I hate fasting.  I love fasting.  It is a confusing place to be in, yet it is beautiful.

Fasting is not easy.  Who am I kidding?  Fasting is really hard!  However, I have noticed that I have been desiring to fast more and more lately.  Why is this?  Because of the nearness of the Lord.

When I started fasting, it was always because I needed desperately to hear from the Lord on a particular matter, or because I wanted breakthrough in a situation.  And God has been faithful to meet my needs whenever I have come to Him.  But there is a strange side-effect that has recently overshadowed any other reason why I would fast.  I have found joy in the weakness of fasting, in the total dependence on God.

I don’t mean the physical weakness (which certainly happens) I mean emotional and spiritual weakness.  The great glory of fasting has been that it brings me in touch with my spiritual poverty (“blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”-Matt. 5:3).  When my physical needs–specifically hunger–are met, I have no need to depend on God to sustain me.  Without food, I have nowhere to turn for comfort except to God.

While fasting, I am also in constant need of God’s grace to keep me faithful to the fast.  There have been times when I was so strongly torn between my desire to break a fast and my desire to not break it that I would curl up in a ball on my bed and cry out to God for the strength to continue.  Yet even in such times, how deeply I would feel the nearness of God!

Fasting makes me lean on God daily, hourly even.  On a normal day it is too easy to trust in my own strength and forget to depend on Him.  Fasting helps me remember to lean (“Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?” -S.O.S 8:5).  For me the beauty of fasting has been in the humility of it.  There is such sweet joy in recognizing my inability to do anything apart from Jesus.