L. Kathleen Cline

  I have been mulling over the part fasting should be playing in the age of grace. For two weeks, I have questioned my friends about why they fast. Most of my friends said the same thing: to get close to God or hear God. My friends are kind and allow me to challenge their thought processes or debate them concerning their answers. Yesterday at church, God finally brought a complete response to me about fasting. Imagine yourself on a date or having an intimate dinner with someone, and they took out their phone and started scrolling. What if you were talking to a friend and they walked away from you to do something else? How would you feel if someone you loved screened their calls and refused to pick up the phone to talk with you? All three of those scenarios are how we treat God. God looks at the relationship with His people as a marriage. There is not one marriage that can survive without intimacy or that special closeness withheld for only one. When we read verses

  Was fasting a foretelling of repentance and dying to self? Everything in the Old Testament Jewish faith was the "first to establish the second," meaning the religious acts were a foretelling to set up the death and resurrection of Christ. The practice of circumcision is not a sacred act anymore, nor is sacrifice. Why? Because in the New Covenant through Jesus, circumcision is now of the heart and not the flesh. The book of Romans reminds us that every religious act of the flesh has been replaced by living under grace through faith. So why are we continuing the practice of fasting for repentance or sorrow? Is that not an act of flesh? Do we not believe that if we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us? Why do you have to starve yourself to get God to move or hear Him? Don't we believe that He has heard us if we ask according to His will? Do you think God is motivated more by our acts of humility or our acts of faith? Does He not kn