Prayer and Fasting

Prayer I get. There is something about communication with God, 2-way communication with God that not only makes sense, but also feels right. This God I worship is real, and this God is also a communicating God. And, we were definitely made in this God's image. So, I can't help but think that this God appreciates and participates in good, deep, honest, real, important communication all the time, even with boring conversation partners like me.

My problem comes with the fasting part... Fasting is hard. Its only been 6 hours since I started the fast... Okay, well I took my last sip of coffee at about 11 am, so its been about 7 hours really. And I did slip up and eat a handful of grapes, and then came back later to eat 3 more. I felt better because I limited it to three, for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and because they had already fallen off the vine and were just lying there in the bottom of the colander underneath the healthy bunch still attached to the vine. See the lengths I am going to already... and its only been 6 hours!

Anyway, this fasting thing. Its all over in the Old and New Testaments. The verse that sticks out the most to me goes, "When you fast, don't look all heavy and burdened..." Yet here I am ready dragging my slippered feet around the house hoping for a Meat Lovers Pan pizza to arrive, if only I had the strength, or maybe I should say weakness, to order it. I'm wanting a beer and chips and peach salsa. "Mwaaa Ha HAaaaa! They are right there in the fridge. Just go get them Joel." But I remember the little stone in my pocket from this morning's service, and I remember what Jesus said to evil as it tempted Jesus to turn the stone to bread... "One does not live by bread alone."

I won't die for not eating for these 24 hours. I won't collapse. Most people probably couldn't tell. I shouldn't really even talk about it. But I am feeling the mild early hungers, and am realizing just how conditioned I am to fall into my habits of eating... what, how much, when... I'm almost spoiled by the luxury of food. Still, how does this fasting refocus me toward the God I serve?

This hunger, it is mirroring my other hungers. My spiritual hungers. Just as easily as I can grab junk food to satisfy my lazy stomach, do I also grab for spiritual junk food to fill my spiritual hunger? Worse, as a Pastor, am I preparing and serving spiritual junk food to those who come to me, to the church where I serve, seeking good food, living food, the bread of life? I pray not. Although, I have been accused of such.

My hungers are not my greatest concerns. In my bodily hungers, I discover my spiritual hungers. In my spiritual hungers, I think of those around me who remain constantly spiritually hungry. I feel like a dietitian, hired and trained to help people learn how to eat good food. Except, I keep finding my "customers" in line at McDonald's. Sure, they may not always like what I cook up or suggest they eat, but how can they stand to eat that other stuff day after day? Can't they see what it is doing to them, to their body? Don't they want to be healthy?

Then I think of the greatly obese man I visited in the hospital, dying of heart disease and kidney failure, whose knees and back had hurt for decades, who missed church on Sundays but made it to fast food breakfast Mon-Sat, and whose grown child brought him ribs and mac and cheese in the hospital. It was those very things that killed him. But it was those very things that made him happy. His happiness was tied up in filling his hungers with junk. His happiness accelerated his own death.

Are we, as modern Christians, all that different from him? We sit in our stale, sterile sanctuaries, eating on junk food liturgies or songs or sermons, and wonder why we continue to be dying. We're not hungry, so we must be okay. Except, we are not hungry because we have stuffed our spiritual stomach full of filler, not healthy food. Are we truly satisfied, healthier, growing... or are we happy in our habits that are just accelerating our own death? I'm afraid too often, modern Christians and modern churches are too much like him.

This prayer and fasting, it is leading me to want to stuff anything I can find down my pie hole. The hungrier I get, I imagine the more ready I will become to get a greasy double cheese at Steak and Shake, or a mile high stack of flapjacks at IHOP. Is that the way those outside the church feel about their spiritual hungers? "Just give me something, anything, unhealthy filler if you have to, to help me not feel so empty inside. " There are some like that out there. But my guess is that there are even more who want good spritual food from their church, something the church has not been able to offer them for far too long.

I for one never want to provide such malnourishment. No matter how hungry they might be, how hard they may be pounding their fists for french fried sermons, I pray, and I fast, that I may continue to find the will, God's will, to give them nothing too fancy... but something ridiculously healthy, like living water, and broken bread, and a sip from the master's cup.