Fast and Pray

I detached from Facebook for the week.  Hence the updating of this blog.  I substituted one time waster for another.  I was doing great at the beginning of the week.  Reading the Bible a lot.  I felt better about everything.  

"Godliness with contentment is great gain."  That is a verse I am trying to ingest, meditate on and then live out.  It's so small a verse yet so huge a concept. 

I have for some time felt that God accidentally made me in the wrong century.  I mean not really since I trust God not to make such huge mistakes (tiny ones, maybe).  So since I trust his timing I would often wonder why I was put here and now? I mean, I guess that is the huge question we are all wrestling with right?  Here is what I am getting to: deep down in my bones I want to live in a one room cabin with no electricity and spend most of my day farming.  I think I would have been really great at living in the year, oh, 1902.  

I read Cold Mountain recently, and it is about these two ladies who run this farm in the 1860s in the mountains of North Carolina.  Yes, it was difficult.  Yes, it was exhausting.  But goodness, to work with my hands like that; to plow fields and shuck corn and raise goats.  I also just started See You in a Hundred Years.  A book about a husband and wife who leave New York City to move into a farm in Virginia and live like it was there 100 years ago.  I've only read the first two pages.  I'll update about it as I get more into it.


Tonight, I built a bonfire in my backyard. (It was my second solo bonfire success!)  I wanted to make squash and brats.  So I collected the wood, got the fire going, chopped the vegetables, skewered the meat and got to cooking.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  And I feel accomplished, though it was such a small thing.  

All of this is to say that I want a simple life. I want a simplicity that starts within and then manifests itself in my actions and behaviors and lifestyle.  


I love to fast.  Not while I'm in the middle of one. But before and after.  In the middle it sucks.  I hate not eating what I want when I want.  So fasting is the most immediate way to practice self-discipline and to crucify my flesh.  


I did an extended fast recently.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be... because I did it with other believers.  It was amazing.  I didn't have any divine revelations but everything was put into perspective.  I learned that I am capable of doing an extended fast.  I hope to do another one soon.  Maybe 7 days.  I feel listless and directionless.  I want to fast and pray until I hear God's voice in my life.  Until I feel where his Spirit is leading. Until I know what step to take next.  


"Taste and see that the Lord is good."  I don't think I've gotten a good taste in a while. I feel thirsty for his Spirit.  


"Seek him and you will find him when you seek him with all your heart."