Day 17: Making Change Last

As we approach the final days of this year’s Daniel Fast, I have been thinking about what I’ve gained along the way, and what I will refuse to let go.

As we move back to “normal”, hopefully “normal” has changed, at least a little. Not just in terms of eating healthier or being more purposeful with your time (both of which are excellent), but with your heart, your attitude, your capacity for God.

What spiritual muscles have you developed, and how will you keep flexing them?

I will be taking some things with me on the food side (some of the things we’ve eaten have been so good in spite of their healthy contents that I see no reason quit), as well as continuing to refrain from certain activities (for me talk radio really needs to stay on the “do not play list”). But more importantly there is an awareness of God that I don’t want to leave.

A woman in our connect group shared last week about her tenacious perseverance to spend 2 hours in prayer, seeking God’s face. In her initial attempts she kept falling asleep.

So she would set aside another time and try again.

After several attempts, and with dogged resolve, she was able to go for the full 2 hours. Only by pushing through was she able to get past a busy life full of responsibility and care, past fatigue, past the inability to focus, past lists of things to do.

When she got there, she said she found a sweet place with the Lord she had not visited for quite some time. Her story was invigorating, and honestly her enthusiasm and her intention to visit that place again soon, had me on the edge of tears.

This is such a great picture of not only fasting, but the intentionality required for lasting spiritual growth.

This is what I want to take with me, a life of pressing past all the things that keep me from him… a fasted life.

After you have had a day of feasting and celebrating Easter Sunday, how will you reengage with him Monday morning? Life has an ebb and flow to it and no one can keep up a pace of intense devotion continually, and that is okay, don’t let that get you down. Still, make your plans now for keeping up with the progress you’ve made in your appetite for him.

When will you fast next? Not for three weeks, but a day, or a meal.

When will you plan to be alone with him again, to share your heart, to be still and know?

So although you can soon go back to eating and doing all that you did before, don’t let that focus cause you to forget why you did it in the first place.

Let’s purpose to make this change last. Imagine what our God can do with that commitment, and where it will take us as individuals, and as a church!

~Tadd