With only little more than two weeks left in Lent, why not add a new twist to your Lenten experience before Easter?
If Lent hasn’t been a part of your life, look at this as a two-week exercise in preparation for Easter.
Try fasting from God.
By definition, fasting is “abstaining from all or some sorts of food or drink, especially as a religious observance.” In recent years, that definition has been stretched to include not just food and/or drink but anything from TV, to social media, to sex.
That’s well and good, and potentially helpful.
But let me suggest the radical notion of fasting from God.
Before you report me to your local heresy hunters’ bureau, let me explain.
Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, in the 4th century, reminded his parishioners that one of the things that distinguished Christian worship from the Roman pagan worship of the day was Christianity’s absence of quid pro quo (something that is given or taken in return for something else) in worship. Simply put, the pagans worshipped their gods because the devotee either wanted to prevent something bad from happening, like the flooding of the Tiber River, or for something good to happen: perhaps a bumper crop of grapes for the wine press.
For Augustine, quid pro quo was not why you worshipped God. He would say, in current parlance, that you do not worship God because he might tell you the winning numbers for your lottery ticket, or when and where to travel and what plane is the safest or most likely to get you to your destination on time.
For Augustine, you worship God because of who he is: all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing, all-truth. You worship God because he alone is worthy of worship. To do otherwise is to miss the one true God and to make of ourselves less than we are meant to be. Worship of God was for Augustine, a life-altering experience as well as a life-time adventure. “To fall in love with God,” he said, “is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”
So, to clarify: fasting from God in the sense I’m suggesting would be to fast from “using” God as a means to get what we want or desire, unless of course, that’s what
God wants or desires for us. It would be fasting from approaching God in a way that fails to acknowledge who he really is.
This requires some reflection on our part. Let me help by probing: when was the last time you came to God and not asked him for something? I wonder if we approach God like we’re Bob Wiley (What about Bob?) who was in the habit of crying to his therapist, “Gimme, gimmee, gimmee, I need, I need, I need.”
So, let me tell you how I plan to fast from God between now and Easter. Just to make sure I’m not falling into a habit of praying only for something I want or to be kept from something I don’t like, (quid pro quo,) I’m going to fast from asking, from petitioning God. I’m only going to come into his presence, confessing my shortcomings and sins, praising him for who he is, loving him for being the all-loving, all-merciful, totally sovereign, forgiving God that he is.
I’m sure I’ll stumble at times, and may slip and fall as I attempt this, but it’s worth a try. So, that’s it: that’s how I’m going to fast from God, until Easter Sunday morning, when I plan to arrive at church extra early, sit alone in the sanctuary and ask the Lord for one thing: “to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).
And in that fast, I suspect—indeed I hope, yes, I do believe: I’ll encounter more of him than I ever have.