Fasting

Getting ready to do a 21 Day "Daniel Fast". Everyone in my church is doing it. Advice?

 

I started to do that a few years back. I lasted 3 days! They were miserable!

i tried just eating fruits and vegetables and drink only water. man, it made me feel worse than crap and that's what you do a lot of when that's all you eat. Plus, i was trying to fast from tv and internet and just focus on more learning. I didn't do too good.

Is your church associated with Jentzen Franklin?

 

We know of him (he's actually a relative of a guy in our church) but we're not really affiliated with him. We're independant.

 

I tried it one year during Ramadan when I dated that Turkish girl. I made it all of one day and then ate something as I was prepairing dinner before sunset. NOT for me.

 

If you're talking about fasting from food, my advice would be, "Don't do it." In my experience, one day of fasting and prayer is plenty. Beyond that, the health risks really override any spiritual benefits.

 

I guess I'm not spiritual enough, but I can't imagine fasting for more than a day. I get headaches and become moody if my blood sugar drops.

 

I'm not a good faster either. I get the headaches and stuff too, though friends tell me that pushing through that is part of the fasting.

I did a study/review of Biblical texts on fasting a year or two ago as a request for a Sunday School. I'll have to find it, it's on my old computer.

Regardless, one suprising discovery was that everytime fasting is mentioned in the Bible, it has striking results.

The most moved I've been by a fast was experiencing someone else's fast. Back in 1990 I was on a Spring Break mission trip to D.C. We were helping out at the Federal Soup Kitchen (it was nonprofit, just located in an old federal building and the name stuck). We had been helping preparing the meal, particularly salvaging good letuce from letuce heads that had some bad spots on them. It was getting late in the afternoon, around 3 or 4, and we (college students) hadn't had anything to eat all day. We start griping and complaining, until someone whispers to us that the staffers working in the next room had been fasting for about 4 days straight, only drinking water, in prayer and protest regarding legislation in Congress regarding food assistance to poor children. Needless to say, we shut our mouths real quick, and were humbled.

 

10.5 Hours left to go. Been a lot harder in some way that I expected, but easier in others. More than anything else, it has forced me (and made me more comfortable with) talking about my relationship with God and why I do what I do.

 

That's the idea.