Fasting from Guilt

I’ve been doing an incredible Bible study with a group of women I really cherish. It’s been a slow, intentional study, giving us each a chance to really take our time exploring the spiritual disciplines. We move through two disciplines a month, which for some disciplines feels like an eternity.

Going into fasting, I was so conflicted. I can’t fast from food with my health issues because I get woozy and faint without food every couple of hours right now. My first thought was that I had to fast from social media then, but I knew that was a bad choice for me. Most days, my ONLY human interaction all day is on social media. It’s the only conversation I have, the only community I can access…and I am SO LONELY. Plus, in my state of isolation, my battle is to fight the urge to further isolate, to keep myself from disappearing completely. I know that if I shut down social media it’ll become a way for me to shut down completely and not reach out at all. To anyone.

So I prayed about it. I talked to my husband, and he prayed about it. He asked me what the idea of fasting is, how it’s used. I explained that you deprive yourself of something, and every time the urge or craving comes up you instead turn to God and not the thing, in order to have your needs met by Him. Then my husband said, drawing back on our conversation moments before about how guilty I was feeling, “Why not fast from guilt?”

So I tried it out for a couple of days. And it’s insane. When I start to feel guilt come up, instead of dwelling there and swimming in it and getting swallowed by it…I take it to God. Immediately. I present it before His throne, and He has helped me examine it, each and every time. He asks me very simply, is this guilt a product of your sin? Is this guilt created by your own actual wrong-doing? Is it showing you somewhere you need to repent? And so far, every single time, my answer has been NO. It totally releases the grip it has on me. Because God has used this to show me that guilt is an addiction, too, one that reinforces the lie that I’m not enough. He’s shown me that it’s false guilt. Manufactured by a lifetime of abuse. And let me tell you, with my illness taking over and the holidays coming up, my enemy is POURING ON the guilt trips and this has miraculously released me from that grip! Normally this time of year I am sick over it, totally wracked with guilt because I’m not meeting others’ (unrealistic) demands on me. God is showing me that my feeling of guilt is most often a fear of disapproval, and that the accuser (Satan) is behind the attacks of guilt I feel — NOT the fact that I’ve done something truly wrong and need to repent. HUGE DIFFERENCE.

xo,