Fast for World Vision

2005-10-20T11:48:00.000-06:00

Are you sure you want to win the lottery?

Read the story of Jack Whittaker. Winning the largest powerball lottery to that date was the about the worst thing that could have happened to him--and his only granddaughter. A lot of Christians think that playing the lottery is innocent fun. For arguments to the contrary see this. Playing the lottery is far from innocent; it's a particpation in the destruction of many lives. See this also.

2005-10-20T11:45:00.000-06:00

Change

I've decided to curb my fasting a bit for now. I've cut it down to fasting through lunch one day a week. The 3-meal (about 30 hour) fast is hard, no doubt. I found it was cutting into other areas of my life as far as the energy I needed for them. It's not a law. I'm still giving the same amount away to World Vision each time I fast. I may go back to longer fasts someday.

2005-08-22T16:15:00.000-06:00

World Vision has a statistic: $360 will feed one child for a year. That's a little less that $1 a day. For the 30 Hour Famine, World Vision recommends each participant find 12 supporters who will pledge $1 per hour of the participant's fast. That would raise $360 per participant. Do you think that you could find a way to trim your expenses by $1/day? Here's one idea: If you eat out for lunch, just skipping one luch a week would raise about $7 (depending on where you eat).

I was noticing last Friday (my fast days) that fasting really forces you to be filled with the Spirit if you're going to overcome your old nature; by fasting you've taken away your own physical resources, so you have to draw on Another's. This is good practice for when you aren't fasting because we tend to rely on our own strength when we have an abundance of it, when, in reality, we needs God's power to overcome our flesh, and we need it all the time.

2005-08-19T16:26:00.000-06:00

There are other ways to fast if your health doesn't permit (or for other reasons). You can go on a simple diet fast. For example you could eat only brown rice and water for a time, or bread and water, as these are the diets of thousands every day. You can fast for fewer than 3 meals at a time. Perhaps you skip lunch or breakfast once or twice a week. One of things fasting for the hungry does is give you a sense of solidarity with those who are suffering. For a short time, you are one of them; you feel a bit of what they feel.

As Richard Foster details in his Celebration of Discipline, one can fast from just about anything, not just food. Here are some reasons to fast besides simply feeding the hungry:

If you think that something has too strong a hold on you in your life, fast from it for a time. For example, I fasted from the internet for a week once.

You want to gain a greater dependency on God's power in your life. As your body weakens, this provides a natural opportunity to admit to God how much you need His strength in all areas of your life.

You need to repent of a sin in your life.

You want to pray regularly and intensely for a particular situation. Your hunger pangs will remind you to pray.

You want to learn what Christ meant when He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3: "Man does not live by bread alone, buy by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." (see Matthew 4:4) Here you can use your normal meal times to read God's Word instead.

2005-08-19T16:20:00.000-06:00

World Vision promotes 30-hour famines three times a year. It's an opportunity for people to get a small taste of what tens of thousands of kids experience every day, except to a much greater extreme. It also raises money for World Vision. If each participant gets 12 people to pledge one dollar for every hour that participant fasts, he will raise $360, which will feed one child for a whole year! Our church will be doing this on 10/28-29/2005. If you're interested in doing one at your church check out their website.

2005-08-16T15:28:00.000-06:00

Here is a story on Talbot School of Theology's M.A. in Philosophy program: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/006/6.46.html . I graduated from this program in '99. I feel privileged to have been trained at Talbot.

2005-08-16T10:30:00.000-06:00

Here's another good resource. Sojourners, a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice, is heading up the 30,000 campaign. From their website:

Tell President Bush
you will pray and fast with us

Every day 30,000 children die a preventable death due to extreme poverty.

Yet we have the power to prevent this silent tsunami. What is missing is the moral and political will to do so.

We are calling on more than 30,000 people to declare to President Bush their intention to fast and pray during the World Summit. A fast can be as simple as sacrificing one meal during the course of the Summit, which can serve as a spiritual and personal act of solidarity with the billions of people across the world who go without food and basic necessities every day.

For more, see their website: http://go.sojo.net/campaign/30000_children.

2005-08-16T08:06:00.000-06:00

Here is a website worth visiting: www.one.org. The ONE campaign is a group of celebrities and many relief organizations (including World Vision) who have banned together to elimate world poverty, primarily through encouraging the U.S. government to committ 1% of its budget to poverty relief.

2005-08-09T09:43:00.000-06:00

This is an article that is very eye-opening with respect to the state of American evangelicalism: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/001/3.8.html. Ron Sider is a modern-day prophet. Evangelicals often wonder why their influence in the culture is so insignificant. We need not wonder, though. Jesus said that if the salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer useful for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. American evangelicals (and born-agains, as George Barna distinguishes between the two) have largely lost their saltiness.

In my view, the way back to saltiness is through a thorough practice of the spiritual disciplines, e.g., Bible study, Bible memorization, weekly worship, prayer, fasting, tithing and freewill giving, watching, study, small group fellowship, and many others (if they prove useful since they're a means to an end). A good place to start is Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. Dallas Willard gives a wonderful theoretical treatment of the disciplines in The Spirit of the Disciplines. J.P. Moreland has also spoken on the topic as well. His lecture "Prayer as a Spiritual Discipline" is powerful. You can get this and other lectures by contacting him via Talbot School of Theology: www.talbot.edu.

2005-08-08T10:15:00.000-06:00

I'm creating this blog as a way to promote an idea I've had for several weeks now. Over the years I've experimented with various spiritual disciplines including fasting. I've read many books on fasting. Many respected Christian leaders speak of fasting's value in the spiritual life. For example, Bill Bright, leader of Campus Crusade for Christ deeply believed in the transformational power of 40 day fasts and sought 2 million people to participate in such fasts as he did regularly toward the end of his life.

I can't say that I've had the same experience with fasting as some have. As Dallas Willard suggests, spiritual disciplines are a means to an end; they're a tool to help one put on the character of Christ (See his The Spirit of the Disciplines). Thus, if a spiritual discipline isn't having its desired effect, try something else. Spiritual disciplines are, in a certain sense, disposable. Granted, some of the spiritual disciplines are not (e.g., regular Bible reading) but this, I think, is because some disciplines double as acts of obedience. Is fasting disposable? Well, think of it this way: Qua spiritual discipline, it is disposable, but qua act of obedience it isn't since Jesus assumes that we will fast (Matthew 6).

Of course there are many purposes for fasting. The most common are as a way to repent (we see this frequently in the OT), as a way to focus oneself in prayer, particularly when one is deeply burdened over a particular issue, and as a way to wean oneself from earthly pleasures in order to delight oneself more in God. Well, to be honest, at this point in my life, fasting hasn't helped me much in these traditional areas. It's helped some, but it's had its limits.

Recently, my wife and I were given a cruise vacation by her parents as a celebration of the end of her 9 year teaching career among other things. We went on a five day cruise departing from Galveston, TX to Cozumel and Playa del Carmen, MX. There were many exciting activities during this trip. The highlight for me was SNUBA diving in Cozumel. SNUBA is like SCUBA only you don't have to be certified to do it and your air tank floats on the water instead of being strapped to your back.

Anyway, it was really good for me to be out of the country as I haven't been since a trip to Russia in '94. One of the poignant pictures of our time in Mexico was during our drive returning from the Tulum Mayan ruins, just south of Playa del Carmen. As we rode in our bus, alongside the highway I saw a couple of young Mexican children playing barefoot (as I recall) in the dirt under what looked like a homemade lean-to. As far as I could tell, the kids lived there. I was struck by the contrast between our luxurious cruise--one in which you could eat three huge and very delicious meals a day--and these kids who looked very poor.

Since my college days at Sterling College, I have been more aware of the state of world poverty primarily through reading Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. This book really challenged me to live my life in light of the poverty that exists in the world. It has encouraged me to live simply and sacrificially.

Well, since I hadn't been fasting regularly for several months, as I reflected on the contrast between these Mexican children and our cruise, I was impressed with the sense that I should begin fasting again. But this time around, I have a different focus. I decided not to hyperspiritualize fasting, but to simply do it for the sake of helping and identifying with the 29-30,000 children who die in the world every day due to malnutrition and its related health problems. I try to fast once a week, missing 3 meals. But there's a twist. I decided to take the money that I would normally spend on this food and donate it to famine relief. I've picked World Vision as the organization that I'm donating this to. Each time I fast, I write it down and then, once a month I give that money to World Vision. This is a sort of freewill offering for us as it goes above and beyond the tithe (which, incidentally, I’m convicted should be a tithe of a gross earnings, not net, and should include the value of everything that is given to us, e.g., health benefits, vacations and gifts. See Randy Alcorn's Money, Possessions, and Eternity for the best treatment of money I've ever read).

I've been doing this for about six weeks now and it's been pretty neat to see how God has used it to give me a much deeper compassion for the suffering that exists in our world. People's bodies react differently to fasting. For some, 30 or so hours without food (just water), deeply affects their energy levels. For others, they're not too affected. The former is the case for me. Frankly, I feel terrible about 8 hours into the fast. My energy levels significantly dip, I usually have a low-grade headache for much of the fast, my bowels don't function properly and I can become irritable if I let myself. So, physically speaking, it isn’t fun.

As I've been fasting I haven’t put the pressure on myself to read my Bible when I'm normally eating at that time of day, or to do more praying. In my case, doing these things tends to put a burden on me that makes my spiritual life seem more like drudgery than delight. So, I haven't set up this obligation for myself. Sometimes I use the hunger pangs to pray more, but my primary focus has been on simply reminding myself that this very day of my fast is a day in which 15,000 children will die because of very preventable malnourishment. And when I think to myself, "I'm not enjoying this," I remind myself that "Neither are these kids." I remind myself that this is only one day that I feel like this, but that these kids, who are dying today, have been feeling like this for weeks.

As the founder of World Vision Bob Pierce has said, “Let my heart be broken for the things that break the heart of God.” This exercise has been doing this for me. The eerie element here is that it seems right and good to have more of God’s heart in this area, even though it’s a broken heart. I've also found myself praying that God would expand the small amount of money I'm giving. God can stretch or add to dollars since His resources are unlimited. He just doesn’t seem to do it unless we’re cooperating with Him; He won’t have it any other way.

I've also had an increasing burden to try and promote this activity, to get more people on board. If I recall correctly, Ron Sider recently wrote in Christianity Today, that American Evangelical Christians alone could completely eliminate the problem of world hunger if they would but do what they are supposed to do: tithe. Moreover, there would be several billion dollars left over. The numbers for American Evangelicals are appalling. American Evangelicals, on average, give something like less than two percent of their income away. In the OT, it seems clear from several passages that what a person serves is what that person worships. Well, many American Evangelicals clearly serve the interests of money and thus clearly worship it, though not consciously. When we bring in the whole tithe, we give God his rightful place in our lives. In our experience, God has always, and I mean always, provided us with what we need as we’ve tithed throughout our marriage.

So, I've decided to put some thoughts to the web to see if, perhaps, God's Spirit would lead more of His people to lay their lives down for the suffering in this way. Now I realize that not everyone can do this. Pregnant and nursing women shouldn't fast and there are many other health related ailments that prevent people from fasting. But there are many who are able. Consult with your doctor if you have questions and be sure to drink plenty of water if you do decide to fast. Also, if you've never fasted before, it's a good idea to ease into it. Start with one meal, work up to two, then three.

The verse that has been on my mind recently in regard to this project is Colossians 1:24, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body (which is the church) in filling up that which is lacking in Christ's afflictions." (NASB) This is a puzzling verse, but as far as the application goes here, I understand Paul to be saying that he was able to rejoice in his sufferings (in our example fasting), in order to help others in the Body of Christ. Related to this is Philippians 3:10 where Paul speaks of knowing the fellowship of Christ's suffering in the process of being conformed to His death. What fasting for this purpose has done has deepened my compassion for these kids, who, at least on one theological model, are all members of the body of Christ since they are not yet capable of rejecting Him.

Now I know there may be a lot of questions people have when they read this like, "Doesn't the Bible say that you shouldn't tell anyone that you fast?" and other questions as well. I'm happy to answer them by e-mail. The answer to this first question is "No." What Jesus is teaching in Matthew 6 is that we shouldn't fast for men, but for God. That's the whole theme of the chapter: you shouldn't fast, give or pray for men, but for God. But, the His point is not that you should be covert about these practices. Otherwise, Jesus would be contradicting Himself in the very same sermon (The Sermon on the Mount) when he says in 5:16 to let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. In sum, Jesus tells us to do our good works for God’s glory and to let others see them, for the sake of God’s glory, not our own. See Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy for this argument.

There's a neat article in this month's Christianity Today about some high school kids at Wheaton Academy in Wheaton, IL who came up with a vision to raise $50 K for a school in Zambia (I believe) for World Vision. Well, their fund raising began very slowly, but when they began to really pray, the money poured in, mostly from the kids themselves, and they ended up raising $75 K. They've done two projects and are now on their third. We really can make a difference, one child, one dollar at a time. I’d like to hear from you if you’re interested in taking up this discipline with me. World Vision does 30-hour fasts three times a year. I’m hoping to head one up at my home church in the next year. But, in the same spirit as these 30 hour famines, I think we can do more; I think we can do this once a week. I know there will be weeks where it doesn’t happen, but that’s OK.

Fast for World Vision

Tell President Bushyou will pray and fast with us

Tell President Bush
you will pray and fast with us