Category: Series: ‘Hard’ truth

[This blog post is part of a series called ‘Hard’ truth]

This series has turned out a little longer than I anticipated.  This is it though.  I’m drawing the line.  These are the last couple of ‘hard’ truths I’m going to share:

Christians should be a hungry people.  In June I was thinking about fasting for my dad’s salvation but I was about to go on a mission trip for two weeks, and there were a ton of reasons it wasn’t convenient timing. Thankfully a friend encouraged me to follow the leading of Scripture and the Spirit and let fasting be the exclamation point to my prayers.  If I would have waited I would have missed the opportunity to intercede for my dad in that way.

Piper describes fasting as a demonstration of our desperate need for God.  He points out that we don’t see a ton of fasting in the American church because we aren’t really desperate for much.

There aren’t a lot of things I want enough that I’d be willing to skip a meal.  That makes me sad.  Mainly because there’s one thing I want to want desperately – and that’s the return of Christ.  One thing I learned this summer is that fasting increases my desire as much as it demonstrates my desires.  Even when my heart can’t catch up, my soul’s desires can be demonstrated through my physical hunger, and the hunger teaches my heart holy dissatisfaction.

Singleness is good.

[This blog post is part of a series called ‘Hard’ truth]

I’m so desperately glad that I knew the truths I’ve laid out in the past several posts before ‘hard’ hit.  Those thoughts were like anchors to my soul, given by the grace of God through the stream of His Word.

Maybe that’s the thing I’m most thankful for in all this.  I’m thankful that when ‘hard’ came I had a firm foundation in Him through the Bible.

I became a Christian later in life and I didn’t know anything about the Bible.  I remember getting my first one.  I remember staying up late with my friend, both of us pouring over Psalms because we’d never read anything that stirred our hearts in that way.

I didn’t know what it meant to trust the Bible though. I  didn’t know why it mattered that the Scripture was authoritative.  I didn’t understand that it wasn’t just a neat book; it was the living and  breathing voice of God in my life.

When I learned that concept, I felt obligated.  Opening the Bible became duty.  Most of the time it just seemed boring and emotionless.  The only way I could fix that was by reading the parts that I loved over and over and skipping all the other stuff.