most of our time is actually spent on taking care of our bodies – eating, sleeping, taking showers, going to the bathroom, grooming, transporting our bodies to various locations.

    I guess some day we will not have to deal with all these things. Meanwhile, I think we should enjoy them while we can, and thank God for them… 🙂

  5. “A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry” (Ecc 8:15)

    Are you sure this New Jerusalem place is going to be any fun??

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