Humble Yourself With Fasting

“For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.”
Psalm 69:9-10

A call to fast, is a call to humble yourself. Pride is one of the primary enemies of the Christian soul. Pride says things like, “I don’t need to do this…” or “this is something for others to do, not me.” Pride puts us either above others, as in I am too good for this, or it puts us in a place with a lack of need, as in others have need of doing things like this, but I don’t.

Fasting requires humility. It requires us to say that we don’t have this. I don’t have the ability to accomplish whatever it is the Lord is wanting to do. When we look at a situation and think, I’ve got this or I can do this by myself, we are essentially saying that we don’t need God.

Some of us have an issue where we may pay lip services to the King. We might say, “with God’s help, I will do such-and-such,” but in our hearts we plan to simply bring it to pass in our own power. When we fast, what we are saying is quite different, we are saying, “I can’t do this on my own, no matter how hard I try.”

Fasting doesn’t make sense on the surface. How does abstaining from food accomplish anything? It’s a lot like prayer in that sense. When I pray and fast, I’m surrendering. I’m saying that I cannot do this, Lord you have to take control. You release any sense of control you had over a situation and put that thing squarely in the hands of God.

In Psalm 69, David is suffering. David’s enemies have said all types of false things about him and David thinks its because of his zeal for God’s house. It’s because of his great love for God. David ties his current sufferings back to a moment of repentance. He says that when he decided to weep and fast, the reproach of the Lord became his own.

When we fast, we take on the Father’s heart. His reproaches, his burdens become our burdens. We stop looking at ourselves and start looking outward. We see those that are suffering and we join in their suffering. We see those that are hurting and our hearts become one with them in that hurt. Fasting is a catalyst for our hearts to be transformed into the heart of the Father. We become like Him in the fast.

Fasting for most of us produces intense pain, as our hunger grows physically, our suffering increases. It’s in these moments of suffering that we begin to relate to Christ and his sufferings. Jesus, the most humble person to walk the earth, suffered intensely during his time here on earth. His ministry began with a fast and he suffered many things as he walked this earth.

Isaiah proclaimed that he would be called the suffering servant. How far are we from this? How comfortable have our lives become that we even struggle to imagine what life was like for Jesus? Comfort has become an idol of the proud. We must ask God to come in and humble us in our fasting and tear down that idol.

Prayer - “Father, I recognize that my pride blinds me. It causes me to think that I don’t need to fast or that I should let this responsibility fall on others. I humble myself before you as I fast today. Help me to relate to you in a very small way today as I fast before you. Thank you for hearing my cries to join with you in your suffering. Amen.”