One of the biggest lies perpetrated upon the modern-day church is that true intimacy with God can only be attained by certain individuals, usually heads of ministries or churches, who demand that they be the gateway by which you discover Christ. It’s not just humbling yourself, repenting of your sins, and picking up your cross to follow Him; you must do it in the manner in which they prescribe. Otherwise, it’s not valid.
I’ve known people who’ve been water baptized a half dozen
times because each new guru tells them the last time didn’t take. It wasn’t
right because they either got baptized in the name of Jesus, in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or they didn’t get baptized in the Hebrew
name of Jesus, and that’s just something we can’t have. You have individuals
taking unnecessary baths fully clothed over and over again because someone
convinced them that the God who loved the world to such a degree that He sent
His only begotten Son to die is likewise so petty that if they didn’t get water
baptized in the name of Elohim, Yeshua, and Ruach Ha-Kodesh, in that order,
with the requisite inflection, then you’ll get turned away when you stand
before the great white throne of judgment.
Anyone who tries to control your access to God is not your
friend. Anyone who insists that you need them in order to know Him is lying to
your face, and sooner or later, you will feel the grubby fingers in your
pockets, feeling for some loose change, if not something more substantial.
You don’t need a third party to get to know God. All you need
is the desire, hunger, and willingness to take the time and draw near to Him.
Fasting facilitates the nearness. If your intentions are pure, and all you
desire is more of Him, He will not turn you away or play hide and seek with
you. If you seek, you will find. It’s a promise, and He keeps His promises.
Problems arise when we pursue God as a means to some end or
other and not exclusively for Him. He isn’t a means to an end; He is the end.
He isn’t the vehicle by which you achieve your deepest desires; He is your
deepest desire, or at least He should be. He is the destination. The terminus.
The end of the line. The brass ring. He is everything and not the means to
acquiring things.
I have a friend who is somewhat well-off. He made the right
investments at the right time, reaped the rewards thereof, and is beyond
comfortable as far as his daily bread is concerned. One morning, we were having
breakfast, and when I asked for the check, he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask,
why do you always insist on paying for your meal? I can get it; it wouldn’t be
a problem.”
“Because I don’t want our friendship to be about that. I want
our friendship to be about our friendship,” I answered.
God already knows the desires of men’s hearts. You can’t hide
it from His all-knowing eye. Some people pretend to be God’s friend for the
perks and benefits. It’s like trying to be friends with a rich guy because he
might let you drive his Porsche, not because you genuinely like spending time
with him.
You’ll know which is which most of the time, depending on how
people react the first time God says no. It’s easy to spot if you know what to
look for. If someone desires a genuine relationship with God and asks God for
something, and the answer comes back as denied, they take it in stride,
acknowledge that God knows better, and continue building their relationship
with Him. If someone’s in it because they think they can hoodwink God into
letting them win the lottery, the first time He says no, they get angry and
bitter and turn their back on the God whom they’d declared they would serve
unto death only moments earlier.
Fasting is the ecosystem. What you build in that ecosystem is
entirely up to you. Fasting must have a purpose beyond depriving yourself of
food. It must be targeted and given direction.
Nehemiah 9:1-2, “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month
the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust
on their heads. Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all
foreigners; and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their
fathers.”
I am thoroughly surprised that someone hasn’t put together a
fasting kit consisting of sackcloth and a baggy of dust, but now that I’ve put
the idea out there, it’s only a matter of time. Although the purposefulness of
fasting did not change from the Old to the New Testament, how we are instructed
to conduct ourselves did.
We are no longer supposed to dress ourselves in sackcloth and
sprinkle dust on our heads, but rather wash our faces and not walk about dour
and dismayed as though fasting were a chore or we were being put out by the
practice thereof.
Fasting must be a regular practice in the life of the
believer but never a common one. What I mean by this is that we do not approach
fasting on autopilot, doing it just to get it over with, but with intent and
purposefulness of heart and a focused desire that the fast itself will amplify.
I’m a creature of habit. I drive in to work every morning, come home in the afternoon, and every other day, stop by the grocery store to get whatever we’re running low on in the home. I’ve driven the same road so often and for so many years that some days, I find myself pulling into the driveway without being consciously aware of having driven myself there. It’s disturbing every time it happens, but they say it’s all muscle memory and a normal part of life. That’s not what fasting is supposed to be like. We can’t just go through the motions hoping it’s good enough. We must actively strive to humble ourselves and seek the face of God so that we may see the fulfillment of His promises toward us, His children.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment