Today is the first day after I have completed my 40 day fast. It started out as 14 days- it grew to 21 days and before long, it was 40. It has been the longest 40 days of my life!!!!!!! I had come to a point of not having cravings for specific foods but just missing the action of eating. Looking at people put food in their mouth was fascinating lol! Anyway now that I’ve finished I need to slowly get back into eating and I need to put on at least 3kg.
That’s all the physical part of it and now for the reasons behind it and what happened through the journey. I started this fast looking for direction. That’s all I wanted- a hand to point me to the way and I can walk it. Of course God had other ideas (I could imagine being like ‘finally I have her where I want her, let me now deal with what I want to deal with). Have you ever come to God asking for something and the answer He gives seems to have NOTHING to do with what you asked? Be comforted, you are not alone! Our conversations ran along the lines of this:
Me: Daddy look at this, what do you want me to do?
Daddy: Mimi, I want your heart
Me: Yes I know, here it is, now about this thing again- what do you want me to do?
Daddy: Mimi, I want your heart
(you can imagine by now I’m getting just a little (tiny) bit testy- so I rephrase)
Me: Daddy, I am all yours. In this situation, tell me your will so I may do it
(see how ‘spiritual’ that sounds)
Daddy: Mimi, I want your HEART
(Nope not fooled one bit)
Me: yes, yes, yes!!!!!!!! I’ve said yes already! I want to know what to do!!!!!
Daddy: *silence*
Yup………..so much fun! (but this does happen to you right? Its not just me?)
This happened a lot during the first few days until it finally dawned on me (hey I was desperate so it took longer than my normal brain takes) I was going about the whole thing wrong. About 1 week had passed by now. So I asked God what He wanted of me during this fast. First thing He said, ‘I want 21 days’. So that was how the first extension for my fast came about. During that time, I came to Him with no agenda, no request and just waited on Him. Some days He answered immediately, other days He wouldn’t say anything for hours and other day He would be completely silent. The lesson wasn’t in what He would say, the lesson was in waiting; not on my time (ok I’ll do QT for an hr- God speak), but on God’s time (I’m just going to wait until You speak). Yes you still have to function in the real world and I still went to work and still went to gym and still did all I was supposed to do- but while doing it, I was waiting on God (consciously, actively).
I had reached 20 days and I was relaxed and felt like I had achieved something. While in my sister’s room I came across this book:
It’s a really short read, like about 60 pages. So I sat down and read it in one go. It was a wake up call. It’s not that what was in the book was anything new, it was just a ‘light bulb’ moment. When the same thing has been told to you over and over again and then one day when its said you are like ’wow’. I call it revelation of the HS. Anyway the crux of the matter was I was short-changing myself and God; myself because I had settled for a very mediocre encounter with God and God because He could do so much more in me but I was limiting Him. And hence my fast was extended to 40 days. Honestly I think from the beginning God wanted me to go 40 days but knowing me, if He told me to do it, I would have gone about it kicking and screaming. Now because it was ‘my idea’ to do it, I was totally willing.
The rest of the journey was filled with highs and lows. The highs were moments of total clarity in what God was saying and responding to it. The lows were the moments of dejection; when to believe you were changing or believing fasting was making a difference, was really hard. But even in the lows I was reminded that if so many negative thoughts were bombarding me, I must be on the right path!
In the end, I came back to the beginning; Mimi, I want your heart. This time my response was what He wanted.
Fasting is not the end. It’s not a time to draw near to God and after the fast, we go back to our regular lives. Fasting is a means of coming to a new closeness with God; a place where we are more receptive to changes He wants to make in us and allow those changes to take place; we come to a knew revelation and understanding of who GOD is and who WE are in Him. All this so that at the end of the fast, you (this changed you) can go ahead into a new level in your relationship with God and not go back to ‘life as usual’. Its that wake up call to being called to something greater than you can ever be on your own (you’ve always understood it but the ‘greater’ is so much greater now!). And its funny that the more you respond to this call, the more its not ‘you’ responding. Its Him in you. All you are doing is getting out of the way so that He can do His work.
The end of the fast is the beginning of this prayer:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down and the mountains trembled before you.
Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him
You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. but when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
Yet, Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:1-8
