First, the details. On March 24 at Cru we're going to have a night of prayer to kick off a week-long fast, culminating at the March 31 Cru. We're not yet sure how we'll break the fast together that night, but we'll do it. For those from campuses outside the city who don't come to the Pittsburgh Metro Cru weekly meeting, we'll leave the ball in your court. You can join us in that same time period (Wednesday to Wednesday), use your own weekly meeting times as start and end points, or choose another time period around that week.
I know at least a few of you read the words "week-long fast" and react with alarm: "what? a week without eating? is that even possible?" In fact, if that's not your initial reaction I'd be surprised. But before you follow that train of thought and pass it off as impossible and something you're not going to do, please read on. What we're not doing is forcing people to not eat (we're not forcing anyone to fast at all - it's purely voluntary as the Spirit leads you), and we're not dictating exactly how you engage in that fast. There are lots of ways to do that, and we'll touch on that in a later post.
The Vision
The staff team has been praying and thinking about the needs of Cru, and we've felt that it would be appropriate to call the students involved with Cru to a week-long fast. We desperately desire to see God move in a powerful way to transform the lives of every student involved with Cru, individually and personally, and to see revival on our campuses. In that light, we want to challenge our students, volunteers, and supporters to join together in fasting, in whatever way God may lead, from March 24-31 - fasting and praying for God to move in our hearts and lives, revive and deepen our faith, and move through us and by His Spirit in profound and powerful ways on our campuses. We will pray and trust God to produce the results that He wills.
Our mission is to turn lost students into Christ-centered laborers. And our scope is every student on every campus in the Pittsburgh area. That's well over 100,000 students. Those goals are pretty audacious if you think about it. To communicate the Gospel to every one of those students, and to see every believer involved with Cru sent from college into a lifetime of personal ministry, is honestly impossible for us. It's a bit like gathering a group of 7-year old kids and challenging the Pittsburgh Steelers to a full-pad game of tackle football. We need help. Lots of it. Going about it with minimal prayer and dependence on God is simply not an option.
So if our vision is God-sized and impossible for us to humanly accomplish, it's imperative on us to desperately seek God to do it. We need Him to work on our own hearts, breaking down pride, allowing us to deeply experience transforming grace, and empowering us to be His laborers. We need Him to bring our hearts to total dependence on Him, not just for our mission but for our entire lives. And we need Him to tear down the walls that are keeping people from knowing Him, to awaken the hearts that are dead. In short, we need revival. Personal, corporate, total revival.
And the vision for this isn't just about Crusade's mission. It's ultimately about Jesus. He's the chief end of our lives - to glorify Him, to know and enjoy Him. So we're inviting you to fast first as a way to hunger for Him and invite Him to transform you deeply and radically. To draw nearer to Him and know Him more. A side-effect is the accomplishment of the mission of turning lost students into Christ-centered laborers and whole campus revival. All that starts in our individual hearts. (hey, that rhymes!)
What Fasting Is
There is a ton that could be written here, and I'm not the one qualified to write it! But I'll do my best.
We'll go to the Bible to see what fasting is. In 2 Chronicles 7, Solomon finishes the dedication of the temple, and God appears to him at night and says this: "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:13-14) This doesn't mention fasting specifically, but highlights the call of God for us to humble ourselves, turn from sin, and pray and seek God's face. He promises to answer with forgiveness and healing.
Fasting is an exercise in humility. We abstain, traditionally from food, in a way of crying out to God that we need and desire Him more than the physical needs of this world. John Piper says, "One way to present ourselves before God humbly is to demonstrate to him by fasting that we acknowledge our overwhelming love for physical pleasure."(1) Instead of continually running to our physical needs and wants for satisfaction and life, we in a sense say to God, "I need You more than I need food." We humble ourselves and express our utter dependence on Him, for life, grace, salvation, etc. There is something about abstaining from food (or in some cases, other things we depend on), that tunes our hearts to God in this way. Our hearts become uncluttered and more deeply sensitive to God.(2) It is humbling to turn in dependence on Him, both in a physical sense as we need His sustaining in a time when we could be very weak, and in a spiritual sense as we cry out to Him.
Fasting is also a means of seeking God. When we fast we don't simply not eat. That's self-starvation. We take the time we'd normally use to feed ourselves and instead use it to feed on God, to seek His face. This can be through prayer, reading Scripture, etc. Certainly prayer is a huge focus. Fasting and prayer are deeply intertwined in the Bible: Nehemiah 1:3-4, Acts 13:2-3, Jonah 3, Daniel 9:3, Ezra 8:21-23, to name just a few passages. Fasting and prayer are companions of sorts. Fasting can help bring focus, urgency, and power to our prayers. We almost begin to feel them, or cry out to God in response to the physical hunger we feel. As I mentioned above, there is something powerful that happens when we fast and our senses are tuned to hear and connect with God on a deeper level.
Fasting is also a way of repentance. We see this in the Bible on multiple occasions. In Jonah 3 (linked above), when Jonah delivers God's message to the Ninevites, they respond by declaring a great fast. The king removes his royal robes, dons sackcloth (a show of brokenness and repentance), and decrees to the city that no one - even animals(!) - was to eat, that they were all to fast and call on God urgently for His mercy. Their response to conviction was repentance in fasting and urgent prayer.
There are other Biblical examples too. In Esther 4, the Jewish people are on the verge of destruction, and Esther is about to risk her life to approach the king and ask that he revoke the royal order that the Jews be annihilated. Before going in to the king, she asks the people to fast for her for 3 days. The fast is proclaimed as a means to cry out to God for Him to move in a miraculous and supernatural way. It's a fast with a specific focus. Sometimes you might hear someone say "I'm fasting for X or Y". Same idea.
Also, in Matthew 6:16, as well as 9:15, Jesus uses the phrases "when you fast...", and "they will fast", indicating that this is to be a regular Christian practice. Yet it's often neglected. In Matthew 6, Jesus also starts statements with the phrases "when you give...", and "when you pray...", so fasting is grouped in with giving and praying as regular Christian disciplines. Fasting is the one most often neglected, probably because it's often most difficult, specifically in the instant gratification culture we live in.
And lastly - and I'll end the post with this thought and leave the rest for later posts - we turn to an interesting chapter on fasting, Isaiah 58. Please check it out before finishing this.
Done? Good. God, through Isaiah, is speaking against the sort of fasting that was often done in that time - a superficial ritual that was merely an external exercise. There was no humility, repentance, or depth connected to it. If there were, their actions would have changed. Verse 3 says, "...on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers." Their actions showed that their hearts weren't engaged, they were simply performing an outward duty. Then God goes on to explain true fasting:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
For Israel, God was calling them to repentance and change instead of mere ritual. For them to turn from their wicked ways of oppression and injustice; to stop them and to act in mercy instead. Then, He says in v.9-10:
you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
God doesn't desire empty ritual. So our fasting cannot simply be an empty ritual (more on that in the next post). So as we enter our fast in a few weeks, we should examine ourselves and ask God to reveal areas where we are practicing injustice, cruelty, oppression, rivalry, malice, grudges, fighting, etc. We don't merely want to fast in an outward action, we want to repent of our sin and act in justice and mercy.
I'm going to close this post here. Please be thinking and praying about this fast. We earnestly desire for God to move in our midst - transforming our lives and the campuses around us. And who knows how He may answer us as we cry out to Him? Nothing may happen - yet, at least - or we may see God move in ways we could not believe. But I challenge you to cry out to Him and join in this fast together.
And, please, if you have any questions or thoughts, please either post them here or ask one of the staff - we'd be glad to help.
--Jason
Resources:
(1) A Call to Fast for Humility and Power, article, John Piper
(2) Fasting, Jentezen Franklin
(3) A Hunger for God, John Piper
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