Consumed: 40 Days of Fasting, Repentance & Rebirth

by Dean Briggs

Are you persevering through this fast in the belief that God sees and knows your heart, that He loves you, that He has good things planned for your life? Meditate on the reward of God today and thank Him for it.

If a person makes fasting part of her or his life . . . By taking a long fast or two, and then fasting one day a week, s/he’ll gradually find a growing peace and personal integration.

(Rom. 11:33). You can’t search long enough or deep enough to figure Him out. There is no bottom and no ceiling to God. He just keeps going. Limitless.

Fasting and natural diet, though essentially unknown as a therapy, should be the first treatment when someone discovers that he or she has a medical problem. There are hundreds of journal articles in the medical literature documenting the value of fasting in improving the function of the entire body, including the brain. The time may come when not offering this substantially more effective nutritional approach will be considered malpractice.” — Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Just as you can’t understand the appeal of a mystery book if you only read the first and last chapter, you cannot understand the spiritual hunger a fast is meant to produce if you skip too quickly to the desired outcome—spiritual

spiritual hunger and connection with God—assuming a simple cause and effect process, like pulling levers and shifting gears on a machine.

When I fast, what I am confronted most with is not my hunger for God, but my endless desire for nourishment. Food consumes my thoughts.

Daily, desire assaults me, so much that a brutal, humbling, almost shocking fact can no longer be denied: I am a man of flesh.

when I fast, reality invades. The subtle grays of my foggy spiritual devotion are brought into bright contrast, high relief.

My secret motivations, normally hidden even to me, become transparent. A terrifying picture emerges: life is all about me. I am hungry; I want to eat; I don’t like self-denial and, really, I can’t wait until it’s over.

Far from any illusion of spiritual greatness, in the weakness of a fast I realize I have no strength or focus for prayer. I have no discipline. I am temperamental and irritable because the comfort of my flesh has been disturbed. I have no comprehension of God. The landscape of my soul stretches bleakly before me, and I am permitted the gift of sorrow.

People who think that they are spiritually superior because they make a practice of a discipline such as fasting or silence or frugality are entirely missing the point. The need for extensive practice of a given discipline is an indication of our weakness, not our strength. The disciplines we need to practice are precisely the ones we are not “good at” and hence do not enjoy.” — Dallas Willard

we see that fasting does not cause hunger for God so much as it serves to awaken the far more painful truth of how little we desire God at all.

God remains an abstraction, much like “heat” could be viewed as an abstraction of flame, when in reality our God is a Consuming Fire that burns, refines, transforms and does not apologize for His plans to take over planet Earth.

Does He really mean everything to you? Can you continue to invite Christ, experience Him in the presentness of your life, with no other props, only joy? Or in the midst of the fast, do you find yourself thinking about everything but Him.

In this hour of history, later is too late. We are living in the days of the Five Virgins. Now is not the time for procrastination with our oil. If our vessels are empty, now is the time to buy oil.

ancient Lenten hymn says, “Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses.”

You see, those who fast are not the spiritually elite. They are not the great saints, but the least. In the midst of forty days and forty nights, your leastness is made clear.

“God, I thought I wanted you, but I don’t. I am fasting because I thought I wanted you, but now I see the truth. I don’t want you nearly as much as I want food.

Though I am utterly in need of you, I just want to eat. Please awaken my heart to know my need. I can’t escape from my lies unless you become my Truth. I am blinded by the cravings of my flesh.

The greatest thirst of my life is You, and yet all I care about, day after day, is my belly. Change me, O ...

Jesus has many lovers of His kingdom of heaven, but he has few bearers of His Cross. Many desire His consolation, but few desire His tribulation. He finds many comrades in eating and drinking, but He finds few hands who will be with Him in His abstinence and fasting.” — Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471 A.D.)

Just as Jesus fasted forty days before embarking on three-and-a-half years of the systematic destruction of Satan’s dominion, so shall extended periods of fasting unleash the presence of God within His church in unprecedented measure in the days ahead.

In His absence we mourn and hunger and thirst because nothing else satisfies like His presence.

We either mourn because we realize it is true, and therefore we fast. Or we fast because we do not yet feel it as Jesus Himself declared we would. In repentance and obedience, we fast until we mourn.

the righteousness He imputes is not meant to be hidden, but translated into mighty exploits (Dan. 11:32), works of justice (Isa. 58:6-8, Mat. 25:34-36), and the global proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom (Mat. 10:7-8; Mark 16:15-18).

Fasting helps both to prepare the message within us, as well as to prepare us to bear the message with integrity and boldness.

Consider a good quality herbal tea as part of the fluids you drink. A variety of good “cleanser” formulations can be found at any reputable health food store. Prepare these plain and sip a cup or two a day in addition to the water you consume. Various combinations of herbs in the tea may include milk thistle, burdock root, chickory, uva ursi, cinnamon, clove, dandelion root, juniper berries, chaparral, red clover, poke root, sheep sorrel and others that will help strengthen the kidneys and liver as they cleanse the blood and renew your body.

With physical fasting and, even more so, with interior fasting, the Christian prepares himself to follow Christ and to be His faithful witness in every circumstance. Moreover, fasting helps us to understand better the difficulties and sufferings of so many of our brothers and sisters who are oppressed by hunger, severe poverty and war.” — Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)

Missing song for Day 12 (This link led to the song from a previous day.)

a subtle erosion occurs with surprising swiftness.

In striving for God, we begin to labor in our own strength again.

Grace remains the solid theology of our salvation; not so much the sustainer of our daily lives. To the degree this occurs, the flesh rears its ugly ...

Before long, our heart is full of inward boasting of such things as our dedication to God, our steady denial of sin, our spiritual gifts, our soul-win...

As we fast, we must flee self-striving and pride, but also self-contempt and defeatism.

(Psa. 73:25-26, 28).

He draws near, not because we fast, but because He is good and He loves us.

The Message translates Psa. 40, “Your love and truth are all that keeps me together.”

Throughout history, men have fasted with a wrong spirit as they sought to earn God’s favor or man’s approval. Some embrace extreme self-debasements to try to prove their dedication to Him or earn His favor. This is not what God is after. He delights in our pursuit to love Him and to believe His word. We do not fast to prove anything to God or to deserve His favor. We fast to position ourselves to receive freely from His grace and be preoccupied with Jesus and His will.” — Mike Bickle

reason fasting must become a compelling practice; a habit; more and more a necessity than a luxury. Darkness is and will continue to escalate in all manner of perversity. How do you plan to stand in faith in the days ahead?

He warned us. In no uncertain terms, there will be a price for loving Him at the end of the age. Endurance will be required. Naming Jesus will cost something.

But how do you learn perseverance on that scale? You have to grow in it. “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?” (Jer. 12:5). The end of the age will be a horse race, not a foot race. Fasting is the ideal exercise to stretch your endurance muscles. Can you fast for one day or week? Good, try three! Have you fasted for five consecutive days? Excellent, now try ten. Then 20. Then 40. See?

Fasting is an utterly practical, useful discipline the Lord has given His Bride to help her prepare for the coming trials. However, the deeper exposure of your heart to the flaming love of God is the real key. When evils surround you, lean into the fire of God.

If a king wanted to take possession of his enemies’ city, he would begin by cutting off the water and the food and so his enemies, dying of hunger, would submit to him. It is the same with the passions of the flesh: if a man goes about fasting and hungry, the enemies of his soul grow weak.” — Abba John the Dwarf (Desert Father from the 4th century Egyptian wastelands)

If fasting is a unique grace, it is also warfare. God employs it like dynamite in the soul, to break loose the calcified chunks of our heart that no longer live before him but routinely gorge on the world’s pleasures.

Lasik. We fast from anything and everything needed to shake ourselves awake: food, finances, use of time, words, energy, entertainment. We get violent. We become restless, urgent for deliverance.

When you start to feel reckless, holy urges; when you gasp in your spirit for more of God and less of you; when you become discontent with your contentment, forty days have been prepared for you,

By the time you’ve gone to bed at the end of any given day, you’ve literally been through hell. The battle is serious. You need protection. You need grace. You need armor. You need truth. You need power. You need insight. You need courage. You need God.

He will resist your forty days. He will busy your day, tempt your mind, attack your will, stir pride and lust. He will arrange difficulties to test you and make you return to the easy comforts of food. He will try to weaken your resolve. Ironically, you may find it easier to resist than ever, but stay alert.

Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one’s flesh to the spirit, renders