Full, Forgetful, and the Grace of Fasting

I'm back with a few more thoughts on prayer and fasting. My plan is to employ some material from John Piper's simply marvelous book entitled: A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Prayer and Fasting. This book is packed with simple but deep thoughts about God and our needed hunger for Him. It's been a joy-giver in my life, so I'm not hesitant to share some of its choicer fruits with you.

As the sub-title indicates, the chief purpose of fasting--and really all spiritual disciplines and (now that I think of it, the purpose of all of life)--is to desire and delight in God.There are many things that can interfere with such delight in God. For some it is legalistic religion and religiosity. You know what I mean: formalistic prayers, ascetic attitudes that we ought to abstain from certain foods or drinks or enjoyments because they are bad.

Such fasting and self-flagellation have certainly been practiced as a way of trying to atone for sins and win the favor of God. But I'm not guessing that that is a clear and present danger for many, if any, of us. I'm guessing that it is not abstinence that is dulling our affections for God, but indulgence. Dr. Piper says:

The discipline of self-denial is fraught with dangers--perhaps only surpassed by the dangers of indulgence (p. 9).

Let's face it: indulgence has killed a lot more grace in our lives than abstinence has. If our affections for God are going to go cold on us, it's not likely going to be because we've been too hard on our bodies but because we've been too soft. It's going to be because we've enjoyed the gifts of God more than we've enjoyed the Giver. We're full and forgetful.

Piper adds:

For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife. (Luke 14:18-20) The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable (p. 14).

Food is among those wonderful gifts which God gives which can steal our hearts away from God. One value of fasting from time to time is that it reminds us of that for which we should really hunger: God. It subdues for a time the appetite of the body (whether for one meal or one month of meals) in order to give freer reign to the appetite of the soul.

By fasting from time to time we are able to say to our souls: "I love God more than food." This is what Dr. Piper has in mind (at least in part) when he writes:

Therefore when I say that the root of Christian fasting is the hunger of homesickness for God, I mean that we will do anything and go without anything if, by any means, we might protect ourselves from the deadening effects of innocent delights and preserve the sweet longings of our homesickness for God (p. 15).

Are you hungry for God? If you fast occasionally you might find that you get even hungrier. If you are not hungry for God it could be that the very thing you need is a time in which you pull back from your normal appetites and give space and time and thought to the One Who alone can fill your heart.

Things to think about.