Fasting...oh joy!

So I have been asking God to explain fasting to me.Specifically, for me, it has had a wrong connotation to it. It has always seemed like something that has to be done as work to please God. It has always had a negative connotation to it, like you have to do it so that you are working really hard to make God happy.

However, now that He has taught me that humanity's main problem is the inability to receive love, specifically from Him, that faulty understanding no longer makes sense; it doesn't fit. If our main challenge is the inability to receive love, then working really hard to earn love is antithetical. So as I have realized this, I have been asking Him, again, to tell me the truth. Here is what I am getting.

Fasting is about growing deep roots. And, again, I am learning it through my work in the landscaping field.

As I have written about before, the key to a healthy lawn, and to healthy plants in general, is deep roots. So, knowing that, we then have to know how to get deep roots. And, of course, the analogy is going to apply to people as well.

In my journeys working on peoples' yards, I sometimes hear things like this--"I know we are only supposed to water a few days a week, but I like my grass green, so I water more."

And it's true; watering your grass every day, or a lot of times throughout the week, will keep your lawn greener. But here's the rub. Watering your lawn every day produces shallow roots, which then HAVE to be watered every day, or else they dry out immediately because they are so shallow. When you water every day, you keep the surface of the ground constantly wet. And roots are always going to go where they find water.

And what exactly is the problem with shallow roots? Well, shallow roots dry out quickly if the water supply ever stops; they are easily susceptible to disease and fungus, especially if they are wet all the time; they are easily susceptible to predators, such as animals that eat grass (which will pull the grass up by the roots), and bugs which will infest and/or eat the roots; and, shallow roots are susceptible to all manner of environmental hazards--i.e., foot traffic, fires, excessive heat or cold, etc.

Plants with deep roots, on the other hand, can survive all of the above, because although they are exposed to all of the same dangers and hardships that other plants are exposed to, once their foliage is damaged, destroyed, eaten, or otherwise hurt, their roots remain intact; and once the danger is past, they will simply begin to grow again.

The same hazards hit all plants. Plants whose roots are right near the surface have their roots exposed to the hazard; plants whose roots are deep do not.

So, the way to get deep roots is to water in a fashion that draws the roots down deep. This is accomplished by watering two, maybe three times a week, but watering deeply during those times. You give it some water, you let it sink in; you give it some more water, you let it sink in. Repeating this will allow the water that you give it to sink down deep in the ground. Then the roots will follow, because roots will always go where there is water. Then you don't water for a few days, so that the surface DOES dry out, so that the roots are forced to grow deeper as they follow the water down.

All of this applies to people as well. Take everything that was just said and see the analogy. People with deep roots can survive all of the hardships of life (that come to us all), but people with shallow roots are more susceptible to being harmed by them. So then, the question becomes, how do people get deep roots? Well, the answer to that question is very long. In this post, I am only going to talk about how fasting aids in the deepening of our roots.

A person's roots are the deepest when they extend into the spirit; specifically, a person's roots grow the deepest when they grow into God, into Jesus Christ, and into the Spirit of God. Fasting lessens your dependence on the physical realm, and moves it into the spiritual realm. The physical realm is only surface deep; the spiritual realm is deep soil. Jesus said, "It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing." And, "Those who worship God must worship IN SPIRIT and truth."

So fasting forces our roots to go beyond this physical realm, by depriving us of basic needs of our physical bodies--primarily food. When we do not have food to sustain us, or to make us happy, or to fulfill, us, we are forced to look elsewhere for that fulfillment, namely, the spiritual realm. When the disciples tried to get Jesus to eat on one occasion, he responded, "I have food to eat that you know not of.My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." Jesus was eating spiritual food, and we must learn to do the same. He also went on in John chapter 6 to say quite a bit about He Himself being the bread of life. The entire chapter lays it out. He said that we must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. Obviously we cannot do that physically. He goes on to clarify."The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life."

So, the conclusion is this--in order to grow our own roots deep, they must extend into the spiritual realm; specifically, they must extend deep into Christ Himself. If we are so dependent on the physical realm that we can't live without physical necessities, that means our roots are only surface deep, and we are in more danger than we know.

Going without food, or water, or sex, or anything else that we place our trust in physically, will force us to look for and seek out something else to sustain us, just as the roots of your lawn, when deprived of surface water, will drive down into the soil to find water.

I was wondering about fasting from things other than food, and whether or not they would have the same effect, when I remembered that in the Bible, it does mention fasting from sex in 1st Corinthians 7. Paul says that a man and a wife should not deprive each other except for the purpose of focusing on prayer. And fasting from water is mentioned at least once, in the story of Nineveh, where the king decrees that no one should taste food or drink anything for three days... man or beast even! So apparently it does work to abstain from other physical things than just food. However, most fasting that I see is simply from food.

Life can be viewed as soil where we, the plants, live. The physical realm is the surface of where we live, and if our roots extend only into this level, then we will have only the physical realm to sustain us. However, if our roots extend into the spiritual realm (and the further the better), then we will be much more able to survive and thrive throughout all of the hardships and dangers that will come at us. No one escapes the hardships of life; it is how we are able to deal with them that determines the outcomes in our lives. And the deeper our roots, the better we will be able to deal with them.

So, to re-visit my earlier point about my perceptions, we can see then how fasting IS a part of love, and how it DOES fit into the paradigm of God's great love for us. Love always does what is best for a person; that is a great definition of love. So for God to implement a tool that grows our roots deep into him is certainly an act of love.