Fasting Focus :: Second Week of Lent

Fasting Focus

Each week you will be provided with a fasting focus for that week. They are meant to be supplementary to any other form of fasting you have sensed God’s leading in thus far.

Second Week of Lent :: Intimacy

Distractions

This week we’ll be focusing on growing in intimacy with Christ. As such, we will be fasting from distractions. As we saw last week, often we are most uncomfortable in silence and solitude when we are left to ourselves.

This week spend a minimum of 15 consecutive minutes a day in prayer and meditation.

Talk to God about more than just the things you want. Share your dreams with Him; your fears; your questions. What does it feel like to really and truly bare yourself before God?

What does it feel like to offer Him the time to speak to and restore you?

Day 10 of Lent :: The Sound of Silence

“Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.”

1 Kings 19:11

Action: Read 1 Kings 19:11-13

Reflection:
What are the “loud” things around you that grasp for your attention yet are void of His voice?

We must never underestimate just how spiritually dull we can become if we neglect times of solitude and silence before God.

Reflection:
What are some areas you are prone to become dull in?

In silence we become aware of how much noise is always buzzing around us. Even more, we realize our dependence upon such things to pacify us. We become conscious of how often needless words and chatter rule our conversations, mostly out of fear and a need to control. Solitude and silence strips us of these opiates, forcing us to encounter ourselves and the world as they really are.

Reflection:
Monitor your surroundings and conversations today. See how many of these “opiates” you can recognize. How much is your daily life surrounded by noise that fosters superficiality rather than depth of spirituality?

“We live, in fact, in a world
starved for solitude, silence, and privacy:
and therefore starved for
meditation and true friendship.”

C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory

Day 9 of Lent :: of Mice and Men

“And Simon and those who were with Him searched for Him. When

they found Him, they said to Him,
‘Everyone is looking for You.’”
Mark 1:36-37

Researchers have found that it takes twenty times more the amount of amphetamine to kill a mouse living in solitude. But a group of mice will start hopping around and hyping each other up so much that a dosage twenty times smaller becomes lethal – so great is the effect of “the world” on mice. Also a mouse given no amphetamine at all will be dead within ten minutes of being placed in the midst of a group on the drug. In groups they go off like popcorn or fire crackers (The Life You've Always Wanted, 91).

Solitude is not merely a therapeutic place. “Solitude is the furnace of transformation,” wrote Henri Nouwen in The Way of the Heart. “Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. It is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs.

“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me - naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken – nothing. ”

Reflection:
When was the last time you intentionally spent four or more hours alone in solitude and silence for the purpose of detaching from the “amphetamines” of the world and “ridding yourself of your scaffolding”?

What are the challenges for you carving out such a time periodically for solitude & silence?

Prayer:
Take a few moments in prayer and begin to ask God to show you if and how busyness has numbed you to His presence in your daily life. Spend some time journaling about what you and God talk about.

Action:
Look at your calendar over the next several months. Look for a half day that you could set aside to engage in Solitude and Silence. If it is not intentionally scheduled, it will likely never happen.

Day 8 of Lent :: Too Busy

“Come with me by yourselves
to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Mark 6:31

In the West, we equate business to success.

The more busy we are, the more productive we believe we are being. In fact, it becomes the standard greeting everywhere: “I am so busy.” Author Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath writes, “We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character. The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single, mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.”

A causal reading of the Gospels clearly depicts how many people were constantly trying to get to Jesus. Several passages paint the picture of He and the disciples were so busy they didn’t even have time to eat (perhaps for days). Needless to say, Jesus was BUSY!

Reflection:
Think about how busy Jesus was, how many people were seeking an audience with Him, and yet the resilience He maintained to be alone with God.

If Jesus was the Son of God, why did He need time alone in solitude and prayer?

Further, if Jesus, as the Son of God needed such times, how much more do we?

“I’m too busy. I can’t afford to get alone.” This is what we often say. The Son of God was busier than we could imagine, with the greatest mission ever known to man, yet He seemed to say, “Because I’m so busy, I can’t afford NOT to get alone.” How much more us? What excuse will we now use?

Day 7 of Lent :: Jesus' Secret

“Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight,
He went out and departed to a solitary place;
and there He prayed.”

(Mark 1:35)

Jesus, of course, was well aware his presence and words were in demand. That is precisely why He traded an hour or two of sleep for time alone. For Jesus, solitude and quiet, reflection and prayer, were lifeblood. This was not an isolated incident. It was the rule.

As Dallas Willard observed, these times of chosen solitude, deprived of noise and activity and friendly interaction, were not enfeebling, dull, or even lonely for Jesus. They were “the primary place of strength…” (Spirit of the Disciplines, 162). In those quiet hours, He cultivated the insight and wisdom that could disrobe convention and strip false assumptions naked. Piercing insight. Rock-solid wisdom. Real vision. No wonder everyone was looking for him.

Reflection:
Why did Jesus place such a high priority on these times of solitude and silence?

Does solitude and silence have an expressed place in your rhythm of life?

Action:
If possible, pack your lunch and during your break drive to a secluded place. Eat lunch alone.

The goal isn’t necessarily to say anything to God, but simply to be with Him. (If the above example isn’t relative to your current season of life, you may want to think of some creative alternatives).

This can often be a challenging exercise, especially if we are used to being surrounded by constant stimuli and noise. Nonetheless, this was one of the secrets to Jesus’ strength – time alone with God in silence.

“Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave Him not alone.”

Brother Lawrance
The Practice of the Presence of God, 49

Day 6 of Lent :: Unplugging

“We do not live more fully merely by doing more,
seeing more, tasting more,
and experiencing more than we ever have before.
On the contrary, some of us need to discover that
we will not begin to live more fully
until we have the courage to do and

see and taste and experience much less than usual.”
Thomas Merton

It almost seems that modern life is designed to prevent meaningful time alone in quietness, reflection, and prayer. On some level, it actually is.

Providers of goods and services make their profits when you are interacting with their products, not off in quiet reflection. Movie makers do all they can to get you to watch, restaurateurs urge you to dine; store owners push you to shop.

Amid these wearying patterns of activity, even our moments of escape often involve little more than passive consumption of media. And so, images and sound pervade almost every leisure hour. As Italian film director Ferico Fellini described, all of this, particularly television, “has mutilated our capacity for solitude. It has violated our most intimate, private, and secret dimension.” (Revolutionary Communicator, 119)

Reflection:

How do you feel about Italian film director Fellini’s statement stating that television, “has mutilated our capacity for solitude. It has violated our most intimate, private, and secret dimension”?

On average, American adults watch television 4–4.5 hours daily. That’s a total of 1,460 hours or 60 days out of each year (this does not include other media such as DVDs, Internet, etc - Nielsen Media Research).

On average, how many hours of television do you watch each day/week?

Action:

Perhaps one of the things you could fast during this season is the quantity of time you spend watching television. This could be a daily viewing time limit, designated no-TV days, or perhaps choosing to unplug the television for a extended period of time.

Remember, the message isn’t that television is inherently evil, rather we are looking for ways in which we can create space to meet with God and others.

The Skinny on Fasting

Can skipping that burrito at lunch really show God how much you love Him? What's the real purpose of giving up sweats over Lent anyway...?

Fasting can be a big question mark in the Christian life, here's a new video by The Skit Guys’ on The Skinny on Fasting.