Like a fast

In the last couple of weeks in our women’s bible study, the mamas were talking about how to look to the Lord to be sustained in our season of not getting much help, of not getting a lot of time with our husbands, and even experiencing the feeling of being trapped by our children.

I spent a number of days just weighted down, carrying the burden of the women, and thinking on my own walk with this trial of feeling like life is more than I can handle, and learning to understand who God is in that. I presented my request to the Lord: Father how can we rely on you for strength?

I was trying to pinpoint the circumstance. It seems like it comes down to physical and emotional exhaustion. Because the first couple hours of my morning I feel organized and my kids are trucking along, we might have an activity at a certain time and I’m enjoying them. Then comes 11:00 or 12:00 am. Similar to 5:00 pm, I start to notice my kids getting weary of our house, their toys, of my instruction, of everything. And then I follow suite. I’m drained. I’m ready for nap time. I feel wiped. Multiply this times an ungodly high number when your baby is a newborn. When your body is physically tapped, even if you’ve had your iron and protein to back you, a very fleshy side of me starts to emerge. This is the moment I think of when I consider the discussion with my sisters in Christ. It’s a moment where I sense the end of myself, I sense some desperation, I begin to see my children differently than I do at 8:00am, and my own identity in the Lord becomes blurry. Like we were warned at the women’s retreat, I can begin to take on other identities, usually revolving around my emotional state. If I am saying to myself, “I feel crazy,” then I let myself act crazy. If it’s “I am so angry” then I am very tempted to act angry and feel justified. If it’s “I am done” then I might easily let appropriate and biblical instruction or discipline begin to slide. This is the state that as a mom we look to the Word and to the Lord and say, “What is there for us in this, Lord?”

So I’m writing and praying and reading and the Lord just gave me a parallel that really helped me. This physical exhaustion reminded me of fasting. When we just abstain from eating in a fast, we feel crazed pretty quickly. Or we can do what Scripture puts in hand with fasting: PRAYER AND SCRIPTURE. Fasting exposes a basic need, a weakness in us. And Deut declares that man’s food does not come by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Yes. This is how it feels. We feel differing degrees of physical and emotional exhaustion, as if experiencing an appointed season of fasting. The Lord has given us the blessing and the hard work of this season. Just like when we fast, the Holy Spirit prompts us to do so. And in this season it feels like an unsolicited, unchosen, practical fast. I am denyed free time, time alone, maybe even food, sleep, quiet, and energy. Just like in a fast: food. More than ever I feel exposed. This can lead to malnourished and crazy pretty quickly. Or, like a fast, I am in a season of leaning heavily onto the Lord. I do not live by bread alone. I do not live by free time, by moments alone, by sleep, etc. I live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. I must have him as my bread or I will perish.

Our group is studying Romans and when we got to chapter four, we studied how “against all hope” Abraham believed God about what was promised him without weakening in his faith, without wavering, but instead was fully convinced that God would do what he said he would do. In fact the description of God in that chapter, just a couple of verses earlier was “God, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” God promises us things that require faith because they seem daunting and impossible, just like Sarah’s dead womb being able to bring new life.

I felt challenged reading this to not just be glad for Abraham and Sarah that God is a God who gives life to the dead and brings into existence things that do not exist. I was challenged by the Holy Spirit to think about it in my life, in a much smaller way. Some days my patience is literally non-existant. Some days I have no endurance. Some days as soon as my eyes open I already wish it was 7pm. Some days I feel a total lacking of love. I see more and more the more I am SPENT that I am not so great. When I am put through a wringer, deprived of free time and quiet and energy and even time to eat a meal, I become something devastatingly ugly. And I write that, oddly, with a relieved smile on my face. Because there’s no convincing once you get there. You just let yourself be laid low and let God begin to fill you with his grace. You let him begin, AGAIN AND AGAIN, as much as is necessary to cause to come into existence things in your heart that just do not exist. This is the God that he is. By nature. And by choice towards us, because he has demonstrated his love toward us.

In realizing lately a need, a must have, for the promises of God to be in my pocket lately, I came across a verse for this season of mothering that I might just take Deut 6 literally about. I am kind of considering figuring out a way to tie it to my forehead . Because what feels impossible is strength. Endurance. Patience. And the power of God. All of the lies that we battle in our season at home somehow involve these divine gifts. Yet Scripture is clear that God desires to give us these things, that as 2 Peter 1 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.”

So the verse I came across and parked on was Colossians 1:11 and instead of quoting it exactly, which you can look up for yourself, I took the promise and threw my faith upon it, reading it the way the Holy Spirit says to me:

The Lord will strengthen me with all power according to his glorious might so that I might have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father.

Now. John Piper said in his recent sermon at Mars Hill that we need to take the promises that relate to our issue at hand and after we read them we need to ask ourselves, Do I believe him?

So do I believe that God can strengthen me with all power according to his glorious might so that I might have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father? I want to! I have the desire in me to and I feel compelled to trust him. Let’s say I don’t. Let’s say that sounds too outlandish, too impossible for me. Lately as I have been studying God’s promises and then have been battling doubt about them simultaneously, I have realized that if they are not true, then there is nothing else for me. If God’s promises for me are not true, then hear this, there are no other promises for me and not much of anything to cast my hope on. So I will keep my hope, not even by choice, I will tell you. There is nothing short of an intense compelling in my Spirit towards faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the promises he holds in his hands. I find myself compelled towards faith, which itself is a gift from God (Eph 1), that Jesus is all my hope, all my might, all my endurance, all my patience, all my joy. He is my bread in this ordained “fast” from other things which were only a false sense of sustenance anyway. Lord help me believe.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” John 6:35, 56-7