Thus I began my preparation for this 40 day fast that I am now 2 days into. I am participating in a nation wide call to college and graduate student believers to fast and pray for their campuses. Really this would be considered a partial fast, because I will still be eating over the next 40 days, I will simply be fasting from certain foods.
It's called the Daniel fast, taken from the first chapter of the book of Daniel. Daniel was an Israelite who was taken to Babylon as a slave in the king's court and was to eat certain foods to be strong for the kings service. Daniel and his fellow Israelites fasted from meat and wine, eating only vegetables and drinking water to "not defile himself with the kings food." (Daniel 1:8-21). God rewarded their faithfulness and gave them skill and wisdom in the kings courts. The Daniel fast is modified in that, in addition to vegetables, you are allowed to eat fruit and nuts and drink juice. The general rule is no meats and no sweets. Whole grains only, no white flour. As you participate in this fast, you are to pray and as I shared earlier, prayer is a part of the Christian life I simply do not understand and have struggled with for some time. I want to know how it works and why. My theology that God is totally in control of what happens and that he never changes poses a problem, in my mind, to the "power of prayer". If my prayers do not cause God to change, what is their purpose? Is prayer just a one sided conversation? These and so many other questions have entered my mind on the topic of prayer. I have researched, I have read, and still I am not satisfied. I need to experience this thing called prayer on a daily basis to truly understand it. Perhaps understanding prayer isn't really the point of this discipline of fasting and prayer. Maybe its purpose lies in drawing near to God. Maybe in focusing less on myself and more on others, or maybe in something that I have not yet discovered.
Sunday morning Dr. Ferguson preached on prayer. I call that divine appointment, you can call it whatever you like. The scripture was Psalm 109:4, "In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer." In Hebrew the last half of that sentence reads, "...but I prayer." David cannot separate himself from prayer; there is no division between praying and not praying because prayer is always an expression of need and David has recognized that he is always in need before his accusers and before the Holy God of Israel.
Out of anything I could have done to understand prayer better and to grow my prayer life, fasting- being reminded of my need of God by every hunger pain and desire for chocolate or coffee- will help me accomplish this.
My goal for the next 40 days: To understand prayer as the key element in the Christian life.
I will leave you with a quote about prayer:
“Prayer is one of the weirdest things in the world. People do not become enamored and helped by a Christianity that glosses over its weirdness and tries to make it easy and palatable and boring. Christianity comes alive to people when they see it is weird and you say, yeah it’s weird, wildly weird, it’s so weird it’s true!” -John Piper
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