recently i was introduced to a blog by a sweet friend of mine. the name of the blog is Fabs Harford and i love it!
as i was looking around, i found this blog post and it completely wrecked me. i encourage you to read it if there is any desire, need, prayer not met/answered/fulfilled. it applies to every area of my life. between Josh’s message on sunday about unswered prayer, delay and the love of Christ and this blog post, i felt like my heart was strengthened in the waiting.
this woman of God reminds us that God is the one who gave us hunger. for food, for touch, for community, for Him. does He not know the extent of these that we need? in fact, He knows perfectly!
The goal of fasting is not for God to remove our hunger, but for us to learn that in the midst of hunger He is trustworthy. The feeling of hunger is the point of the fast. God wants us to feel hunger so that we are reminded that we are not supposed to be satisfied and we are supposed to long for Him. We fast to reflect that we trust God regardless of what our bodies tell us. He is our authority, not our bodies.
Today, my body wants something tangible and physical. My body doesn’t know that God will satisfy all my needs. It just wants what it was made to have. And today, I don’t get to have that. And so the line is drawn in the sand and the challenge is made. Today, what will be my source of truth? Who will be the one who determines what I need? My body? Or my God? Who knows my needs better? Me or Jesus? When I feel so clearly what I ‘need’, will I trust Him that there is a greater need? Will I learn to be hungry so that I can trust Him in hunger, not just in plenty?
…You will waste this suffering if you fail to use it to witness about the greatness of God. Our God is a God of pleasure. He is not calling us to hunger because he wants us to be miserable. He is calling us to hunger because He wants us to experience the greatest pleasure available to man. There is nothing that sounds as foolish to the world as a person who would pursue purity, not out of some sense of religious obligation, but out of a faith that there is a greater pleasure in store for those who would trust in the Creator. There is nothing that makes God look as beautiful as when we, who have tasted His goodness, would use our lives to testify that we will forego any momentary joy in order to taste more of Him.
my heart is strengthened to remember that He is in fact the God of pleasure and my God who KNOWS me. sometimes that means “waiting two days to come to meet me”. i pray more every day that my heart trusts in that!
