Fasting and Suffering

a few quick thoughts

image by redcharlie on Unsplash

There’s this thing that happens when you fast. It’s a moment where you begin to feel the emptiness, the raw cravings, the groans of deeper hunger. The immediate reaction of the flesh is to look to fill, to look to cover what feels like exposed nerve-endings, to look to find escape from the discomfort.

The Lord taught me a mental trick to get through it. He said, “Lana, that’s when you know it’s really working, that something is happening. When you begin to feel that—embrace it. Thank Me for it, because there is deep work taking place in your physical body and in your spirit.”

When we fast, a process called autophagy occurs. This is when the old, dead, diseased cells in our body are eaten by healthy cells unto regeneration and cleansing. That’s just on a physical level. Spiritually, much more is taking place than we can comprehend: dead, diseased things lose ground. Life takes over.

The Lord recently showed me the same mental trick for suffering. We can focus on the pain of it—everything within us begging for a way out—, or we can reframe it. We can thank the Lord that a deep work is happening inside. That we are being transformed.

Don’t we long to be changed?

Even better, in suffering we find a deeper fellowship with Him; we can thank Him that we get to know Him even an inch more.

“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings…” - Philippians 3:10-11

It is all the abundant life, every bit of it. And not a stitch of it is in vain.

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Something I want to highlight:

The Charlotte Prayer Room is putting on a one-day silent retreat next Saturday, May 16th, from 9 AM - 4 PM. Details in our event list for the month.

A few songs I’ve been listening to lately (old and newish):

Highs and Lows, (I like the acoustic version by Hillsong Young & Free)

Happily Hidden, by Pat Barrett and John Mark McMillan

breathe again, by AMXNRADIO and Joel Houston

River of Gladness, by Ethan Nathaniel (this whole album actually)

A sermon I recommend (spoiler, it includes a testimony of our family):

“Connected: Moving Past the Surface” by our friend Pastor Cory Barnes.