Equipping young women professionals with young families to find fulfillment, contentment and joy as mothers and home makers without losing sight of who they are as women.

Volume 09, Issue 31: Seeking God Through Fasting (Part I)

Fasting as a love offering

We revisited the subject of seeking God early the other week. I was failing in a corporate fast the week I wrote the "Seek Him Early" article. As a result of failing at fasting yet again, I was interested in learning how to succeed at fasting. That's when I stumbled onto a YouVersion Bible plan provided by Jamie Rohrbaugh.

Fasting is one of the Christian practices that most of us neglect or struggle with. I have broken so many fasts and fasted wrongly so many times but I didn't take it seriously until I found Jamie's experience. There are many studies written on fasting, but this is the one that caught my attention because its focus is on something that's close to my heart - seeking God for Him, not for things. Jamie's plan is on fasting as a love offering to God. This is what I always wanted my fasts to be about but I didn't know it until I read Jamie's experience.

We fast wrongly when we fast to manipulate God and get stuff, rather than fasting to get Him. Most of us are not accustomed to fasting as a love offering to God. Seeking God first hasn't been the primary objective of most of our fasts. When Jamie discovered how to fast as a love offering to the Lord, it changed everything for her.

She no longer fasts to get God to move. Yes, she prays for specific things when she fasts - and God answers, but mostly what she fasts and prays for is to just want Him - to love on Him and offer His something of value to her.

If you don't want to manipulate God anymore but rather fast as an offering to Him, a sacrifice of love that will warm His heart and show Him that He is worth anything to you, tune in to what Jamie had to say about how to go about fasting that caught my attention enough to write about it.

We can fast to get God to move - pray for specific things, but we can also fast as a love offering to Jesus. The later is where we fast and pray because we want Him - we want to love on Him and offer Him something of value to us. This kind of fasting will get our passion and fire for God back, get us hungry for Him again. Jamie wrote that when she started fasting just to seek her Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, she started seeing tremendous results. She began to draw closer to Him than ever before, started to get her passion and fire for God back. She became hungry for God again and started to see miracles happen in her life.

God meant it when He said that we should seek His face. He meant it when He said to seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things would be added unto us. So, like Jamie, I am going to start fasting just to seek God's face. We can't do it on our own but He is there to help us. I want to say like Jamie and mean it, that I have been a fasting failure but now I just want Jesus. I want my fasts to be a love offering to Jesus. Next, we will look at how to prepare for a fast.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi