| Please, not that self-denial! |
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On May 1, 1998, I entered a seven-year fast.
For six-and-a-half years, I had no idea when the fast would end. For almost that long, I had no idea its purpose. Yet from the start, I knew the nature of the self-denial God was requiring. I did not have to quit eating for seven years, though that might have been easier. Some days I did indeed fast from food. But the entire seven years, I had to lay down almost every desire of my heart.
Our family had to move to a place where we knew no one, leaving behind relationships that had taken years to build and starting new ones from scratch. I had to put on panty-hose and go to work in an office building every weekday, doing work that exhausted, rather than energized, me. No 9-to-5 job, the grueling schedule kept me away many nights and weekends.
I hadn't worked outside the home since before our girls were born. I longed to remain a stay-at-home mom until both girls left the nest. I had to kiss that desire good-bye. My new work schedule continued until the month our younger daughter graduated high school.
As the fast began, our daughters entered eighth and sixth grades in a private school that lay 25 miles across the city from our house, 16 miles from my office. My husband traveled almost every week with his job. Strangers to the school, the city, the rush hour traffic, the local customs and the people, we dealt daily with logistics ranging from decidedly high-stress to utterly impossible.
Throughout the fast, I had to lay aside my primary gifts and callings. I wanted to exercise my gifts in that setting. I repeatedly offered, repeatedly tried, to use my gifts in ways that significantly benefited both my employer and the people we served. But the vast bulk of the time, the system into which I had stepped kept me very, very busy doing everything except what could have had the greatest impact.
Several popular studies purport to help Christians find their niche in ministry. The studies tell you: "Look at your talents, your spiritual gifts, your expertise, your experiences, your desires. Where all those intersect, viola! That's where you should plug into ministry."
I started one of those studies. I didn't finish it. One weekend, sitting on my bed attempting to complete the day's assignment, I threw the workbook across the room.
God had called me where nothing fit - and I didn't know why.
Perhaps hardest of all, I had to live with perennial disrespect. From the beginning, I was treated with dishonor, sometimes flagrantly, often subtly. At first, it had nothing to do with me personally. People who drew their significance from the system used dishonor as a means to keep me in my place.
In the end, subtlety went out the window. Flagrant abuse erupted and continued with increasing intensity for 14 months. It had everything to do with me personally. The system in which I served demands loyalty. People committed to the system grew determined to force me swear allegiance to it. Though I consistently did everything possible to honor those people, they became furious when I also consistently chose to obey the Lord Jesus at all costs.
A few weeks before I completed the fast, a kind man who worked in another area of the building stepped into my office. I had not talked with him about what I was experiencing. I had no idea he was aware what I was experiencing. As he stood looking at me, he began to cry. "No one should be treated like you've been treated," he said. Then, he turned and left the room.
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| Can I leave now? |
I'd love to tell you I handled these years well. Initially, I did not.
When God first brought the Choice before me, I got angry. I refused even to consider the assignment being offered until my husband said, "Don't you think we should ask God what he wants?" Grudgingly, I asked God. When he told me to accept the assignment, I did - but I went, kicking and screaming.
A year later, I grew angry again. Pointing my finger in God's face, I asked, "Just where is the peace and joy that obedience is supposed to bring?" My anger became evident to others.
One day, my boss confronted me about it. I left his office to spend an hour on my face, weeping before the Lord. Finally, I told the Lord, "I'm with you. I'm following you, even if peace and joy never show up."
As months turned to years, I can't tell you how many tears I shed - on the way to work, in the stalls in the women's restroom, at home in the wee hours of the night. I can't tell you how often I asked God, "Did I miss you?" "Can I leave now?" I can't express how very silent he remained.
With all my heart, I sought to honor the Lord in that place, to do with excellence what he set before me to do. I watched our marriage and our daughters grow in the Lord. I laughed with coworkers. I saw God move in the lives of people I was serving.
Yet the fast continued.
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| You shall humble your soul |
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The Old Testament law requires only one 24-hour fast, from sunset to sunset on the Day of Atonement. The three passages in Leviticus and Numbers that describe the day don't even contain the word "fast." Rather, repeatedly, they say, "you shall humble your souls" (see Lev. 16:29-32; 23:26-32; Num. 29:7 NASU).
The Hebrew word translated humble in those verses means "to afflict, to oppress, to humble, to force." It's the same word the psalmist uses in Psalm 119:67, 71 (italics mine):
- "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word."
- "It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees."
Before my seven-year fast began, I would have told you I knew God's Word and was seeking to obey it. Now, I realize: I was standing in the entryway of a palace with countless rooms. Indeed, I was trying to camp in the entryway. But God had room after room to show me, each filled with new and different treasures. One key would open many doors.
During those years of affliction, I was learning to accept and use the key. I was learning to humble my soul.
Only recently have I begun to grasp how my soul and my spirit work. The deepest part of me, my spirit, is in hot pursuit of God - deeply loving him; accurately hearing him; eagerly desiring to know him, honor him, follow him.
My soul wants to do the same thing. Yet, on its own, my soul cannot discern or choose the right way. However, when my soul is subject to my spirit and my spirit is filled with the Spirit of God, I willingly, joyfully, make right choices.
Ah, but my soul loves to play the usurper. Like a spoiled child, it wants to be in charge. It thinks it knows best. It assures me it can discern accurately and choose wisely. It boasts that it is protecting my own best interests when in fact it is sabotaging me.
Again and again, my soul will "figure out" a situation and instruct my body to act on its wishes, all the while telling my spirit to sit down and shut up.
Until I humble my soul. |
| Act on your spirit's yes |
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Each year on the Day of Atonement, God commanded his people to humble their souls. Twice in the New Testament, God commands, "Humble yourselves" (James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6).
How long have I struggled to understand what that means! How often, when trying to implement it, have I instead invited and agreed with disrespect.
BUT GOD saw my constricted spirit, crying out to honor him. He saw my confused soul, sabotaging the very things it wanted to do. The Lord put me in a position where obeying him required choosing to act on my spirit's yes when my soul was screaming NO. Continued obedience required clinging to God, spirit to Spirit - and trusting that even when my grip failed, he was holding me - while my afflicted soul used every means in its power to get its way, including mental reasonings, emotional pleadings, tears and fits.
Every time I chose to side with my spirit, I grew stronger in spirit - and humbled my soul a little more. |
| Did it get easier? |
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So as the fast progressed, did it get easier? Yes - and no. It became easier to walk by the Spirit as my spirit gained more practice leading soul and body, and my soul - finally acknowledging that my spirit was indeed hearing from God's Spirit - quit demanding that it understand or feel good.
But the affliction increased exponentially.
The final year-and-a-half was the most difficult season of my life; the last 14 months - from February 2004 through April 2005 - were excruciating. At one point, I sobbed, "Lord, if it hurts this much to follow you, who in the world will do it?"
He answered, "You are."
With wonder, I whispered, "Yes." The deepest part of me, the "person within," yearned to know, to honor, to reflect the LORD. But now, my soul and body weren't thwarting my spirit's every attempt. When every obedience resulted in yet another brutal, full-frontal attack against me, all of me kept crying, "Lord, your name be honored! Your kingdom come!"
The Lord answered my cries. Day by day, he delivered me from bitterness, from anger, from rebellion, from unforgiveness, from threatening to quit, from wanting to lie down and die. Did my soul try to indulge some of those things? Yes. But renouncing each sinful response, I embraced the opposite.
During that time, God began speaking again. He began speaking a lot. He showed me that my seven-year fast was itself an intercessory act. He began revealing the nature and extent of that intercession.
By his power at work within me, I was able to walk through hellish circumstances day after day, then go home and joke and laugh with my family. I was able to pray for, to forgive and to bless those who were despitefully using me. I was able to finish the fast. |
| I will choose when you leave |
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When the Lord told me the completion date, it still lay four months away. God instructed me to go in private to the people in authority over me, to let them know when I would be leaving.
One of those people had announced at a public meeting just the month before, "I can fire Deborah any time I want." His provocation for making such a remark? I had raised my hand and asked permission to correct an erroneous statement he had made about my work.
Now, I said, "Lord, when I tell these guys I'm planning to leave, they'll very likely say, 'Just pack your things and go.'" The Lord answered, "I decided when you came and I will choose when you leave."
I said, "Lord, I have no strength to go any further. I'm trusting you to enable me to finish and to finish in a way that honors you." |
| Oh, Ezekiel! |
Only after I had privately announced my intended date of resignation to my superiors did I realize: To finish on that date meant completing exactly seven years.
One prayer partner who knew my intentions said, "From now on, don't make any waves. They know you're leaving, and you can coast."
But God kept requiring obediences that infuriated people who had authority to terminate me. In short, I had to make several private appeals in behalf of the people I served, pleading for leaders to turn from choices that wound, divide and demean the very people we were supposed to help.
In mid-March 2005, our family took a Spring Break trip to Colorado. The whole week, I dreaded returning. I didn't know how I could take another step, yet six weeks of affliction still lay before me. I was terrified of messing up in that last six weeks, of tripping and falling just before the finish line.
After traveling home, I woke up physically sick on the Monday I was supposed to return to work. Sitting up in bed, I opened my Bible to the book where I had been reading, that lovely devotional book of Ezekiel.
I read God's commands to the prophet in Ezekiel 4:4-8.
"As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it. For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year. Then you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and prophesy against it. Now behold, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege" (NASU).
"Oh, Ezekiel!" I thought. "How did you do it? How did you lie on one side without moving for 390 days? That's more than a year! How did you ever get up, turn over and lie 40 days more? That's six weeks!"
Then, I realized: I had borne an unbearable siege for more than a year. Now, I had six weeks to go. Knowing the exact date when all hell had broken loose, I pulled out a calendar and began counting.
Astonished, I discovered the exact number of days from February 17, 2004, until the last day I worked before our Spring Break trip: 390. I discovered the exact number of days remaining to finish the fast: 40. |
| It is finished |
On April 30, 2005, I completed a seven-year fast.
Generally when you enter a fast, you know what you're abstaining from, for how long and why. But when God leads you into a time of extreme self-denial and you have no clue as to length or purpose, choose to go forward, step by step, exercising your Spirit-led spirit. In so doing, you will humble your soul.
That doesn't mean your soul loses. Oh, no. All of you wins. The further you go, the more your spirit, soul and body walk together in step with God's Spirit. Astounded by your own perseverance, you do not abort the fast. Oh, no.
Psalm 12:6-7 declares, "The words of the LORD are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times. You, O LORD, will keep them" (NASU).
Hear the seven-times-refined words of the LORD: "Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?" (Isa. 58:6 NKJV)
The LORD keeps his words. He WILL free people from yokes, bonds, burdens - from enslaving and being enslaved - when you finish the fast he has chosen.
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society®. All rights reserved worldwide.Also quoted: New American Standard Updated (NASU) and New King James Version (NKJV). | |
Deborah P. Brunt
