At the beginning of the year, it is a good time to set aside a few days or weeks to fast and reset ourselves. I avoided fasting for many years until I was open to learn about the power of prayer and fasting. This is not a legalistic thing to do... it is a matter of the heart. As God directs you to fast, He will show you what to fast.
Usually, I have done a modified 21-day Daniel fast. One year, Big Sweet Pea fasted sweets and my nephews fasted ketchup. Those were both hard things for them to give up.
A spiritual fast is something we are encouraged and asked to do in the Word of God. As believers, it is a time to lay aside distractions and position ourselves for what lies ahead. Matthew 6:16 begins with, “When you fast...” not “If you fast.” This is a spiritual discipline that has many benefits. Not only does it disconnect us from the world, it reconnects us to God.
Personally, I’ve found that I have received clarity and direction from the Lord in big decisions I have faced. Several years ago, we were considering the idea of selling our small ranch and buying an acreage. I truly believe we received confirmation to walk it out by faith because I had chosen to put God first over food. It was such a huge decision for us; we had prayed and believed and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that little ranch. It had also been Hubby’s grandparent’s homestead.
We had a lot to consider, yet after much prayer and seeking the Lord, we had full confirmation to pursue the sale of it and move. It would take a book to share the God-experiences we had as we sold the homestead and bought our present place. I am thankful for His guidance in those life-impacting decisions.
“God says I’m waiting for you to do something physically so I can do something spiritually.” Fasting is like a spiritual shower that clears out the fog, the sin and the distractions of life and brings greater focus and ability to hear His voice clearer. It creates more closeness and changes our heart. Fasting fine-tunes our hearing.
There’s a story of two woodcutters who often chided each other of who chopped more wood. Finally, they decided to have a competition to determine who the fastest chopper was. There was only one rule... whoever chopped the most wood in one day wins. As they positioned themselves the next morning, they started chopping at their fastest speed. After an hour, Jack, the lumberjack stopped. The other lumberjack, Peter, thought his opponent must be tiring which inspired him to cut at double the pace. After 15 minutes, Jack went back to chopping. After a time, Peter’s opponent stopped once again; right as Jack had begun to tire. Jack smiled to himself and picked up the pace because victory was close now!
All day long, Peter stopped chopping for 15 minutes every hour while Jack kept going relentlessly. As the competition ended, Jack was absolutely confident he had won but to his astonishment, Peter had actually cut more wood! “But how could this happen,” he asked? “You stopped every hour for 15 minutes!”
Peter, the winning lumberjack replied, “It’s actually simple. Every time I stopped my work, while you were still hard at it, I was sharpening my axe.”
Fasting is like sharpening our axe. As we step into 2021, let’s sharpen our focus and fine tune our hearing for the days ahead.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
