Week 3

Fasting

John Wesley said about fasting, "Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it."  In my experience as a United Methodist, it has been disregarded.  

When I hear the word "fasting," I am immediately taken back to my days as a Roman Catholic and Lent.  Each year we would "give up something" whether it be chocolate, sweets, coffee, etc.  Then on Fridays, it was time to give up meat.  It was intended to be a spiritual discipline to prepare us for Easter.  But in actuality, it lacked spiritual power.  In my experience as a Roman Catholic, it has has been misunderstood.

I think that it has been misunderstood in the sense that the focus was about me.  It was about what I was giving up and when I could get whatever I had given up back.  Really though, the purpose of fasting is to grow closer to God.  It is less about self-denial and more about building a closer relationship with God.  So, fasting is a God thing, not a me thing.  First and foremost, fasting is God-centered.

We live in a world of plenty.  When we pull into McDonald's we are asked if we would like to super-size our order.  Food is at our disposal 24/7.  We don't know what it is like to go without.  The idea of denying ourselves seem to be foreign many of us living in the US.  Why would we ever need to fast?

In Luke 4:1-13, we hear the story of Jesus being tempted in the desert.  In verse 2 it says, "where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.  He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry." So Jesus fasted forty days and at the end of his time in the desert, he was hungry.  According to Richard Foster, those who fast for long periods of time experience hunger in the first week, but after that time, the hunger pangs go away.  If that is true, what kind of hunger was Jesus experiencing?  Could it possibly be that after fasting Jesus had an intense spiritual hunger?

Many times, without us realizing it, food and other things (texting, Facebook, Twitter) control us.  We use them almost as medicines so that we don't have to feel.  Think about it.  We eat when we are anxious.  We eat when we are bored.  We eat when we are sad.  We eat so that we don't have to come to grips with our emotions.  When that which controls us is stripped away, we are left with our true selves.  That is when we realize we are hungry for God, just like Jesus was.

So how do we fast?  It is fairly simple.  Find a time that is going to work with your schedule.  It is not a good idea to pick a day of the week if your job requires business lunches and dinners.  After you have found a good time, start to abstain for short periods of time and slowly build to longer periods of time.  For example, you might want to start with fasting one or two meals.  Fill those times when you would eat a meal with prayer.  Also every time your stomach growls, stop and offer a brief prayer.  Allow God to break into your day.  Be mindful of your health.  For some, fasting from food is not a good idea.  For others, food may not control you, so find something else to fast like your smartphone.  However you decide to fast, seek to feast on God.

  

Week Two

Prayer

 Most of us would define prayer as communication with God which it is.  Communication involves both talking and listening.  But it we are honest with ourselves, our prayer lives are more about talking rather than listening.  We approach God as if God is the cosmic Santa Claus.  Yes we employ the ACTS acronym that we learned in Sunday school:

     Adoration (praising God for who God is)

     Confession (admitting our sins)

     Thanksgiving (thanking God for blessings)

     Supplication (asking for needs)

We acknowledge God's provisions for us and we butter God up acknowledging God's sovereignty so that we feel good about presenting God with our Christmas list.  Just like our Christmas lists, we also expect that God will give us what we want.  We TALK, TALK, TALK.  What about listening? 

Prayer is more than mere communication.  It is dialogue.  With communication, we impart information.  With dialogue, we move deeper, beyond the masks that we wear, to the depths of our spirit.  We bear our true humanity to God with all its imperfections.  Richard Foster says about prayer, "To pray is to change.  Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.  If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives."  Through prayer, we see our need to conform to the likeness of Christ.

Prayer needs to be the fabric of our lives as Christians.  In the Scriptures, we read that Jesus got up early in the morning and withdrew to pray (Mk. 1:35).  Jesus was in the middle of his day, and he stopped to pray (Lk. 11:1).  In sum, the Scriptures encourage us to pray continuously (1Th. 5:17) as our goal.  When I think of praying continuously, Brother Lawrence comes to my mind.  In the midst of the washing the pots and pans, he kept his mind on Christ, seeing God in the ordinary.

While most of us are not Brother Lawrence, we can aspire to try to allow God to break into our day.  One of the ways that we can move in that direction is "Praying the Hours."  When I brought up this suggestion at worship, one of the thoughts is, "That's Catholic."  While Praying the Hours is a part of Roman Catholic monastic life, it predates the monastic movement and was adapted from ancient Jewish prayer practices.  One can use the Liturgy of the Hours (a Roman Catholic liturgy) adapted to our Protestant bent.  But I am merely suggesting that we use the model as a blueprint for prayer that is intentionally dispersed throughout the day.  If we commit to Praying the Hours model, we determine set periods of time, 5 mins, 10 mins, etc., and then we withdraw at certain times of the day, 8 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM, etc.  Obviously each of these times can be adjusted to fit your schedule.  And the prayers that you use can be unique to you.  The important thing is to stop and allow God to break into the day.

Before long, we will be like Brother Lawrence -seeing God in the ordinary of the day - and our lives will a living prayer to God.

Week One

Meditation

Many times when we envision meditation in our minds, we conjure up images of a person sitting on the floor  with legs crossed, palms up and chanting UM, UM, UM.  The goal of this type of mediation is to completely empty oneself.  Christian meditation is the discipline of disengaging from the busyness of the world and making space to hear God.  Foster says "Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word."  Instead of emptying ourselves, we are filling ourselves with God.

While this may sound like a very simple task, think about all the noise in our lives.  Foster argues that "In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in 'muchness' and 'manyness.'"  Our lives are so filled with chatter that silence seems like a foreign land.  We don't know how to act in the silence and we become uncomfortable.  We run back to the noise.  Mediation offers an alternative creating a means to learn to embrace silence and seek God.

Practically speaking, for most of us, meditation is going to require trial and error since it is so foreign.   It is okay for our minds to drift.  Keep at it.  The more we engage in meditation, the easier it becomes.  First find a time of the day that works for you.   Second, find a space that is conducive to meditation.  It should be a place that is comfortable but is free from distraction as possible.  Third, select a Scripture to meditate on.  Remember, meditation's purpose is to create space to encounter God on God's terms.  It is not Bible study, so we do not approach Scripture to see what we can learn.  So, read the Scripture SLOWLY and REFLECTIVELY.  We are not reading for information.

If the Scripture is a story, one way to meditate on it is to insert yourself into the Scripture as one of the characters.  Try to imagine with all of your senses.  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you smell?  What do you taste?  How do you feel? How did you experience Jesus in the story?

Another way to meditate on the Scripture is Lectio Divina.  Read the text very slowly drinking in each word.  Listening for the still, small voice of God.  When a word or phrase seems to pop out, stop and reflect upon it.  Let it interact with your inter-being.  Insights gained during this time make excellent grist for journaling.

May God Bless You this week as you seek to meditate upon his Word.

For the next twelve weeks I invite you to journey with me as we explore the spiritual disciplines using David S. Young's "A Closer Walk."  Each week we will examine a different spiritual disciple.  On Sunday morning we will learn about the discipline, then we are encouraged to practice it throughout the week.

The purpose of the spiritual disciplines is to deepen our individual spiritual relationship with God.  Ultimately, this will lead to congregational renewal.  My hope is that through this twelve week journey, the disciplines will become part of the fabric of each of our lives. 

Each week we will only be able to briefly learn about each discipline.  For those who would like to learn more, I would suggest that you read Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline which offers extended explanations.  "A Closer Walk" is based upon this book, so it serves as an excellent companion.

I would like to offer this encouragement from Foster as we begin our journey together:
     We must not be led to beleive that the Disciplines are only for spiritual giants and hence beyond
     our reach, or only for contemplatives who devote all thier time to prayer and meditation.  Far
     from it.  God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings:  people
     who have jobs, who care for children, who wash dishes and mow lawns.  In fact, the Disciplines
     are best exercised in the midst of our relationships with our husband or wife, our brothers and
     sisters, our friends and neighbors.

May God bless us as we endeavor to draw closer to God.