40 Days of Fasting

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I've been reading a book called Hunger for God by John Piper. It's about fasting and its place as one of the "Christian disciplines" in the modern Church. I will just say right now that I suck at fasting. My motives are always messed up, and I end up feel like a failure. But reading this book has slowly started to help me understand some really cool things about fasting. Here are a couple short quotes...

“If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” 

“Will I find spiritual communion with God sweet enough, and hope in his promises deep enough, not just to cope, but to flourish and rejoice in him?” 

I've just started to think about how fasting is a way for me to say with my body that I want God more than I want the thing I'm fasting from. I want His presence more than I want to eat or check twitter or whatever thing. In the past when I've attempted to fast, I haven't turned to God in my hunger and asked for His presence to be enough and satisfying. I'm like the Pharisees in Matthew 6 who want everyone to know that they're fasting for the Lord and look how righteous I am! So as I have been processing this, I knew it was time to pull the trigger and actually practice this discipline. And what do you know, today is the beginning of Lent. I'm going to be giving up the sugar (as I like to refer to that), and by that I mainly mean  sweets but also as much refined sugar as possible. I know you may be thinking that this is very cliche, but I've started to realize how constantly my body craves sugar. It's crazy how I feel like I need it daily, and I don't like that feeling.

As I prepare my heart to celebrate Jesus defeating death and sin during this season, I know this will be something that will reveal a lot of my own sin. I want to pray in those times that I would physically and mentally crave the eternal God and His unfailing Word, rather than something like sugar that will never satisfy for more than a couple hours at most.

So here's to the next 40 days!