Some might describe their fasting experience like "Hell Week" for Navy SEAL training. A Navy SEAL might argue that point, but it's easy for a reasonable person to make the correlation. As Marcus Luttrell described in his book Lone Survivor, Hell Week was five days of the most grueling physical testing the human body can handle. Running on sand, swimming in freezing water, carrying boats, with endless hours of push-ups, sit-ups, and flutter kicks. And if you don't want to go through it, you don't have to. There's a bell placed stationary everywhere the SEALs go. All you have to do is break rank, walk up, and ring the bell, and you're done.
I wonder...how many of those people would have quit if the bell wasn't there?
Question: What's your "bell" when it comes to fasting?
It could be the refrigerator, or it's your Instagram feed. It could be the on/off button on your video game console or the who's who of fast food chains on the main road. What thing(s) would push you to say, "I'm done with this..." as some of the SEAL candidates did in Luttrell's book?
No one wakes up in the morning, looks at themselves in the mirror, and says, "I'm going to be a quitter today!" Quitting isn't generally something any of us plan to do. We have goals, and we set out to accomplish those goals, but something presents itself as a mitigating factor to impede our path to the goal, and we come to a crossroads. What are we going to do? Some of us are compelled by things like "how far we've come (or how little we've done)" or the "embarrassment" we might experience from those who know about our goal. Others realize how difficult the task is, count up the cost, determine it's not worth it, and head back to comfort.
What would it be like to have all of those options removed? What if you already determined what Robert Frost famously coined, "the only way out is through?" This is what it means to remove the quit option in your fast. This is the power of your why. This is where and how the authority of God comes into play with something that most people would quit.
If God is for you, he is more than the whole world and an empty stomach against you. The work you have to do is remove every distraction, every option from your life that would set itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5) that he's able to get you through this experience, not merely surviving but thriving. Now, we can't send a bulldozer to the KFC around the corner, but you make pre-decisions about the route you'll take during your fast, etc., to remove every option to quit.
Make the decision right now. You will not ring that bell. You will not exercise your quit option in your fast. Even if you stumble in your fast, you will endure to the end, in Jesus' name. Amen!
Add comment
Comments