Fasting

Every year my church goes through a period of prayer and fasting. It usually lasts about three weeks, but it can go longer or shorter depending on the person and if they are searching for an answer that they hope to be answered before they stop fasting. Most people think of fasting and they cringe, and as a kid it was a time I did not particularly look forward to. I remember that I had no more snack time and that we wouldn't watch programs on the television for a time. I have come to learn that fasting is not merely giving up food, but it can be anything that one thinks distracts them from God and vying for their attention, which in turn affects the amount of time they spend with God. This year, for example, I am giving up two meals a day(from a typical three), soda, video games, T.V., movies, Facebook, youTube, and other distracting websites. Even though I have only been fasting a week, I can really notice a difference in my thought life and my priorities. The only things I worry about doing is spending time in God's word and doing my disciplines: such as college work, working out, devotions, and music practice. Fasting however is not a time for one to show off to everyone how devout they are or how close to God they are. Jesus instructed his disciples to be quite different. "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:16-18) Basically we should not be lording it over others that we are fasting, because it is something that is intimate between us and God. The only other person that might care to know that you are fasting is someone that is your authority, such as a father or mentor that you are under. Or in this case the whole church is fasting, so everyone expects me to fast, but it is ultimately between me and God what I fast and if I keep my promise to follow through with it. Another really good chapter to read is Isaiah 58, which a word that God brought to Israel about true fasting. in verse 6 he makes it clear what he expects, "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?"(Isaiah 58:6-7)God promises to bring his healing ad answer our cries for help when we do these things. Maybe instead of saving your money on meals because you aren't eating as much or not at all, give your extra food or money to the poor and hungry. Instead of spending hours in front of the T.V. screen, maybe we can be talking with our family about the grace of God and his gift of Jesus. Instead of spending hours on social network sites and reading our friends statuses and writing lol at everything, we could be checking the status of our community and meeting the needs of so many lost, naked, and hungry people. I am so convicting myself here, but I am gonna write it anyway. What if instead of spending hours worrying about our needs, we look to God as our provider, healer, and lover of who we are. I need help, I cannot make it on my own, I am desperate for more of Jesus in my life, I am in urgent care to receive the healing of my fractured heart, I thirst for the deliverance and freedom to live wholly for Him. "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17) He who has hears, let him hear