ABIDING IN CHRIST.

I just turned off the oven, having baked a luscious dark chocolate cheesecake. My stomach is now feeling a bit sick from licking the spoon too many times. There is a false feeling of spring in the air on this sunny 50 degree day. I sit on my bed with my bedroom door open and can hear the birds chirping outside. Life can be funny sometimes. Todays God's Story reading was from Ezekiel 3-5. This text is full of images of food. Eating scrolls that taste like honey on the tongue. Ezekiel being commanded to lay on his side for over a year and eat nothing but barley cakes. (Forget the fact that it had to be cooked on cow dung.) Food. I know, I know. The story speaks of so much more than that. It is God's message to the prophet Ezekiel of his coming judgment. Quite sad, in fact. These chosen people whom God has set apart as his own have now been exiled out of the Promised Land. Years and years of wandering to get there. Miracle after miracle. Graciousness abundant. And then they demand human kings. Man-made rulers. In the place of God. From there it all goes downhill. Wickedness. False worship. God has been abandoned by his people.

I say that life is funny sometimes because this morning was my first time of consuming food since the 29th of December. 22 days. I write these words not to boast...not with a prideful arrogant spirit. Instead, I write with a message. A reality. A truth. A challenge. The truth is that I have never really dipped my hands into this whole fasting discipline before. I've heard it's important. I've read it's important. I mean, didn't Jesus say, "WHEN you fast..." (Mt. 6:16)? Sounds like we should be doing it, I suppose. But, the couple times I've fasted in the past, only for a few days, I haven't really seen the vitality of it all. Until these past three weeks. Over these last weeks, my prayer to have a yearning after God has been answered. My cry to be proactive in disciplining myself to run after him has been heard. I have ran with God. I have danced with God. I have sung with God. I have spoken with God. And I have wept with God.

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that has been ignored for far too many years. Last night, I scrolled down to my previous post that contained a quote on fasting in Richard Foster's "Celebration of Discipline." The reality of it is sad, yet true:

"Where are the people today who will respond to the call of Christ? Have we become so accustomed to ‘cheap grace’ that we instinctively shy away from more demanding calls to obedience? ‘Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.’ Why has the giving of money, for example, been unquestionably recognized as an element in Christian devotion and fasting so disputed? Certainly we have as much, if not more, evidence from the Bible for fasting as we have for giving. Perhaps in our affluent society fasting involves a far larger sacrifice than the giving of money."

Could it be that the Church has shoved fasting aside because it comes at far too great a cost? In our wealthy affluent Western society, it's easy to drop a ten dollar bill in the offering plate on Sunday. We know we have enough. It really isn't that great of a sacrifice. (Don't get me wrong...I understand the importance of tithing and am no way trying to reduce that). Fasting demands us to give up something that ties us down to this world. It demands that we untie ourselves from pleasure that comes from this earth, craving after God instead. It calls us to say that we are not in charge of this life...that this world wasn't made for us. It points our lives to God, through the power of the Spirit.

We must come to this revelation. We must long to be satisfied in God alone. Only when we give up our lives and carry the cross of Christ will we be able to whole-heartedly follow God. Yes, God has grace. And that's amazing news. But he has given us a choice to follow him...to love him...to glorify him. Otherwise we would be his mechanical toys set upon this earth. This life is not easy. No one every promised it to be, not even Christ himself (Jn. 15:18-25). But if we are abiding in Christ, it will be better than easy...it will be good.