Day 7

So I'm making the home stretch now. And I must say it feels pretty good I guess. It really is crazy to think that it won't be long before I get to nibble on some God-given chicken noodle soup. Haha.
But it's been great, and I still want to enjoy the next couple of days of just focusing on Him as best as I know how. Yesterday was probably my easiest day so far, so I think, hopefully, now that I'm this far along that these last couple days shouldn't be too rough either. But considering that, there is one point for today I'd like to mention:
Why not go further?

I actually thought of this the moment I started. Ever since I matured in my fasting approach last year, essentially learning to just mentally give food up, the "final day" isn't the day of deliverance that it used to be. I think this is good. Because as I mentioned in an earlier post, when you dwell on that final day, it really just takes away from the fast as a whole, if anything because it 1- makes you painfully hungry, and 2 - sets you up to push yourself too hard in coming off the fast, and make yourself sick. So anyway, now having come to that point where I've really been able to just fast more peacefully, pretty much since day 1 I haven't been "counting down" until I can eat. However, the one key thing in regards to this fast for me is that this year I know God told me 9 days. It was a couple weeks before the fast, and when I prayed He said it pretty clearly. So I was like "Okay, good deal." So that should mean I shouldn't have even considered going further, right? Well, maybe, but I guess I've been of the mindset that if God wanted to stretch me further, or whatever, during the fast, that I would be willing to hear Him out. In fact, I actually kind of anticipated that I might go longer this year than I have in the past. But, the truth is that every time I've even thought about it in prayer, God has continuously reiterated to me "9 days," to the point that after I seriously prayed about it yesterday, I know that Tuesday night is the time for me to come off this fast.

Anyways, I mention this because I've come to experience two competing poles in fasting: the human pole, and the God pole. On the one hand, fasting is a Scriptural mandate that Jesus expects us to do (when you fast...they will fast when the bridegroom is gone), and that being the case, regardless of whether or not we get a clear word from heaven, as Christians fasting is a spiritual discipline that we ought not ignore. Simply, we (the human side) simply make the choice to obey Him. But on the other hand, and this has been fairly frequent in my experience, often when we pray and seek God about fasting, or about a long fast particularly, it seems, He may very well give us clear guidelines. He may tell us how long, what to fast, etc. And in these cases, we certainly need to heed that and not try and cheat our ways out of it. Furthermore, as it has been for me this year, we may even want to fast for a longer period of time, but He can still tell us that we've done what He's asked of us. Which is, obviously, satisfactory :-).

Yet as a final note about this, obviously trying to draw the line of our human hunger and what God really wants us to do with something like fasting is incredibly dubious. I mean, how many of us who have fasted have gone into our prayer closets, heard a creek in the door and said "The voice of God! He told me I can eat!" Haha. The point is, we have to as intentional as possible about seeking Him. We need to be hungry for Him. And if we truly seek after Him with everything, I think we'll start shying away from making excuses. Rather, we'll actually want to do whatever we can while fasting to get closer to Him, such that if in fact He does tell us our fast is concluded, we will know it's a pleased Father saying "well done" and not an irritated parent saying "Okay already, eat your stinkin cookies!"