Jesus Is the Prize
Have you ever sought the Lord with your whole heart only to hear the spiritual equivalent of crickets chirping? Who hasn’t? We know God often speaks in a still, small voice (1 Kings 11:19), but sometimes it seems he isn’t speaking at all, at least not in the ways we expect him to.
That’s the maddening place I found myself in days before my fortieth birthday. As the sun began to sink low on the decade of my thirties, an alarming urgency set in. If I am fortunate enough to live to an average age, forty is a halfway mark—a sobering thought when there is still so much work left to do. So I set aside forty days to fast and pray, to recommit my life to Jesus, and to ask him to use me more in the second half of my life than he had in the first.
I expected a recommissioning. I expected an exciting new assignment. What I got was an intensive on my sin and the painful (but fruitful!) opportunity to re-surrender my whole self to Christ.
Fasting Is Feasting
Yes, I really fasted for forty days. (Liquids only if you’re curious). No, I don’t have some super-spiritual ability you don’t. I simply saw Jesus’s example of this in Scripture and decided that if he did it, I want to do it too.
Fasting is a concept that’s all over our Bibles. Moses fasted. So did Daniel. And Paul. And the disciples. Jesus talked about fasting as if everyone did it, “And when you fast . . .” (Matt. 6:16, emphasis mine). Yet, for many Christians, fasting is a gift left unwrapped.
In many ways, fasting is feasting. In turning down the volume on our flesh, which is always clamoring to be fled, we have an opportunity to turn up the volume on the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It’s not a formula, and it’s not a diet. It’s a discipline, like so many other parts of the Christian life. It’s also not a means to twist God’s arm. I cannot manipulate him into responding the way I want him to, when I want him to, simply by skipping a few meals. I learned this lesson the hard way as I fasted before my birthday. God used those forty days to point out many areas of sin in my life that I was blind to. It seemed that every time I repented, something else was exposed. The whole thing left me deeply humbled and wondering if I should be serving in ministry at all. But there was a sweetness to it, too. In denying my physical hunger, I was agreeing with God that I have a hunger that is much more urgent:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matt. 5:6)
My milestone birthday came and went. I blew out those forty candles and wondered what God had in store for me next. That’s when the silence seemed to settle in. I couldn’t help but wonder if God’s plan for me in middle age was to warm the proverbial bench.
Lost Babies and Found Purpose
Then came the day my youngest son, Ezra temporarily went missing. (Don’t hold your breath; this story has a happy ending.) For minutes that felt like an eternity, we searched the yard for our chubby-faced baby boy.
“Ezra!” we yelled.
“Ezra, where are you?”
“EZRA, ANSWER MOMMY!”
Then I spotted him, just a dot on the horizon. At the ripe old age of one, Ezra had decided, it seems, to leave home. As I squinted through worried eyes, I could see him in a field near our house, happily pushing his red tricycle.
What he seemed to be oblivious to, I was acutely aware of. My boy was in danger. A busy road separated him from me. At any moment a car could crest a hill and . . . (I didn’t want to think about the and). So, I started to run to my boy, as fast as I could. Without thinking, I flung off my sandals so I could run to him faster. Everything that could possibly slow me down was cast aside so that I could run fast in my singular mission to protect my son. I got to him shoeless and panting, but he was fine. No small miracle.
Later that evening, after I’d tucked that cherub into his bed, I sat downstairs with my Bible open. Tears of gratitude poured down my face and, unexpectedly, in that still, small voice I recognize as my Shepherd’s, my birthday fast came into clearer focus.
God wasn’t punishing me as he exposed my sin—he was pruning me. The laps he has set before me for the second half of my life will require tenacity and sticktoitiveness, warranting the need to throw off everything that might slow me down.
Though his message didn’t come when and how I thought it would, I heard him loud and clear. His willingness to cut away anything and everything not of him was proof that he was not done with me. The marathon of faith demands that I “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).
Where are you in the race? Have you just heard the starting pistol fire, a new follower of Jesus trying to find your stride? Are you in the middle of the pack, with as many years of devotion to Christ behind you as you hope are ahead? Or perhaps the finish line is in sight, more and more you long to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:23). Wherever you imagine yourself, whatever the Lord has called you to cast off, let me assure you it is worth it. Now, several years after that experience, I can look back with such gratitude. God didn’t speak like I expected him to. Through his Word and by his Spirit, he didn’t say what I wanted to hear. But God was speaking. God is always speaking. His message for you today is clear: Jesus is the prize. Keep running hard after him.
is a writer and teacher passionately committed to getting women of all ages to the deep well of God’s Word. She is the author of more than a dozen books and Bible studies, including Connected, 7 Feasts, and Fasting & Feasting. Erin serves as the content director for Revive Our Hearts and hosts the Women of the Bible podcast and Grounded videocast. Hear her teach on The Deep Well with Erin Davis podcast. When she’s not writing, you can find Erin chasing chickens and children on her small farm in the Midwest.
Photograph © Nadia Dulina, used with permission
