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(Story/Gospel)
In our church in Washington (D.C.) I always ask our prospective members to tell me the gospel in one minute or less. How would you do that? What would you say the message is? Here's what I understand the good news to be:The good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in His image to know Him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from Him. In His great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law Himself and taking on Himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust Him. He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ's sacrifice and that God's wrath against us had been exhausted. He now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God.
For the past month and half—stretching back to about the middle of November—I’ve been spending most of my time and energy in preparation for a new project that’s going to launch in just over a month. With somewhere between two and three hundred people watching to see what happens, it’s a very public project.I finished telling the story and the very next person to speak (a non-Christian man in his mid-fifties) said something like this: “I’m one of four people starting up a new project later this year. I’m the only one getting paid. The last few weeks have been tough. I’ve been so consumed by fear, particularly the public fear of failure. I wasn’t sure why I came today and now I know. After hearing that I have a hope that ten minutes ago I didn’t know existed.” After the meeting ended we connected and I was able to talk to him more about how the irony of my situation arose from the fact that my whole understanding of spiritual reality is rooted in grace, that God doesn’t accept me because of who I am but because of who He is. (I wish I would have said more about Jesus in our conversation, but I’ll see him again and we’ll get to talk more down the road.)
I myself am one of four central leaders helping to drive the project forward and provide vision. In addition to the four of us, there’s another thirty or so that have joined in and committed to giving some sort of personal service. Of those two groups (meaning out of those thirty people), I’m the only one getting paid.
Back in December, in preparation for the project, I set a very specific, personal goal to deal with a particular moral problem in my life. With the help, support and rigorous accountability of a good friend, I met that goal in December and I’ve continued to live within its boundaries in January as well. The goal itself wasn’t anything spectacular. It was basically another step toward tightening-down an area in my life that I’ve been making meaningful advances in for a few years now.
On top of that, throughout December, with this new project clearly in view, I prayed with more intentionality, more focus and a great deal more regularity than usual. In fact, on January1st, I brought the New Year in with prayer and fasting, both of which are very positive spiritual practices for me.
I say all that to say this: I went to bed on January 1st absolutely wrecked. All of those positive behaviors and all of that healthy, spiritual living and I was awash with anxiety, unable to sleep. The reason I couldn’t sleep was simple: fear of failure. I had given my heart to the idol of personal success.
My thinking went like this: “Here I am, heading up this new and very public project with all these people counting on me to make it happen and even more watching from the stands to see if it does.” In that moment what I believed was if the project succeeds, then I’ll be a success; but if it fails, then I’ll be a failure. In other words: “I am this project. If it wins, I win, I’m a winner. If it loses, I lose, I’m a loser. And (even more wrecking) everyone watching will know.”
After some reading and prayer I eventually fell asleep and January 2nd came. A week later, I was talking to the same friend who had been helping me with the goal I mentioned earlier. I told him about all the good things I’d been doing and how despite that I’d been so gripped by fear on New Year’s Day. After I finished, he looked at me and said (pretty matter-of-factly), “You know, whether this project succeeds or fails, I wouldn’t honestly think you had all that much to do with it either way. You’ll led. You’ll teach. You’ll do your best. But why anything is successful or not is (for the most part) a mystery up to God.”
I was struck. On the one hand, part of me hated what he’d just said. I wanted to pushback: “Wait a minute, that’s great if this thing tanks, but if the project’s a success, I want people to think I’m a success.” On the other hand, another part of me (the honest, sane, less-self-promoting part of me) loved it: “If that’s the case then all I have to do is breathe and be obedient. The whole success-or-failure bit isn’t in my court.” Suddenly I saw there was freedom in what he’d said. Freedom, sanity and hope.
[T]he reward we are to seek from the Father in fasting is not first or mainly the gifts of God, but God himself. . . . It begins with three main longings that we are to hope for from God. First, that God’s name be hallowed or revered; second, that God’s kingdom come; and third, that his will be done on earth the way it’s done in heaven. That is the first and primary reward Jesus tells us to seek in our praying and our fasting. . . . The supremacy of God in all things is the great reward we long for in fasting. His supremacy in our own affections and in all our life-choices. His supremacy in the purity of the church. His supremacy in the salvation of the lost. His supremacy in the establishing of righteousness and justice. And his supremacy for the joy of all peoples in the evangelization of the world (78-79).This means that fasting (again, in conjunction with prayer, worship and God’s Word) is a means of passionately laying hold of God as the Great Giver and Rewarder of those “ask, seek and knock.”
The issue is not food per se. The issue is anything and everything that is, or can be, a substitute for God. . . . [W]e easily deceive ourselves that we love God unless our love is frequently put to the test, and we must show our preferences not merely with words but with sacrifice. . . . [Fasting] forces us to ask repeatedly: do I really hunger for God? Do I miss him? Do I long for him? Or have I begun to be content with his gifts? Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us (18-19).In a similar vein, Richard Foster, in The Celebration of Discipline, records:
One of the reasons for fasting is to know what is in us . . . . In fasting it will come out. You will see it. And you will have to deal with it or quickly smother it again. When midmorning comes and you want food so badly that the thought of lunch becomes as sweet as a summer vacation, then suddenly you realize, “Oh, I forgot, I made a commitment. I can’t have that pleasure. I’m fasting for lunch too.” Then what are you going to do with all the unhappiness inside? Formerly, you blocked it out with the hope of a tasty lunch. The hope of food gave you the good feelings to balance out the bad feelings. But now the balance is off. You must find another way to deal with it (20).
More than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. . . . If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled my soul with fasting” [Psalm 35:13]. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear—if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first, we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger. And then, we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.In other words, fasting tunes us in to what’s really motivating our hearts, what’s really driving our desires. Fasting alerts us (through physical, self-imposed deficiency) as to where in actuality we are looking to find comfort, joy, security and satisfaction. On the other hand, by forcing us to leave behind our false saviors, we are simultaneously invited (in conjunction with prayer, worship and God’s Word) to develop a fresh taste for God’s sufficiency as He comes to us in Christ.
