Prayer Progress Report

As I mentioned at the beginning of summer, I made a goal to have a better prayer life, which usually means praying more. So how’s it going? I’m glad you asked. A couple of weeks ago our church elders challenged the congregation to fast before our Sunday evening communion service at church. The reason for the fast was to pray about being more prayerful. What? Pray about praying? It’s so simple it’s profound! Anyway, unfortunately I couldn’t partake in the church-wide fast because I had to attend my buddy’s wedding. Desiring to still participate, I decided to fast during the week leading up to that weekend. (I wasn’t going to fast during a wedding when Jesus Himself said that it wasn’t an appropriate time to fast. Wedding Time equals Party Time.)

An interesting experience happened during the week long fast (lunch only). The hunger pains were there but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, the hunger pains were a constant reminder of why I was fasting to begin with, namely, improving my prayer life and in so doing improving my relationship with God. Also, I tried to let the hunger pains remind me of God’s presence as well. This way, I didn’t really feel the need to quickly break my fast because I wanted that constant reminder to keep me from acting like a fool.

This experience stirred my interest on the subject of fasting, and I decided to reread John Piper’s book, “A Hunger For God” in order to have a better theological understanding of the topic. I won’t break down every component of the book here but just point out some things that helped me understand fasting a bit better and gave me a continued desire to add fasting as a spiritual discipline. Regarding fasting, Piper says, “The true mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline. It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment in Christ than in food” (33). Piper goes on to say that it isn’t really about “not eating” either, because food is a gift from God. It’s about saying to the giver that, “You are more satisfying than the gift itself.” So then, fasting doesn’t always need to be about food (or a lack thereof) but simply denying yourself of good things for the ultimate Good Thing, God Himself.

Fasting isn’t often mentioned as a spiritual discipline today because it’s often associated with the mourning and sadness of the Old Testament. Although maybe true, Piper says, “The new fasting, the Christian fasting, is a hunger for all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19), aroused by the aroma of Jesus’ love and by the taste of God’s goodness in the gospel of Christ (1 Peter 2:2-3)” (42). Fasting could include not watching TV, working out less, or abstaining from anything that you usually fill your time with to focus primarily on the Lord. Ultimately, “the new fasting is the fasting of faith . . . [and] faith is a spiritual feasting on Christ with a view to being so satisfied in him that the power of all other allurements is broken.”

I appreciate that Piper brought out the point about “faith” in fasting. Being a complete glutton myself, it took faith to move forward in my spiritual life in the area of fasting. It’s been an amazing experience that I hope more Christians will share. Truly believing that the power of Christ can break “all other allurements” is indeed satisfying.