A Time to Pray
Psalm 91:9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling…
I have to be honest, I have never been a faster. Faster, at times, yes, than my 3rd grade buddies in the 100-yard dash. Faster, often to make a decision than anyone around me causing some frustration for my husband and co-workers. But an actual no-eating “faster?”
Nope, that’s not me.
I confess, I tried a few times and it went pretty badly - I would plan to fast lunch on Wednesdays, then remember about ⅓ way into the meal.
I tried what is known as the Daniel fast a couple of times with friends. The Daniel fast is some version of veggies/fruits and natural drinks exclusively for three weeks. This always went OK - but mainly left me feeling pretty deprived.
Most of my fasting memories involve terrible headaches, which may have been induced by the absence of caffeine.
So, let me begin this conversation about fasting with this caveat: you are probably a much better faster than I am.
I’ll leave the “how-to” details of fasting to google; there’s more than enough technical details out there to fill a few hours of internet research. You can fast in 1000 different ways.
What I want to address is the why, the when and the who.
I’ll do this through my own story of 2020 and fasting.
Every new year is prime “Maybe I’ll fast!?” territory. Entering 2020, I decided not to even entertain the thought of a fast this time around. Nope, not my thing, not going to even go there.
As it turns out, I was not set up for success in my fasting of fasting.
Every new year Doug at City Tribe does an amazing teaching on fasting and leads that community in a three-week fast. Everyone participates differently and discerns the “how-to” for themselves, but they are all in it together.
Wouldn’t you know that ALL of my kids asked to go worship with City Tribe on January 5 of this year?The very Sunday the group was gearing up into fasting mode.
So, there I was, the non-faster, listening as a group prepared to fast. I was open to what God might say to me, because I try to be that way, but giving myself full permission to opt-out.
The “I’m out” posture worked well for most of the service until I actually began to pray. The conversation with God in my head went something like this:
Me: “God you’re not asking me to fast are you.”
Quickly back, God: “No.”
Me: “Great, I’m not interested.”
Quietly and gently, God being very subtle: “What if your fast wasn’t about lack?”
Me: “What was that?” (God’s smart question barely registered at this point).
God, helping me understand: “What if you fasted lack?”
Me: Silence
God: “Cayce, you know how destructive lack-oriented thinking and action is, but you also know how much of your own life has the residue of lack in it. What if you gave up anything that’s motivated by “not enough” or need or lack? What if you really let Me be enough and let you be enough?”
Me: “That would be a relief.”
God: “You have my permission to give up (fast) all thinking and acting that comes out of lack in any form. Lack is the thing that sparks fear. When you think you are lacking or you might lack in the future, you cannot live from the reality of who I am for you now and who I made you to be now. Lack steals energy from the present, putting you into fear of the future from false stories about the past. Why don’t you fast that old cycle?”
Me: “So, no fasting food?”
God: “You can, or not.”
Me: “So no direction there?”
God: “Whatever you do, do it from the fullness you have in Me.”
A hallmark of the voice of God is that God has this crazy way of saying subtle hard things, but it feels like freedom and peace, never condemnation. God basically just called me out for my wrong thinking, but it felt like a kind journey in conversation with The Safest Place I know.
Fast forward from January to the morning of March 15, 2020, declared by President Trump a National Day of Prayer. I sat down and had this thought toward God:
Me: “What’s on your heart?”
God: “Psalm 91:9”
So I googled.
There are lots of versions, each half of a sentence:
“If you make the LORD your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter,”
“The LORD Most High is your fortress. Run to him for safety,”
“Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place,”
“You have made the LORD your defender, the Most High your protector,”
“For you have taken refuge in the LORD, my shelter, the sovereign One.”
“You, O LORD, are my refuge! You have made the Most High your home.”
“For thou, O LORD, art my refuge! thou hast made the Most High thy habitation;”
“When we live our lives within the shadow of God Most High,
our secret hiding place…”
Me: “That’s nice, God, but it’s not a full phrase. What’s next.”
God: “What’s next comes next, but what’s now is now.”
Me: (I went ahead and looked at what the next verse was.) “Ah, yes, there we go - the promise…”
God: What I’m saying for you today is just this, Psalm 91:9
Also more God: “Cayce, you already do what the verse says and you love to help other people do it. Just this matters so much right now.”
Me: (I’m a bad compliment receiver because remember my issues with lack, so in my head I questioned what God was saying) “Hmmm?”
God: “I love how you have made Me your tower.”
Me: “Thank you.”
Let me be clear here- somehow when God is complimenting you it is deeply affirming and at the same time you know that you are that way because of HIM. So my “thank you” turned into more of a deep “Thank YOU.” And all the memories from this past week of HIS incredible provision in my life came flooding back. God was a fortress for us as we watched our son careen on a sled at an ungodly speed into a rock wall head-first. We RAN to GOD in so many ways for perfect provision for all that was going so wrong and GOD indeed was our safe place of refuge. He was our tower. God was the Most High, far higher than our terrible circumstances, and God truly sheltered us.
God: “It’s the same thing now with Coronavirus, you (hear the collective YOU in this) don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but running to me will never leave you lacking.”
Let’s go back again to January. Remember when I decided to fast lack? (more accurately put: God was super smart in the way He talked me into doing something great for myself).
Well, I actually ended up not eating any food for an entire 7 days.
I know. That sounds absolutely crazy. I’m not a faster.
AND, God didn’t tell me to fast food, thankfully!
Here’s what happened: I gave up looking at fasting as an “exercise in lack”. I gave up the lens I have tightly clung to for too much of my life: looking for what’s not there or what won’t be there in the future. For years, I thought this made me responsible and praise-worthy. It was time to give that up, too.
As the meals came, I checked in with Jesus and listened to him. I felt physically full (not hungry) and actually had a desire to simply trust Him and feel the fullness of soul and spirit that I already have with Him.
An aside: I don’t have fullness and connection with God because I worked at it or did all the right things. I have it because God made sure we all do. Jesus lived, died and lives again to give us full access to the COMPLETE love of God - it’s a gift that has already been given. But looking at even the best gifts through the lens of lack makes them feel simply... somehow lacking.
Letting go of lack, I am able to experience what I already have right now from God: everything. Love. Life. Hope. Security. Companionship. Help. It’s here, now, for the taking.
So the meals kept coming and I was committed to fasting lack but somehow ended up enjoying not eating.
Yes, you read that right. I am not making this up: I enjoyed it. I had a minor low-level caffeine headache on Day 2, but after that I felt like I was SOARING.
I’m not joking, after the hump of Day 2 I felt better than I had felt in years. I had the most vivid beautiful dreams, 4D almost. I wasn’t hungry in the slightest and I felt more like myself than ever.
A dam of lack broke for me and it had nothing to do with whether I was eating or not. Yet somehow it had everything to do with not eating because I simply am not a “faster.”
This week, March 18-20, many people from all over the world will enter a three-day fast together for the purpose of Psalm 91:9 - running to our God who is our Tower, our Shelter, the Most High.
I am going to fast - the fast will look how it looks according to what God is speaking to my heart.
What about you?
What fears pop up when you even think about fasting?
What does lack say about it?
Those things are normal, but not always helpful.
What is Jesus saying?
Here’s my encouragement to you: Just start the conversation. Maybe you think about God but don’t actually have a two-way conversation with God very often.
Try a fast from this: living like you’re alone up there in your head. Fast from thinking that you are in a monologue.
Or maybe try fasting fear. Go ahead and give yourself permission to give it up for a minute.
Do you get stuck in future-tripping? Maybe it would help you to fast the need to constantly mitigate all the things that could go wrong in the future. If you stop worrying about all that and let God be your Tower right now, maybe you will get some much needed relief for your soul. The truth is that you may be called on in the near future to prepare well for what’s to come. God may eventually use your wonderful future-tripping skills, but those skills will flow more naturally from a place of trust rather than from fear or lack.
What if your fast is less about going without and more of a way to tell the God who made you: You are God, I am not, I choose to run to you. I choose to hide in you, the Tower who made me and sustains me.
Be a faster this week with me!
I encourage you to fast March 18 -20.
I’m not worried about whether you think you are a faster or not.
When you fast out of a mindset of fullness, good things happen.
A short but important “by the way”: when lots of people fast together, running to God as their strong Tower, the trajectory of history changes. Read Esther!
Take a deep breath in and let that breath of God FILL you.
Start your fast there.