Reblogged from Leading God's Generation:
"The problem with living sacrifices is...
they keep climbing off the altar!"
I heard my dad say that one time he was preaching. (Rom. 12:1)
Not sure where he got it, but it sure has hit home with me during this time of fasting.
I'm looking forward to the fast being over!! Why?
•So I can do what I want!
Reblogged from alwayssimplybegin:
Do you think Lent is long? Maybe I’m the only whiner here. How quickly I leave the language of dying and descent for the happy ending! I’m already ready to celebrate.
Maybe I can blame it on the faith tradition I grew up in. We didn’t observe Lent. We were only resurrection peeps. Jesus wasn’t ever on the cross anymore. We were all about the Hallelujah and the Amen.
As I looked back through notes from my reading during the last year, I thought that this bit from a biography of St. Francis might be helpful for our Lenten journey:
...this immense and unimaginably good God...brought him to life, gave him purpose, rescued him from chaos. In other words, God was his Creator and Redeemer not in some theoretical, academic or analytical sense, but because Francis had…
For all my failing and flailing to give up anything to become more, there is this:
The realest fast is to hold fast to Christ.
Isn’t that the motivation every fast needs –the possibility of holding fast to Christ?
Fasting, it is that: abstaining from anything that hinders adoration of Christ.
I could do that, make that the definition of my Lent and fast: Letting go of more of the world, to lay more hold of God.
That would redefine me.
Isn’t that it?
(Ann Voskamp)
Read more: The Secret to Fasting in a Lent that is Failing » A Holy Experience
For the legalist, morality serves the same function that immorality does for the antinomian, the free-thinker, the progressive, namely, it serves as an expression of self-reliance and self-assertion.
The reason some Pharisees tithed and fasted is the same reason some German university students take off their clothes and lie around naked in the park in downtown Munich.
The moral legalist is always the elder brother of the immoral prodigal. They are blood brothers in God’s sight because both reject the sovereign mercy of God in Christ as a means to righteousness and use either morality or immorality as a means of expressing their independence and self-sufficiency and self-determination. And it is clear from the NT that both will result in a tragic loss of eternal life. So the first meaning of legalism is the terrible mistake of treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God’s favor. It is a danger we must guard against in our own hearts every day. And please know that my old self is just as prone to it as anyone. (John Piper)
(excerpt from John Piper, Revival and Prayer, June 6, 1986)
And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)
The point here is that fasting is a feast.
It is not a giving up of food for its own sake.
It is a giving up of food either for the praise of men or for the reward of the heavenly Father. We are always driven to fast because we hunger for something more than food.
That is the meaning of fasting: it cries out, “This I want more than the pleasure of food!”And “this” can be the admiration that men give to people with will power, or it can be the reward we seek from God alone without regard to the praise of men.
Jesus, of course, says, “Feast on God not man! Desire God in secret, not the praise of men in public.” This is just another way of saying what William Sprague said about seriousness. No one engages in secret fasting in the presence of God alone with a spirit of levity or trifling. Even when you wash your face so as not to look dismal, there will be strong, earnest, serious longings in the soul.
Secret fasting makes you real with God. It is just for God and it tests the authenticity of your hunger for his Spirit.
Well, it is time for lunch, and I need to find a way to invite you to stay for part two and for prayer without making those of you who have to go feel like second-class Christians. Here’s how I can do it. We will just assume that you had an unbreakable appointment or that you are going away to fast in secret.
