My husband and I attend Life Community Church, our home church here in Wilmington. We actually meet in the mall which is really cool. Anyways. At the beginning of every year, we do the Daniel Fast as a congregation. It’s an awesome time to watch God move in amazing and powerful ways. What’s the Daniel Fast you ask?? Allow me to tell you.
The Daniel Fast is taken from the book of Daniel. In brief, Daniel fasted several times over the course of the book. Each time he fasted it was for direction and seeking the Lord about a certain situation. His diet consisted of mainly fruits and vegetables. The first time we read that Daniel fasts is in the beginning of the book. Daniel 1 talks about his diet of fruits, vegetables, and water. In chapter 10, we read that he does not eat sweeteners of any kind and fasts for 21 days. No wine, meat, bread, or dairy. You’re main basic food groups you might say. This chapter is also where we get the 21 days from.
*If you haven’t read Daniel lately, I encourage you to go check it out. I mean, come on!! A story of fiery furnaces, lions, and awesome answers of prayer!! What else would you look for in a great story??*
Our church does this as a whole so that as a body of believers, we each get to thrive on the words of Christ. There are many more aspects of this fast that we do such as reading through the entire Bible in the 21 days, fast completely from eating lunch, and putting a certain amount for each day of fasting towards a fund for our adopted village of Lajwatek in Uganda.
*Here is a link to our church if you’d like to check it out*
Towards the end of the year, we know that the Daniel Fast is about to come up. As the time got closer this past year, Matthew (my husband) and I started praying about what we were going to fast. I know, I just explained what we fast as a church body and all that jazz. Let me explain something that I have learned over the several years we have been doing this. Yes, we fast but fasting is not just about the food. That’s a big part of it for sure but it’s not the whole shebang. If you look at the diet for the Daniel Fast you quickly realize it is basically a vegan diet. Fasting is not just about the food though. Fasting is also about giving up something that distracts you from pressing into the presence of God. Food can be a big distraction. We eat when we are happy. We eat when we are sad. We eat to celebrate. We eat when we are “starving.” Everything in our lives is centered around eating. We take out the distraction of constantly eating for every reason we come up with to press in. There are also other areas that we may fast from. For example, Matt and I fasted from TV, Facebook, and Craigslist. Those might not sound like big ticket items but when we stopped to think about how much time we play on those things, I was amazed at the wasted space. Making room for more one-on-one time with our Creator is something God longs for from us and Satan can’t stand. The more you press into seeking His face, the more I can promise you will find some pretty turbulent weather. I would like to share with you what we experienced over our 21 day fast this year.
Our focus for this year was to gain direction on what our next move as a newly married couple was to be. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a dancer. 100% dancer through and through!! My passion, desire, and dream is to be a worshiper through my dancing. My husband, on the other hand, is not an artsy person AT ALL. In fact, he’s far from it. He was a pre-med student in college at Liberty and then at UNCW. After graduating college, he was not sure of what medical field he wanted to go into so for the past 5 years he has been teaching at a local Christian high school. Just recently he has decided he is ready to go back to school and has felt the nudge towards veterinarian medicine. Our focus for this time of fasting was to understand how our two passions as two separate people were supposed to collide and through that, help gain direction of where to go for vet school.
Giving up something that you have created a routine around is not an easy thing to accomplish. When you place God in that space however, great things come from you sacrificing. Although as a couple we were seeking the Lord on direction, we also sought for things on our own as well. For me, I needed peace over the idea of moving to a new country. I have lived in Wilmington for most of my life. Leaving this place called “home” made me real nervous when I thought about it. For the first couple of weeks I was learning how to be still, to taste and see that He is good, and to serve and love others like God wants us to. Got some great things from those few weeks!! (If you’d like, go check out Acts 17, Hebrews 11, and Psalm 139:23-24. These were verses that I looked at several times over the fast.) Going into the fast believing and standing on faith that God WILL do something is also not an easy thing. When we expect God to do something, He will!! However, He might not do it in our timing or in the way we are looking for it to happen which is why it can get frustrating. God’s promises are good for our lives and He will not leave us or forsake us. He promises to hold us up in times of trouble and to give us a hope and a future. These are things we can stand on and defeat the enemy with when Satan tries to come against our faith. I found myself losing a little hope towards the end of the fast about God giving me peace and assurance over vet school. But like I said, God’s timing is NOT ours. What seemed like the last minute was really right on time. I found encouragement from St. George’s (the vet school in Grenada) website. There is a group of significant others (their spouses are in school and they aren’t) who have created blogs and support groups for others coming to the school. Better yet!! There are heap of them who are Christians and weekly meet for church!! The peace I had looked for in the beginning of the fast had arrived. I was realizing that we could be moving down there but I would not be thrown into a whole new life without any help and support. That was the peace I needed.
If you’ve never fasted before, I suggest you pray about it and seek the Lord on what or how to fast. The Daniel Fast is pretty intense and you shouldn’t do it by yourself. Like I said though, there are plenty of things you can fast from. Just remember, fasting is not about giving up something so you can fill it with something else. Fasting is about giving up something that keeps you from pressing into the presence of God. If you check out my blog you can read about the entire three weeks.
Thank you for reading!! I pray you were encouraged and perhaps inspired to dig deeper into your own personal relationship with the Lord.
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