On Fasting

Isaiah 62:6-7

On your walls, O Jerusalem,

            I have set watchmen;

all the day and all the night

            they shall never be silent.

You who put the LORD in remembrance,

            take no rest,

and give him no rest

            until he establishes Jerusalem

            and makes it a praise in the earth.

I read this passage in a recent quiet time and it struck me as an appropriate reminder of how earnestly God wants us to pray. Isaiah, as you probably know, is a prophetic book – perhaps the most famous of the Old Testament books of prophecy – and as you near the end of the book you find more and more reference to the coming time when God will complete His redemptive work, destroying sin and evil once and for all and bringing forth a New Jerusalem, filled with His presence and righteousness, in which sin and pain will be no more. His Kingdom will fully come.

The verses quoted above follow a passage that fits this prophetic description of God’s coming Kingdom. Isaiah writes that “the nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory..” (v. 2), and that “You shall no more be called Forsaken…but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her….” (v. 4) He also uses marriage as a metaphor, in which God is described as rejoicing over His people as a groom rejoices over his bride (v. 5). Revelation 21 and 22, the Bible’s last 2 chapters, describe this New Jerusalem in more detail, describing the city coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. God will dwell with His people, crying and pain will cease, the Kingdom will be established permanently.

Both for an Israelite hearing these words in the day they were written, and for us reading them now, a hopeful longing for this beautiful day to come ought to spring forth. This is desirable, worth fixing our eyes upon and dreaming about. More than any other hope of a bright future ahead, this is the brightest, the one we ought to keep in front of us. It’s better than graduation day, better than wedding day, better than anything that happens to be the top of our life’s bucket list. It’s better than a Pirates World Series win (and if you know me, you know that’s a pretty lofty future I hope for).

In light of this vision of what is to come and the longing it produces, we have verses 6 and 7.  God says that He will set watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem who will not be silent. So what is a watchman and why will these ones not stop talking?

In ancient times, cities were walled – fortified against any enemy attack. Often, watchmen would stand atop these walls, scanning the horizon for any threats, or, as in this case, any signs of good news on its way. The watchmen would then alert the city accordingly. It seems that these watchmen, though, are not silently waiting, but constantly speaking. Or in this case, praying.

The following words in the passage indicate this: “You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest, until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.” Those who put the LORD in remembrance, I believe, describes those who pray. And these people who pray are told to give God no rest, or to take rest themselves, until the establishment of this coming Kingdom.

Now I don’t know exactly how God hears and answers prayer, or determines what He’ll answer when and how. It’s mystery that continues to confound and amaze me, but passages like this give no doubt that He considers it vital and uses it in His grand and global plans. He uses the prayers of His people in the accomplishment of His purposes. That’s astounding! God, the Creator and all-Sovereign King, will establish His eternal Kingdom – that’s a fact – and our prayers are an essential part of the process. In some way, He waits for us to ask and seek.

Beginning this week, Pittsburgh Cru has entered into a time of fasting together. We’re inviting everyone involved with Cru to participate by joining in a daily lunch fast from Oct. 13 to Nov. 21, or by fasting in a way that God may specifically lead you or would make more sense for you. We’re doing this because we desperately need God. We need Him to move in our individual hearts and we need Him to move on our campuses and in our city, to draw people to Himself, revive the hearts of His people, and bring the values and presence of His Kingdom here to our city.

Pittsburgh is not Jerusalem. But this passage doesn’t speak just to that city in Israel; it also speaks of a coming day when the new Jerusalem will be the eternal home of all who believe and proclaim Christ as Lord. And this passage reminds us that we are to give God no rest until that day comes. To persistently ask, plea, and beg for Him to bring this end of time and establish His heavenly reign on earth. To cry out to Him for His move. To continue to go before Him and not stop until that day comes. He invites it! He wants us to do this.

As we fast together, let’s pray with this persistency and earnestness, for God to bring His Kingdom in its fullness quickly, and also for Him to bring His Kingdom - which has come to the world through Christ and is spreading and growing even now – more fully and tangibly here. Let’s pray for the lost to be saved, for the hearts of God’s people to be revived and transformed and moved to worship and to action, and for the joy, freedom, peace, healing, life, justice, reconciliation, and all the other wonderful elements of His Kingdom to be more realized here, in Pittsburgh.

If you’re free, the staff will be meeting daily from 12-1 to pray together, and we’d love for you to join us. Let’s seek the Lord together! We’ll usually be at the random stairway to nowhere in the Tansky Lounge of the Pitt union, but text one of us to double check.

-- Jason (412-354-0942)

Cru Fast Sharing Board

Hey everyone...as we fast together this week, let's make this space a place where we can share comments on how we see God working, post prayers and prayer requests, and give encouragement. Please post a comment and use it to write out a prayer, send a note of encouragement or thanksgiving to God, and share what God is doing through the week. Let's keep a visible list of what God is up to!

--Jason

Ok, let's all fast together... but how??

By now hopefully you've heard that across the entire Pittsburgh metro we'll be fasting March 24-31. If you haven't heard this, I recommend leaving this blog entry immediately and reading Jason's last two blogs about what fasting is and what fasting isn't. In fact, go read them right now either way.

Ok, so maybe we all understand the motivations for fasting and some pitfalls to avoid. Perhaps we're all motivated to join together as a community in humility to seek the Lord through fasting. How in the world are we going to do it?

Each person is uniquely different in their habits, ways of connecting to God, schedule, medical history, etc., so by far the most effective way to do this community fast is for each person to choose shis own plan for that week. (Have you heard of the word "shis" before? It was a noble effort by grammarians to create a gender-neutral possessive pronoun that was less bulky than "his or her," but obviously it was a colossal failure. I still like to use it from time to time.)

Here are some main options for your fast:


Food fasts

During any food fast, you will experience physical hunger. You should allow this hunger to motivate you to hunger after God, realizing that your need for Him far exceeds even your need for physical food. An added bonus is the extra time it frees up to act on that spiritual hunger and spend time with God.

1. Total food fast

I know very little about this one, and I don't recommend it. I think it entails just drinking water for a week, and maybe some broth, with perhaps some vitamin supplements. If you feel led to fast in this way, please consult someone who has done it and/or a nutrition major.


2. One meal per day

For this fast, you abstain from one meal each day. During that time, you spend time with God, meditate on His Word, etc.


3. Daniel fast ("no meats or sweets")

Daniel rejected the king's choice food and wine, opting instead for a diet of vegetables and water (see Daniel 1:8-20). Similarly, someone on a Daniel fast sticks to things like vegetables and fruit, eliminating meats, desserts, cola, etc.


4. Sun-up to Sun-down

This fast entails abstaining from food during the period the sun is visible in the sky. In terms of meals, this would mean fasting from breakfast and lunch and having a relatively late dinner. This gives you the aforementioned benefits of a food fast for the better part of the day, while still allowing you to receive nourishment and not die of starvation.



Other types of fasting

For medical reasons, plenty of people can't readily participate in food fasts. But there are other types of fasts out there; if you can't food fast, or if you think one of these other fasts would be more effective for you, feel free to explore these options.


1. Media fasts

a. magazines
b. internet
- facebook
- lostpedia
c. TV
d. movies
e. secular music

In a media fast, one abstains from any or all of the above (and/or anything I've forgotten to mention). I think the best way to choose a media fast is to think about which of these media sources wastes the most of your time and/or pulls you in a direction away from God. Fast from everything on the list that qualifies as one of those two things (time-waster or negative influence).

The greatness of this fast is that it can free up tons of time to spend with the Lord, and possibly begin a process of permanently removing negative spiritual influences from your life (inappropriate movies/music, etc.).

I'm personally going to do a media fast for our community fast. I'm going to do my best to do a full media fast and abstain from everything listed above.


2. Customized personal fast

Along the same lines as the strategy for choosing a media fast above, you can create a personalized fast that makes sense for your life right now. Maybe you need to fast from a person, a book, a particular website, a hobby... you would know this better than I would. The same guidelines would apply for choosing your fast -- what wastes my time, and what pulls me away from God? Whatever you come up with, fast from it.

*************************

The fast will officially begin (3/24) and end (3/31) at Cru. I'm excited to hear what you guys will be fasting from! If you have any questions about fasting, please ask anyone on the staff team or Rob Yon, who gave a great talk about fasting a couple nights ago at Cru.

I'm excited to see what God will do as we seek Him together.

Jon

What Fasting Isn't

Last week I wrote a bit about our upcoming fast and gave a brief biblical overview of fasting (if you haven't read it yet, please read that first - just scroll down or search the archive on the sidebar). I want to continue that today by talking about what fasting isn't. Knowing what it isn't can help us engage better in what fasting is.

I closed the last post by pointing to Isaiah 58, the chapter labeled "True Fasting" in many Bibles. In it, God calls Israel out on their empty fasting - they were simply doing a ritual and it had no effect on their hearts. This was evidenced in their actions - fighting, exploitation, etc. They were fasting as a duty or ritual, disconnecting it from their hearts and actions and expecting God to hear them based on the fact that they were performing this outward action.

So the first thing fasting is not is this: Fasting is not empty ritual. It's not simply an action we perform. Fasting is an act of humility and a proclamation of dependence on God. Isaiah 58 indicates that this humbling of ourselves should be accompanied with an examination of our attitudes and actions, and repentance (a turning from evil and sin). The Israelites in Isaiah 58 seemed eager for God to come near them (v. 2), but their actions showed otherwise. They failed to acknowledge their brokenness and rebellion. So their fasting was pointless. In his book "Fasting", Jentezen Franklin says this: "You should enter a fast seriously, having repented of any known sins."

Fasting is also not a demonstration of our own super-spirituality. If our mindset as we fast is along the lines of, "Look how spiritual I am because I'm abstaining from food for a whole week! God will surely see and bless me!", we've got it all wrong. That's pride, not humility. Jesus addresses this attitude in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. The Pharisee comes before God boasting of his "accomplishments" - saying that he's "not like other men" like the tax collector next to him, that he fasts twice a week and tithes. But the tax collector approaches God humbly, asking for mercy, confessing that he's a sinner. He's the one who leaves justified. We can't use fasting as a way to show God how great we are. That's just ridiculous.

There's a danger or not only approaching God this way, but people as well. Jesus says in Matthew 6:16-18, "when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others...when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (italics mine) Beware of these subtle inclinations of our hearts, and take them captive, turning them over to the Lord and receiving His grace.

Fasting is not a means of simply getting what we want. Sometimes when we fast, we may fast "for something" - for revival, for the healing of a loved one, etc. But there is a subtle danger hidden here. We can begin to view God as a vending machine and fasting as a stack of quarters. If we feed the machine enough quarters, we'll get the snack we want. God is not Santa Claus. And we shouldn't approach Him that way. When we fast and pray, we do so expectantly, but ultimately God brings the results in His will and timing. So we can't fast with the thought that we're filling the right formula that God will honor. That's essentially what Israel was doing in Isaiah 58 - performing a ritual or formula and expecting God to honor it. But that's not the way God operates - He sees the heart, not our outward actions.

Fasting is not dieting. On a longer fast you might lose weight, but this is clearly not the reason to do it!

Fasting is not simply abstaining from something. That's just self-starvation. When we fast, we don't just not eat or not watch TV or not do whatever. We intentionally abstain from those things so that we can seek God and hunger after Him. We use the time we'd normally eat or watch TV or surf the web to seek God, to pray, read, worship, etc. Often these longings for whatever we're fasting from can give us sensitivity to our deeper longing for God. In a mysterious way, when we fast we become very sensitive to God and are often able to engage Him and hear Him more strongly. And we can take the hunger pangs - for food or for whatever we're fasting from - and use them as reminders of our hunger for God and reminders to seek Him. Whenever I fast, I try to pray whenever I feel that pain of hunger in my gut. And often it subsides too!

These are a few of the things that fasting is not - I'm sure given time we could come up with more. So as we enter this fast together, let these be reminders of how not to fast.

And again, let me challenge you to join in fasting next week. Go before the Lord and ask how He might have you engage in it, if at all. Soon Jon will post on this blog about various types of fasting. Read over it and invite God to show you how you might take part. We want to seek God together for personal transformation and revival, and for revival and awakening on our campuses. We need Him desperately. Please join us in seeking Him and hungering after Him together, as a body of believers!

--Jason

Cru Community Fast

Last week on this blog Jon brought to your attention the discipline of fasting and mentioned that we'd be engaging in a Pittsburgh Metro Cru community fast later in March. I'm here to let you know more information, cast some vision, educate on what fasting is and isn't, and challenge you to pray about how you can join in our communal fast.

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

Fasting together

As you read through the Bible, you will surely come across many references to the practice called "fasting." Most actual occurences of fasting in the Bible (I've just read all of them, so trust me) are communal and happen when Israel is in a desperate state of shambles or the early church leaders gather together to make important decisions or steps in their ministry.

Fasting is a discipline that is rarely discussed, and there may be some misconceptions looming out there about it. So later this month, we'll be talking about it at greater length, answering some important questions (what is fasting? what isn't it? should we do it? why? how can we appropriately practice it?) and even joining together across the whole Pittsburgh metro in an exciting fast as a community!

Stay tuned for more information!

Jon