“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Joel 2:12
“Fasting in American and other [materially] prosperous Western nations is almost incomprehensible because we are brainwashed by a consumer culture. We are taught to experience the good life by consuming, not by renouncing consumption…The pervasiveness of consumerism is manifest starkly when we realize how deeply it permeates all levels of society, even those that can scarcely afford to consume. The mark of consumer culture is the reduction of “being” to “having”. And this reduction is fed daily by television [or other forms of media].”
John Piper in A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Prayer and Fasting (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997) 137-138.
Piper hits it spot on! Our consumeristic culture teaches us that life is found in “consuming” and in “having”, and that “life consists in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Alternatively, Jesus urges us to renounce that narrative, which does not mean we will not or do not consume. It means we will not seek to find “life” through consumption any longer, but rather through Christ!
Father in heaven, show us, by Your Holy Spirit, the things in our lives that we feed on that do not satisfy. We renounce the messages that life consists in having things and return to You today. May our fasting be an act of making space in our hearts and lives for that which is better for us. We draw near to You today in the name of Jesus. Amen.