Fasting

Great devotional/article I found at New Living Translation by Scott Lyons.

Here is a portion

"...One of the arguments against the necessity of fasting—resistance even to calling it a necessity—is the propensity we have to reserve the word necessity for those things we believe bring us to salvation. And I understand this resistance. But to spend our lives paring down the essentials of our faith is to miss the forest for the trees.

Now it may have its purposes in some discussions. But our faith is fat and full, not undernourished. The necessity of fasting is also not about searching out ways we can save ourselves—only Christ can merit our salvation, only his work on the cross. But fasting fights the passions so that we might receive the fruit of our salvation. Fasting is necessary for our salvation in the sense of our becoming saved, our sanctification, our becoming like God—necessary only after understanding ourselves as within the body. It is necessary so that I might love my wife and my children as I ought, my neighbor, and even my enemy.

It is hard not to belabor the point, but many misconceptions rise up at this point in the conversation, so much so that we abandon the good way that Christ has shown us all because he did not sit down and write up a to-do list for us: "In your arguments, here are the things that are important." But it is he who is important, and sharing in his life. Some of us would rather follow the to-do list. Some of us would consider it a trade-up to abandon the Spirit for the tutelage of the law. Some days, I would.

Meanwhile, as I work on this article on the spiritual discipline of fasting, I am constantly being interrupted by my slew of children. One asks me to show him Young Justice action figures on the computer, one wants me to play Mario Kart, another wants to show me some beautiful thing she has made, and others whine for this and that. Some just want to climb on me, or want me to hold them. My frustration grows, and I burn with anger rather than with God's love. That is the unfortunate reality, the daily life in my home, the hell in my heart. I am a sinner who needs to die that I might live—who needs to fast. And this not simply for myself; I need Life that I might pour him out on these little ones."