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The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Fasting & Feasting: A Deeper Look at Lent with Benjamin Kandt
In this episode, Nate Claiborne and Benjamin Kandt discuss the spiritual practice of fasting, particularly in the context of Lent. They explore the historical and biblical foundations of fasting, explaining how it has traditionally been used as a means of self-denial, preparation, and spiritual discipline. They highlight the connection between fasting and feasting, emphasizing that both are essential parts of Christian life—fasting representing a time of longing and dependence on God, while feasting celebrates the joy and fulfillment found in Him. The conversation also touches on how the Christian calendar has shaped seasons of fasting, particularly leading up to Easter, and how fasting helps Christians resist being controlled by their physical cravings or desires.
They also discuss the importance of motivation in fasting, warning against legalism while encouraging listeners to engage in the practice as a way to grow in spiritual freedom. They offer practical suggestions for fasting during Lent, including food-based fasts, social media detoxes, or other forms of self-denial that create space for increased dependence on God. Ultimately, they encourage listeners to approach fasting not just as an act of giving something up but as an opportunity to take hold of more of God and deepen their faith.
You can listen to the sermon by Hardy Reynolds here, and last year's sermon from Ben here.
Welcome to another episode of the All that Podcast. I'm your host, nate Claiborne, here once again with Benjamin Mann. You got a streak going. Yeah, I do. Well, actually people don't know that because I mixed the episode, but it doesn't come out for two weeks. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Well, in this one you get the special opportunity to hear me with a voice about to be gone. Oh no, it's interesting. You could probably. It's very tried and true that if I don't get a good sleep, like six-plus hours, for like three or four days in a row, I lose my voice. It always happens.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And my newborn has some sleeping problems right now. Okay, same Par for the course, yeah yeah, so that's where I find myself, but I'm good if you can bear with listening to my voice as it's coming in and out. I'm drinking some throat coat as we talk right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, throat coat works magic, and so I'll try to carry it. I don't know how well I can do that but we'll see what we can do so.
Speaker 1:We're here not to talk about throat coat or about sleeplessness, although we can both relate to that over the past few days. We're here to talk about fasting. So last month we did a highlight on the scripture practice in the Common Rhythm and this month we're doing we're just gonna do a kind of an overview highlight of the fasting practice, in part because that's the theme for this month of March. As people are listening to this, you may have noticed on the worship bulletin last Sunday the little tag at the bottom. The theme changed to fasting because we're in a new month and it's got some questions on there. Those were drawn from the All of Life Guide and, as you're hearing this, it's now Tuesday, march 4th and tomorrow, wednesday March 5th, is Ash Wednesday, which starts the season of Lent in the Christian calendar. That's right.
Speaker 1:Ben, why don't you tell us a little bit more about Lent, for people that don't know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some people might come from traditions where they don't practice the Christian calendar and even then you probably practice something in it, because almost all of us know Christmas and Easter, which are part of the church calendar. The idea that there was a day when the church calendar ruled like the school or academic calendar does now is really interesting to me. It is Like I can't even fathom that, but there was a day when the church calendar actually was the thing that dictated your sense of the seasons that you were in.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure there's some students that would like to get back to that since it's mostly feast days and other sorts of holidays and ordinary time.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah. And so we historically we being the Christian church have marked the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday as a season of self-reflection, of preparation of your heart. Often it has a kind of an emphasis on self-examination and a preparing of your heart for a sense of the need for the cross on Good Friday, and so this usually has themes of asking questions about stewarding your life and what that's looked like, asking self-examination, questions about failure in your life, about where you find yourself, are you living up to God's call on your life, those kinds of things. And so you've got this 40 day season of self-examination that prepares you for the cross, which is all kind of culminating in Easter Sunday.
Speaker 2:And so you might think that the church calendar is confusing, or why do people do this? It's not. It's not. Is it biblical this and the other? I would say the Bible has holidays in it, seven of them, in particular in the in the Hebrew Bible. In other words, god cared about how the Jewish people kept time, and they kept time based on his climactic events in history, and so it's not unusual, or not? It's not surprising, that the Christian church would pick up this pattern of marking holidays, holy days, by having seasons of preparation for significant events in the life of a Christian, like the birth of Jesus in Christmas, which is prepared for by Advent, or the death and resurrection of Jesus in Good Friday and Easter Sunday, that's prepared for in this season of Lent.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and it would probably surprise people. I mean Lent maybe is a little out there for some people if they didn't grow up with that as part of the Christian calendar. But in an earlier podcast this season we were talking about Eastern Orthodoxy and they do fasting, not only for Lent but for Advent.
Speaker 1:They're both seasons of fasting leading up to the feasting that they. So they treat Christmas as a feast day, they treat Easter as a feast day, and so there's a period of fasting. So really they're tapping into something and I said we weren't gonna link to this, but I think we'll link people to it. Hardy Preach Day Hardy Reynolds, our RUF minister, who's at New City. He preached a sermon a few years ago where he contrasted fasting and feasting.
Speaker 1:And one of them is kind of the feasting bit is the already of the kingdom is at hand and the fasting is the not yet. And there's this dynamic of they really do go hand in hand and so it's Christian life is out of balance if it's feasting all the time. It's also out of balance if it's fasting all the time.
Speaker 2:That's well said, and even on the common rhythm, you'll see, in the love neighbor side of the common rhythm and the weekly, that's where fasting and feasting are One is a practice of embrace and one of us is a practice of resist. For that reason they really are complementary and go together in that regard. Yeah, so fasting, nate, tell us a little bit about like okay, so maybe somebody's like all right, yeah, lent, 40 days up until Easter, why fasting? Though? Like what's the role that fasting plays? Or why would we fast during that season?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a season of self-denial and preparation. I don't have a history of Lent off the top of my head, but I can think of which actually surprises me.
Speaker 2:It does surprise you. You usually have a lot of these things off the top of your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is one of those things. I'm resisting the urge to Google it right now, just so I can pretend it was off the top of my head, but I would think of it as it's a solemn season in some sense because you're really trying to enter into the weight of what it was leading up to Holy Week, and so you're starting.
Speaker 1:you know, 40 days out. I will say this, for if you really do want to practice Lent, I think you need to do the full version of it, which is to say, today is Mardi Gras, which is French for Fat Tuesday. That's right so if you are getting ready to fast, you would feast today.
Speaker 2:We would get punch geese, which I think is a donut of some sort, up in Michigan. That was like the thing. Okay, yeah, maybe a Polish donut, I don't even know Something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1:I mean not just at Universal, where they go to town on it, or in New Orleans, but if you did the math though, it's actually more than 40 days between Ash Wednesday to Easter I think it's 46 days, and part of the rhythm of it is you actually have micro feasts possible on the Sundays leading up to Easter Foretastes Foretastes, in some sense of like you're fasting, so you get the foretaste on Sunday, but not the full feast that you're experiencing on Easter.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of it's acclimating your body to the season that you're in in Christian time, and so we could go in way more detail on this. But it's one way in which you're letting the flesh not dominate the way you live your Christian life by doing something that deprives the flesh of what it wants, and I'm using flesh, really, in both a physical and a spiritual sense there. In physical sense, in that by not eating something that you would otherwise like to enjoy eating, you're depriving yourself, so you're feeling that hunger get stirred up. But it's also it's easy to live by your desires, which is a more spiritual idea of I just eat what I want, I do what I want, I go where I want, and so that's not the way we want to pursue the Christian life where we're led by the desires of the flesh, meaning not in the sexual sense, but just in a total sense of.
Speaker 1:I just kind of do whatever I feel like, and this is a season where you have an opportunity to fight against that natural tendency that you have by fasting, and doing it in conjunction with one of the most, if not the most significant, christian holiday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so helpful. In fact, I wish I would have known this this time last year, because last Lent I gave up sugar. Now Alana would keep me honest. What I gave up was processed sugars, because I would still eat like dates and things like that, a little fruit here and there.
Speaker 2:The sugar that grows from the earth I would have. So I gave up processed sugars for Lent, which was hard for me, and if I do it again this year, it's going to be hard for me again. So this happened. Actually, lent began on Wednesday, as it does, and that first Sunday somebody in our congregation said hey, I'm trying out baking sourdough cinnamon buns. Oh, they would, wouldn't they? And basically it was like can I make a batch of them for you and will you be a taste tester?
Speaker 1:So I thought you are such a kind you said get behind me. That's right, I'm like. You are such a kind.
Speaker 2:You said, get behind me. That's right. I'm like you are such a kind person, but you don't understand what this means to me right now. Yeah, but had I known that Sundays were little micro foretastes, micro feasts?
Speaker 1:there you go. I totally would have broken my fast right just and served this lovely woman and helped her with her baking process yeah, and if nothing else, that rhythm of it to me is the argument for why it should be a food-based reality. So it's like you could give up coffee, but it means every Sunday morning you can enjoy a cup of coffee but, you don't go back to your regular rhythm of coffee every day.
Speaker 1:That's good. I know people have done social media or things like that. In some sense it works. Maybe it's good for so if it's I know people have done like social media or things like that it's like it really in some sense it works. Like maybe it's good for you to detox social media for 46 full days. Yeah, but the rhythm of it would be well. If you detox social media, that means on Sunday you can check all your accounts, but you also don't want to think of it as like it's fat Sunday and so it's just your social media all Sunday to make up for everything.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's so. That's why I say micro feast is probably a better way of thinking of it. It's not fat Tuesday all over again, but it's able if you, you know if you gave up coffee or if you gave up dairy or if you gave up something that you genuinely enjoy. You can dip back into it on Sunday, but then you're back into feast mode rather than beast mode, I guess.
Speaker 2:Beast mode.
Speaker 1:That's amazing Beast mode starting Monday morning.
Speaker 2:Okay. So another piece to that why it might make sense to give up food in particular, which is that's what the Bible means when it says fasting. It means food, but I don't think it's wrong to expand the definition to include things like social media or-. You could say things you consume or fasting people you don't like. Like that's a legitimate practice right.
Speaker 1:Like introverts are like oh, there we go. How can I fast people Sorry, it's lit, it's lit, I can't be there.
Speaker 2:But you said something. Actually, this is so funny, nate. I'm a fastidious note taker, so people that know me know this. You, I'm a fastidious note taker, so people that know me know this. You said something during a staff meeting in October 25th 2021. What a creeper. I know this is amazing. You said the body is the foundational arena of discipleship.
Speaker 1:That's a good word right there. Did you remember saying that? I don't remember saying that.
Speaker 2:What date was it? October 25th 2021.
Speaker 1:2021. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, I can kind of remember what I was it October 25th, 2021. 2021,. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. I can kind of remember what I was reading around then and why I might have said that.
Speaker 2:I don't remember saying that, though, but let's roll with it because it's a great statement. The body is the foundational arena of discipleship. So what I love about that is it grounds us in reality as it's lived by human beings, which are the only disciples there are human beings right. Because reality as it's lived by human beings, which are the only disciples there, are human beings right. Because we might think you might be apt to go well, these are spiritual disciplines and that's just like holier than thou kind of like airy-fairy, just abstraction type thing. But they're habits and a habit is an embodied thing. It has something to do with your memory, it has something to do with your. You know the ways your body does something right, and so you can habituate yourself into a spiritual discipline and that's not a problem, that's actually great. So read James Clear's book on atomic habits and it'll help you with your spiritual disciplines. Yeah, why? Because the body is the foundational arena of discipleship.
Speaker 2:And so, as we are practicing Lent, it's actually an embodied. It's an embodied practice to say practicing Lent. It's actually an embodied. It's an embodied practice to say I'm going to, I'm going to say no to certain justifiable bodily appetites like food or, in my case, with sugar, or, like you said coffee, something like that. It's totally legitimate and it's actually a way to prepare yourself almost from the bottom up, not just intellectually. You could read there's a lot of really great Lent devotionals out there, but this is almost like a body up reality where you're going. I'm going to prepare myself in an embodied way to celebrate, to give a full body yes to Jesus's resurrection, by giving myself a 40 day runway, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when. I hope what people are hearing us say is this is we've, in all of the conversation we've had so far, we've not pulled out scripture and said well, you know here's where you're commanded to practice Lent.
Speaker 1:Scripture does talk about fasting as a discipline, but it doesn't talk about Lent in particular. So there's a certain sense in which we're drawing on a tradition, that it has roots to it, and some people I know may fault it for some of its sources. So it's in the realm of. This would be healthy for your spiritual life, but it's not mandatory for it.
Speaker 2:That's good. That's well said. I think that's important. And one of the ways I think about that is that legalism, legalists and lovers can look pretty similar externally. Now, if you start talking to them, you'd figure out which one's which pretty quickly, because they're motivational. In other words, you know there's plenty of people who have sold everything, given it all to the poor and done something radically devoted to Jesus, and they've done that in order to get something from God. And some people have done that because they've received everything already from God and they're doing it as a response of love. Right, both, one's a legalist, one's a lover.
Speaker 2:I get this from 1 Corinthians 13,. Right, paul says that you can give all that you have, sell it to the, give it to the poor, but if you have not love, it's you've gained nothing. And give it to the poor. But if you have not love, you've gained nothing. You can even deliver your body over to be burned and if you have not love, you are nothing.
Speaker 2:So you can go to the greatest extremes and if the motive is I'm going to get from God, I'm going to twist God's arm and I'm going to put him in my debt, that's legalism and it's not okay, it's actually you're worse off having done that. But you could do some dramatic things that are, I mean, paul himself was executed for the faith, right, and we would believe that he did that out of love, that there was a motive of I've been given everything and you know, I count all things as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. And so lovers can do dramatic things like 40 days of not eating particular types of food in order to prepare their bodies and their souls for Easter Sunday, but I do think the motive matters on something like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm struck by it. It's stuck with me. I didn't take notes the way you might take notes, but I remember in what was it back in 1943.
Speaker 1:No this was last fall when we had Matt and Dana Candler come out and do some training with us and they were talking about fasting, and I remember Dana saying something along the lines of you basically shouldn't fast until you feel like you can't not fast because your motive can be so distorted by I'm using this for manipulative reasons. Or, you know, in a culture that is and I'm susceptible to this as well in a culture that's obsessed with diet and exercise, fasting is a great way to accelerate your calorie deficit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, you're sort of like well, I need to be in a deficit anyway.
Speaker 1:so let's just do this. So then you're doing the thing, so externally it looks like you're doing what other people are doing, but you're doing it for self-serving reasons. So I think that's probably, too, why you want to think of the conjunction of fasting and prayer, and so it's not purely I'm just self-denying. I'm self-denying. And even the way we state it in the common rhythm to increase hunger for God, that's right. Right, it's not just a I'm just going to be hungry and cranky. Yes, um, yes. If you're actually fasting.
Speaker 2:Yes, somebody said there's no grace in starving yourself, there's only grace in seeking God. And so if you go without and you feel that ache and that directs you towards God, that's the grace of fasting. Um, another way I think about it too is, um, that fasting is it's voluntary weakness. You know, it's like there's lots of promises in scripture about weakness and God's power made perfect there. And so if I voluntarily make myself weak but I do it before the Lord in a way to kind of open myself up to more of who God is for me, then that's where the grace of it is. I think about another piece of fasting is that fasting really is about freedom. This is coming back to your point about the flesh.
Speaker 2:I'll quote some Bible here so that people don't get nervous 2 Peter, 2, 19,. Peter says this whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. That's a powerful verse. It's actually a proof text for me for addiction. Whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. And so many of us are overcome. I can tell you truly there is a tendency for me to be overcome by processed sugars if I'm not careful. It's just like grab a handful of peanut M&Ms walking out because I'm in a low mood state or something like that you get that dopamine hit.
Speaker 1:That's right and I walking out because I'm in a low mood state or something like that.
Speaker 2:And then you get that dopamine hit. That's right and I know better, because I'm gonna get that sugar crash after the dopamine hit, right. But there's just something about fasting's about freedom. It's like don't be overcome by anything anymore, like you can actually be free from these things. But it's going to cost you something. It's going to feel like death, but there's resurrection on the other side, right Another one.
Speaker 2:This may be a little bit personal but I can tell you I've had a lot of conversations with young men who will ask me questions about how to live in a measure of freedom from sexual sin and sexual temptation, lust, pornography, those kind of things. And since that's a part of my own story, I can often kind of offer counsel from my own story. And one of the things that I've said and I always preface it with my legalism and lover speech because this is really important to say I had heard from John Mark Comer I thought this was really helpful that traditionally the church prescribed fasting for what the scriptures call kind of lusts of the flesh or these kind of bodily appetite issues that you might have, like gluttony, like lust, right. Those are very embodied things which are different actually than pride or vainglory, which are often, you know, people would call those kind of like almost spiritual sins. Yeah, because the devil has pride and vainglory, and so basically, if it's a lust of the flesh, a prescription, is actually a form of what Paul called beating his body into submission. We don't like that language, unless you're into working out. Then you're like, okay, yeah, paul did it, so it's cool. And so this is what I say.
Speaker 2:I say, hey, I go through seasons where if I feel as if lust or covetousness or temptation, sexual temptation, those things are like increasing and I catch it kind of on an incline. I will go through a season might be a week, might be a month and I usually tell some close friends that if I lust I will fast. So it doesn't matter if I might fast three days that week, it doesn't matter. Like the commitment is, if I find myself lusting tomorrow, I'm fasting and it's a way to starve, that this bodily appetite that's connected right, this in a way that says I don't want this, I don't want this, I want to put to death the deeds of the body that I might live.
Speaker 2:Romans 8, 16, I think, or 13. And again, you can hear that and you can think, oh, that's legalistic. I actually think it's because I love my wife, it's because I love Jesus, it's because I know the freedom and the joy that comes from not being tempted sexually, and I know that fasting is about freedom and so whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. Fasting is actually a God-given spiritual discipline that enables you to kind of break free from some of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful. I think too, even as you're saying that it might, it might be worth parsing legalism just a little bit.
Speaker 2:I don't want to spend too much time on it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think there is a sense in which there's really two senses of that. There's at least two senses of that word. And, in some sense, by you having a rule or a law of if this happens. Therefore, I do that that is legalistic in the basic sense of there's a rule you're imposing a law outside of scripture that you're imposing on yourself, right, but the legalism, that's the problem and it's why it's kind of you can't treat them as the both thing is when you're using the law as a means to gain favor with God.
Speaker 1:So you're still doing the same thing. You're following a law, but what you think you're doing by following the law is different.
Speaker 2:That's well said, because when I counsel young men and I tell them that I tell them as this is descriptive, not prescriptive, this is me just telling you what's been helpful for me I also, in that same context, tell them that I have people in my life that, no matter what, they always know where I'm at with temptation of any kind it could be covetousness over somebody's lifestyle, or you know because I I want to be a person who lives with no secrets. Now, you could find proof texts about like walking in the light and, you know, having no darkness within you, 1 John 1. But like, that's another law, it's another rule of life that I follow, which is I don't live with secrets. I tell there's people that know all my secrets, that kind of thing. And in a similar way, it's for the same reason I don't want to live without transparency. I want to live known, fully known, with no hiding, that kind of a thing.
Speaker 2:And so, to that point, though, if I were to tell those men, you have to do this, now that's a problem, right? I can tell those men, hey, you have to honor your father and mother. I can tell them, hey, you cannot steal. And because I'm taking Bible and I'm prescribing Bible, but if I prescribe my own spiritual practices and things like that, that's when you can become You're binding conscience, binding conscience.
Speaker 1:It's beyond scripture Especially and it has more weight from you as a pastor versus I could do the same thing and it would still be binding conscience, but it wouldn't weigh potentially on somebody's conscience as much as like. Well, my pastor said I have to do X, y or Z.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's it. Yeah. So in this context it's probably good to come back to the topic of Lent and fasting. I do believe now people could debate with me on this. I do believe that there is a prescription. The Bible calls disciples of Jesus to fast. I get that from Matthew 6, where Jesus assumes his disciples would fast. He says when you fast, dot, dot, dot, which implies he assumes it. Now it's not in the imperative. So you could say, well, he didn't command it there and I would say, okay, that's fine. He did something more dramatic, which is he just assumed that that would be normative for you, which almost might be worse than an imperative in one sense. So I believe I can look at a Christian and say you should fast, you should have a practice of fasting. Now, if I go, it should be for 40 days during. Now the church hasn't had a problem doing that in the past. The early church, if you read the Didache, they fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays they did the Lord's Prayer three times a day the Eastern.
Speaker 2:Orthodox still do. There you go. They prayed the Lord's Prayer three times a day Now. They prescribed those things for disciples because they believe that's what you needed. I won't go that far as scripture, which says you should fast. That's something you should do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so as we kind of land the plane here, that's a good word to end on is that you should fast. And I think what we say is the invitation here, as we go into the season of Lent, is to try to figure out if you don't already have something. And, just as a side note, if you're a member of New City and you took a survey over the summer, we know that most of you don't have something.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And that's no shade, because I'm one of those people who said the same thing is that, during this season, that we're inviting you to figure something out. That's right, and I would say, I'd say, really, you have three options. I'll give three options. One would be to just go in, lean into Wednesdays along with the elder prayer guide and join the elders in fasting on Wednesday. So in this case, you're skipping meals. Yeah, which for?
Speaker 2:us. All that is is breakfast and lunch. So it's like I'll eat Tuesday night and then I won't, and then I'll eat Wednesday night. So I'll eat dinner on Tuesday, dinner on Wednesday. That's a 24-hour fast, but it isn't so bad, because most of your fasts are a lot of that. You're sleeping those eight hours. You're just missing breakfast and lunch.
Speaker 1:If you don't know where to start, we'd start there. And you've got the prayer guide. It's in the app, but you're also getting it as an email every week, so you could start with that. If you wanted to do Lent, so you would start with that. If you wanted to do lent, so you would start tomorrow. It's ash wednesday, um, and I what I've been thinking about is I'm trying to decide kind of what I'm going to do is I've been thinking about not necessarily what can I give up, just in the in the broad sense of like, oh, I could give up.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking about what do I, what do I find myself craving, and so like you were saying processed sugars, sugars, it's like well, I enjoy tacos, but I'm not like oh my gosh, I got to get a taco right or burgers, or like some of these things that maybe I should eat less of anyways. But I can think of. Like, well, is there something along those lines where it's like a component of like dairy products, like ice cream, or it would include things like that.
Speaker 1:So I've been thinking along those lines because I'm trying to think in terms of I don't want a craving to control me, so this is a season where I can take control of the cravings and do it for this purpose. Yeah, I think you've got those two options, and then there's just the traditional of using Friday as a fast day, I think that's that has a long history as well. But I figure, if you're going to do a day, you may as well join the crew on Wednesday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you think of?
Speaker 1:other, other approaches people have, I mean we're recommending those two things.
Speaker 2:There's other things you could do. Yeah, I know we went pretty hard in the paint on making this food oriented, but let me just riddle off some things that you could fast. You could fast food generally, uh, which is what we do on Wednesdays. You could fast for fast sugar, which is what I did for 40 days. Just no processed sugars, right, but again, I still had fructose and you know the stuff that comes in fruit naturally, right, um, you could fast meat. You could fast alcohol. You could fast caffeine.
Speaker 2:Then you could get outside of the kind of embodied sense and you could fast social media or TV or internet of some sort, like maybe, uh, you only use it in a certain place, you know, in time, whatever you could fast, um, I joked earlier. But you could fast people, which would be a practice of solitude, right, like, maybe you actually, uh, bonhoeffer says the best people for the worst people for community are people who can't have solitude. Uh, and the worst people for solitude are those who can't have, who can't live without community, and so, um, and then another one would be shopping, like maybe you just don't spend money for the for the 40 days, uh, and you fast, you know, amazon or something like that. So there are ways you could go outside the norm of what fasting is Um, but then even within the norm, there's a lot of different things you could. You could give up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the caveat there would be don't use it as an excuse to do something you'd prefer to do anyways, like fasting people. Like fasting people, which is sort of like you can't be like man. I'm just so hard keeping up with email. I'm going to give up email for a minute. Yeah, actually that's mine. I've decided my land practice you need. So, yeah, maybe we say this If you're going to pick something that's non-food, I mean food-based, I mean I could say I'm fasting broccoli, but that's not really actually doing anything right.
Speaker 1:It needs to introduce some level of friction for you. So if it's a food item, if it's a, I'm going to give up Netflix for 40 days because I usually watch it for two hours every night or something like that. It can't be something that you don't participate in that much. It needs to be something that's sustainable, doable, but also is going to cause a little bit of a pinch, a little bit of friction. Yeah, that's sustainable, doable, but also is going to cause a little bit of a pinch, a little bit of friction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's well said. Three closing thoughts. First, don't butt off more than you can chew.
Speaker 1:Look at that that works on so many levels. Wait for it.
Speaker 2:I just had to say that. But it's a good fasting recommendation. But I mean that you know like, don't go too crazy with this. If you've never fasted before, don't Take a baby step. That's good.
Speaker 2:Second, and related to that is if you're the kind of person who wants to go, you know I'm going to go big, I'm going to go all in. Just, we've warned against legalism as a motivation. But 1 Corinthians 8.8 says this super direct food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. I just love the straightforwardness of that. So just remember, like your diet, it doesn't make God love you anymore or any less. You know your practices are not going to change God's love for you, but God's love for you might actually change your practices. Hopefully it does.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I'd say is that it's easy to think of fasting as really to focus on what I'm letting go of, because that's core to it. But I'd actually rather you also consider what is it that you're taking hold of that? There is a hungering for God with others. That's core to fasting, which is I'm actually taking hold of more of God by saying no to something. I'm saying yes to him. And so the emphasis of fasting practically is what am I giving up? But the emphasis of fasting, kind of the priority of it, is what am I laying hold of? I'm asking for more of you, god, than I've experienced thus far, and so you know, fasting might feel like sackcloth and ashes, but it might actually end in something that feels like Easter, which is the hope that's set out before us it is.
Speaker 1:Those are some good words to end on Ben. I enjoyed our conversation talking about fasting. Listeners can keep an ear out, so to speak, for another deep dive on a congregant's experience of fasting and that's going to drop in a couple weeks. That's great Looking forward to that one too.
Speaker 2:So until then,
