Finishing Your Fast Well

Finish well.

I can’t tell you how many times I ended a fast gorging at a barbecue restaurant, only to be miserable a few hours later. And strangely dull in the days to follow as I went back to “life as usual.” So foolish. If you have been fasting, I dare you to consider finishing well.

Start with the physical: come off the fast slowly. As a general rule, raw fruits and vegetables are the way go for the first day or so. Specifically, here’s where I’ll be going in the next couple days:

  • Apples, grapes, watermelon or other easily digestible fruit with a high water content.
  • Vegetable soup. Not the canned stuff, and not creamed, it’s easy on the stomach and wonderful.
  • Eggs. Time to get some protein back in the system.
  • Sweet potatoes are supposed to be another winner. Not my favorite but I’m considering it.

But then embrace the spiritual parallel. In the same way you can physically digress by breaking a fast with all the wrong foods, you can emotionally and spiritually digress by re-engaging in a “life as usual” lifestyle. Don’t do it!

I believe the days right after a fast are as deeply important as the time you spent on the fast itself. Did you make some gains in the area of Scripture intake? Maintain the gain. Did you make progress in the area of prayer? Maintain the gain. Did you discover a heightened focus by scaling back on entertainment and social media? Maintain the gain. Did lust lose a little grip on you? Maintain the gain. This is not to say that you never watch a movie again, but it is to say you consider the possibility of a life other than “life as usual.”

Imagine a life of self-control. There’s a fun word.

Don’t let your fast end without some serious chewing on this potent concept. Consider this wild passage:

Make every effort to add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge SELF-CONTROL, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. If these things are yours and abound you won’t be unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord. (2 Peter 1:5-8)

I see so many believers come to God by faith and immediately embrace some degree of virtue. I’ve talked to singles who started believing Jesus and immediately made the decision to stop sleeping together. It’s virtuous. Then they begin to get into the Scriptures and learn the ways of God. They add knowledge. But then I’ll talk to the same guy who can’t shake porn. I have no self-control, he says.  Exactly. It’s time for more spiritual math. Add to your knowledge self-control.

Few disciplines work self-control into a soul like fasting.

If.

If you finish well.

So finish well.

Prepare your heart for the day after. The week after. Maybe you won’t be fasting physical nourishment. But you can embrace the fasting lifestyle. You can fast self-reliance, and boasting, and wasting your life. You really can choose to not live by bread alone … but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Make these next couple days as holy as the last few days.

After all, this isn’t about you anyway. Our great breakthroughs are not the result of how hard we fast and pray and work; we have victory because our King spent 40 days in a desert where He did the ultimate fast, that led to the ultimate life, that took Him to the ultimate death where He fasted life itself. And then He said, It is finished.

With your eyes fixed on Him, go finish well.

 

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