Fasting Slowly

Broken, in the weakness of submission, my body torments me in opposition to this denial of principles. I’ve surrendered, but a constant reminder rings dissonant songs of my imperfections, reducing my vulnerability into the humility of mere silence. An isolated silence in waiting for the voice of righteous sustenance that hovers below audibility within the caverns of my inner sanctum. Echoes of a muted judgment reverberate the acceptance of my emptiness. In guilty acquiescence I wait to be filled; commitment calling deeper still to ignore the spasms of my shameless cravings. I sit impatiently at God’s table knowing that my feast will be determined by my willingness to hunger; my purpose purified in the process. And as this course meanders slowly down roads of limited discipline, flashes of gluttonous excess demand my surrender to repentance. Weakness shepherds my brokenness but my ears fill with thunderous sounds of fulfillment. In a heavenly burst of personal quiet God speaks to me just slightly above the level of my shrinking distractions and He reveals Himself to me squarely between His will for my life and the sin that so easily entangles me. Dominating my concentration, He captures my consciousness with the reminder that my faith is my righteousness and everywhere I find myself lacking, He fills the cold and desolate spaces with the warmth and fullness of His love. The pangs of my selfish yearnings disappear behind the vastness of His comfort. Slowly, I hunger for much more than bread, but now my desire is magnified to prolong the rewards of this denial: the very voice of God. Words of destiny overwhelm me, raw and uncomplicated; uninterpreted yet understood; separated beyond the mental grasp of language, He speaks to my heart with swords of ruthless clarity. In thunderous declarations He challenges my choices with the rewards of obedience. He reveals a beautifully unimaginable garden, visible through a path of holiness called, His Will. Unapproachable without Him, it’s guarded by the jagged tools of His righteous pruning. Trimming folly from my prolonged celebration of childishness and scheduling appointments to table my unending procrastinations, He portions my understanding to the speed of my acceptance and demands a slow, painstaking pace. The slow grind of progress is governed by my capacity to follow and every errant thought is accompanied by the sting of discipline’s sharp edges, then immediately rewarded with the graciousness of His fellowship. He holds nothing against me and He holds no good thing from me.

There, even in the apprehension of my submission, God ordered my steps through the fear of my limited endurance. There in the weakness of deprivation I was buried and rose again in a symbolic resurrection of the man God knew before He formed me in the womb. There on the edge of my endurance I saw and heard God and stood in defiance to delirium. And in an ironic twist He caused me to understand that hungering for Him, knowing Him, is all that matters.

“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;” Philippians 3:10 (NKJV)