Today is Day 16 of E91’s 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. Having extra time to pray while skipping meals has taught me a number of painful lessons:
- I rely too much on food to make me happy.
- I don’t spend enough time daily to be still, meditate on Scripture, and pray.
- I get too caught up in the wrong priorities: busyness instead of peacefulness, schedules instead of relationships, and my agenda instead of God’s agenda.
And now five days remain, but what will come then? Will you and I slip right back into old habits and routines? Or will we choose to incorporate these, and other lessons, into our daily rhythms?
Arthur C. Brooks is a social scientist who studies happiness. Yes, that’s actually a thing. In his widely-acclaimed book, From Strength to Strength, he writes that all the lessons he has learned and now strives to live by can be encapsulated in seven words (p. 215):
“Use things. Love people. Worship the divine.”
He tells us that the problem so many of us face is not the noun things but the verb to love. Things are to use, not to love. Love is at the epicenter of our happiness. I would add that God’s love is at the epicenter of our happiness, and the more we receive and share His love, the richer, fuller, and, indeed, happier we become.
The great theologian and bishop of Hippo, Saint Augustine (354-430 AD), once wrote, “Love and do what you will.” But love is defined by the One who embodies it. “For God is love,” John wrote (1 John 4:8). So, love is an overflow of the nature and character of God.
Thus, love should be reserved for people, not things. “For God so loved the world, that He gave…” (John 3:16). To misplace your love is to invite frustration and futility—to get on the hedonic treadmill and set it to ultra-fast (From Strength to Strength, 215).
Fasting from food has helped me deepen my love for others, and, quite honestly, that is a much-needed improvement in my life. Fasting has also helped me deepen my love for God. When we take love up one level from others to God, we have worship. The writer David Foster Wallace once wrote, “There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship” (Wallace, This Is Water).
If we love things, we will strive to objectify ourselves in terms of money, power, pleasure, and prestige—idols all. We will wind up worshiping ourselves. This is what the world assures will bring happiness. But the world lies. Idols will not make us happy. Only the love of God, when placed in its proper place as the epicenter of our lives, will bring us the happiness we so desperately long for.
Fasting has forced me to hit the pause button on the busyness of life to rediscover peacefulness and relationships as part of God’s agenda, which is far more important than mine. I pray it will help you do the same.
