If only you would prepare your heart and lift up your hands to him in prayer! Job 11:13 (NLT)
My church is doing a 40-day fast. For various reasons, I am not fasting from food but am doing a soul fast. A soul fast is where you fast from something else that you do on a regular basis, something that would be a sacrifice. I decided to fast from TV. There are a couple of things I noticed.
First, the goal of a fast is to get closer to God. It’s not about having the will power to give up something. I have to admit, at first it was harder than I thought. I didn’t realize how much watching TV was my comfort zone. When things were a little stressful, I turned on the TV. When I was tired, I turned on the TV. In the beginning, when I was tempted, I would pray. That’s a good start right?
As time went on, I wasn’t tempted in the same way but I noticed something. I was filling up the time that I would normally watch TV with other things….not praying things. Wait! Isn’t this supposed to be about seeking God? How easy it is for us to get into the routine of doing something (or not doing something) and forget the reason we were doing it in the first place.
I think the true discipline of fasting is not about not doing what I was doing but about reminding myself to seek God. If we make the fast the focus or we fill that time with other activities rather than God, our fasting is useless. God spoke to the Israelites about this in Isaiah. They were so busy fasting outwardly, they were completely missing the impact inwardly.
I don’t have this all figured out yet. Maybe, that is why we fast. Because we don’t have it figured out. Only God does. And in spending more time with him, praying and offering my heart, he can change what I care about.