Episode #275 Seeing Hunger as a Teacher – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Hey friends, it's Jen. Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you were truly hungry? Not just ready for the next meal, but genuinely hungry. Now, if you ask my boys this, they're like five minutes ago. It doesn't matter how recently they've eaten. But for most of us in the developed world, including my kiddos, physical hunger is something that we rarely experience. We have an abundant access to food, which I’m grateful for, and so when we feel those hunger pains, we can quickly satisfy them.

I'm bringing this up because today we're exploring a new topic in spiritual disciplines, and that is the spiritual discipline of fasting. And I want to start with a simple but pretty profound insight:

Hunger can teach us.

I've been rereading the book Celebration of Discipline, and Richard Foster is talking about biblical fasting, which he defines as "abstaining from food for spiritual purposes." He points out that throughout Scripture, fasting refers specifically to abstaining from food, not from media, shopping, or other activities (though those practices may have their place).
And there are a lot of people in scripture who are recorded to have fasted. Moses, David, Elijah, Esther, Daniel, Anna, Paul, even Jesus himself. These weren't fringe characters or extremists. They were important figures in God's big story, who found fasting to be an important spiritual practice.
And so we're talking about that for a few episodes here. And actually, one of the reasons we started talking about the disciplines in total was because of a question that came in from one of you, one of our listeners, asking about fasting. And so I wanna start with the why behind it. What is the spiritual purpose for going without food?

And there's a lot of dimensions to fasting, and one of the foundational reasons is because it reveals our dependencies. The way that I have learned fasting is that you go without food for a specific amount of time because you're choosing to demonstrate your dependence on God. And in doing so, you're consecrating that time, maybe that energy, that you would normally use to prepare and eat food, to prayer, to drawing close to him and focusing your attention on him in a way that's tangible and practical.

And when we fast, the physical hunger that we experience will often reveal the deeper hungers that we often try to satisfy with food hungers for comfort or distraction or pleasure or numbing.

In Matthew 4:4, after fasting forty days in the wilderness, Jesus responded to satan's temptation by saying, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

This isn't just a nice metaphor, it's a lived reality that we get to depend on God in full honesty. Even if we don't know that we're depending on God, we are dependent on him.
In him we live and move and have our being. But in fasting, when we're not partaking in food for a spiritual purpose, we're coming face to face with that visceral reality that we are not just sustained by the food that we eat. Food does not sustain us. God sustains us.

Now I have fasted in different ways for many years now, and we'll talk about how to start fasting in the next episode. But today I wanna talk about what my hunger revealed. I discovered in different times that I didn't just use food for nutrition, but I used it for comfort when I was anxious or distraction when I was bored, or even for a reward when I felt like I deserved it.

I even approached fasting in some unhealthy ways, not keeping my motivation pure. I was like, Ooh, weight loss. Also trying to skirt the rules and be a little legalistic in some of my fasts, which revealed that tendency in me to want to perform, to want to achieve. And honestly, it revealed some areas I needed to work through where I was still approaching my walk with God in a legalistic way.

And so fasting can be this really powerful teacher. It's not about punishing your body or denying legitimate needs. It's about temporarily setting aside a physical need to focus on spiritual realities.

I wanna be clear, this is not for everyone at all times. If you have certain medical conditions, if you're pregnant, if you're a nursing mom, there's a variety of reasons that you might want or need to find an alternate way to practice this discipline.
But the focus of today's episode is looking at what we can learn from the things that we're hungry for and for how we satiate those needs. This isn't about earning God's favor. It's not about growing our spiritual prowess or becoming or appearing more spiritually mature. It's about a grace filled invitation to trust God more and to rely on him more fully and to discover more of his sufficiency and his care for us.

And so as we close out today's episode, listen for what he would want to share with you. And here's a question that you can use in that conversation:

God, what might you want to teach me through hunger? Show me where I've been seeking satisfaction apart from you.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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