“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Joel 2:12
“In fasting, what we are saying is that more than we enjoy food, we enjoy God… Fasting is feasting on fellowship with God.”
David Platt at Secret Church 19, where he taught on 125 passages dealing with “Prayer, Fasting, and the Pursuit of God.” List compiled here by Eric Roberts.
Happy Ash Wednesday.
It’s a day each year when we return to God with our whole hearts. We enter a season by fasting, weaping, and mourning With Platt, we proclaim that we want to enjoy God more than food. We announce that feasting on fellowship with God is our greatest desire.
To do this we return by taking a posture of repentance.
We repent of disordered attachments. In plain terms, that means we let go of good things that may have become too important to us, and maybe even more important than God in our lives. To repent is to change directions and ask the Holy Spirit to help us put things in order.
We repent of sins that so easily beset us. This refers to habits or patterns of living that do not honor God and are not life-giving to us and to those around us. To repent is to change directions and ask the Holy Spirit to help us put to death these practices and patterns and instead walk by the Spirit so our lives produce fruit.
In this sense, feasting on fellowship with God leads to fruitful living. And one of the many fruits the Spirit produces is generosity. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Galatians 5:22-23
Observing Lent is one of the greatest pathways to growth in generosity.
God, we repent of our sins and return to you this Lent. Help us grow this season. Produce the fruit of the Spirit of generosity in our lives this Lent for your glory. And grant me safe passage home from Pakistan (I depart shortly after the time when email goes out). Amen.