Why Fast II? part 2

Some of you may remember my friend, Pastor Ron Auch. He once shared the following story about an experience he had in Lodi, WI.

“I was leading a three-day Solemn Assembly. The church fasted the entire time, and we spent the whole day in church. We arrived each morning around 6:00 am and didn’t leave until about 9:00 pm. The days were filled with prayer and the Word. We encouraged people to come to the church and just camp out for the day. Many of them brought pillows and their Bible, found a place they wanted to park themselves, and just stayed in an attitude of prayer all day long. 

I conducted this each year for a number of years. One year in particular we had a very powerful incident. In the evenings, there was always a teaching on prayer and then a time of reflection. During this particular meeting, God began to move on the hearts of the people and they began to confess their sins publicly.

You could tell it was a move of God because there was no condemnation coming from anyone. People were free to open their hearts. This went on for the first two nights. On the third and final night, it started happening again - but the meeting was really capped off by a young mom getting up and confessing something. She and her husband were very successful: they had a new home; a new car, and things were going very well for them. They were kind of like the Laodicea church: rich and no need of anything. 

After several others had come forward to share, she came up to the mic toward the end of the meeting, very broken. She confessed that she had been very critical of those who had been coming up and making public confessions of their sins the two previous nights. She said, “While you were all up here sharing about the problems in your life, I was sitting back there telling God that there is no need for that, and that they should not be doing that.” Then she went on to explain something that had happened to her the night before. 

In the middle of the night her two-year-old daughter got sick so she got up and was tending to her when she realized that she was about to throw-up. So she picked her up with her back to mommy, facing forward (which is the best way to carry a child who’s about to throw up). She got half way down the hallway when her daughter threw up all over everything. After she got her daughter back to bed, she knew she had to clean up the mess (husbands never seem to wake up for this kind of thing – they’ll even sleep through the smell). She got a bucket and a sponge, and as she took a swipe of the mess she heard a voice say, “Lukewarm.” She wasn’t quite sure if that’s exactly what she heard so she took another swipe and heard it again, “Lukewarm!” Suddenly it hit her, this is the voice of the Lord. 

As she stood before us weeping she shared with us how God had to get her on her knees before Him, knee-deep in vomit, before she could realize that what she was cleaning up is what she had become to Jesus. She repented of being lukewarm and asked the crowd to forgive her for her critical thoughts about them.” 

My honest response to that, once again, is this: if we are going to do this thing called Christianity, why not go all the way with it (Go ALL IN!)? Why settle for anything less than what Jesus has for us? And if that means setting aside a few days to seek God through prayer and fasting, so be it.

Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.” I have always felt that offering our bodies as a living sacrifice can apply to fasting, even though there may be other applications of this verse. When we fast, we are living; but offering ourselves to the Lord. We are a living sacrifice. This is our true and proper worship. Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” 

Continued tomorrow