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By Andy, June 9, 2009 5:40 am

…fasting is the secret key that unlocks heaven’s door and slams shut the gates of hell.

- Jentezen Franklin, “Fasting”

I have never refrained from anything for 40 days before.

I’ve never given up anything during the 40 days of Lent.

Never.

Have I fasted?

Yes…partial fasts, having gone vegetarian for a week, or the occasional workday fast wherein I’ve chosen not to eat during the working day.  I’ve also fasted from blogging as well - typically for a week at a time, and usually as part of a church-wide week of prayer and fasting.

But this time, I sensed the need to go longer…to fast from online social media like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter.  I saw the hold that this technology held on me when I began this fast, and I didn’t like what I saw about myself.  I also found myself drifting a bit in faith, and knew that by giving up online social media I would have more time to focus on my faith and my family.

I have to admit, it was a bit of a struggle the first week not blogging, not reading Facebook, not updating my Twitter feed.  I battled the need to always be in the know, or the need to come up with some really clever tweet or status update.  I did, however, find myself reading assorted resources about social media from both sides of the divide:  from those who believe that online social media is not real community to those who believe that it is a new form of community (I’ll discuss this in a future post).  I spent more time in the Bible and in prayer, tried to be more intentional about the time spent with my wife and kids, in addition to time spent with friends locally, and reading quite a bit more than I had.

So what did I discover?

1)  I was able to hear God’s voice in my life with greater clarity.  That doesn’t mean that I heard this booming voice from above, but rather I could sense an impression on my heart, confirmed typically by others unsuspecting of the answers to prayer that I had been seeking.

2)  One of the “impressions” I got was to spend more time with Hank.  While I have been spending time with him coaching baseball, I hadn’t spent a lot of one-on-one time with him.  I purchased and read “Raising a Modern Day Knight” at the suggestion of a fellow brother, and as a result, I now spend time with him each evening reading a chapter of the Bible (we’re reading Exodus together), discussing each chapter, discipling him in faith on his journey to manhood.

3)  I have spent the better part of the past 40 days reading, re-reading, and praying through Ephesians 5:21-33.  How can I love my wife sacrificially, the way Jesus loves His church?  Too often men stop reading after verse 22 - but the fact is that there are three times as many instructions for husbands (9 verses for husbands, 3 verses for wives) than there are for wives in that passage - so who’s got more work to do in their marriages?  I know I don’t always get this right, but I know that if I am to be the husband that God has called me to, this is how I am to love my wife.  And I want my son to one day love his wife sacrificially.

4)  For several weeks I had been meeting with 2 other men in my church for accountability early on Thursday mornings.  We shared our struggles and challenges, but as we talked, we got the sense that more men needed this kind of relationship.  So what began with 3 of us has now doubled in size (and may continue to grow in number) as men from our church come together every Thursday morning at a local coffeeshop to discuss the prior week’s sermon message and challenge each other to apply those principles in our lives.  The first time that newer faces came to our group, we saw instant transparency - clearly a confirmation that more men needed to be in these kind of relationships to become the men that Jesus has called us to be.

Those are but a few of the things that occurred while I was away - more to share in coming days and weeks.  In the meantime, one final and very cool thing to share - Hank’s baseball team, the team I coach - has advanced in the playoffs.  Big game tonight - winner moves on, losing team goes home!

It’s good to be back.  Thanks for your prayers.

Comments (5)

By Andy, August 30, 2007 7:31 am

One of the books I read during my vacation last week was Donald Miller’s To Own A Dragon. I read this book earlier this year, but I found myself drawn to it again as a couple of us at church were discussing potential future material for our men’s group. I thought this book could be a good read for our group, and in the interest of verifying it and doing research, I re-read it while up in the Sierras.

Roughly a quarter of the way through Miller describes the following about a discussion between him and his friend John MacMurray, who co-authored the book with him:

He told me that when Terri gave birth to Chris, and he held his son in his arms for the first time, it was the closest he had ever been to understanding the love of God. He said that though he had never met this little person, this tiny baby, he felt incredible love for him, as though he would lie down in front of a train if he had to, that he would give up his life without so much as thinking about it, just because this child existed. John set this love beside other relationships, but they didn’t compare. In other relationships, the person he knew had to earn his love. Even with his own father, John learned to love him; and with his wife, they had fallen in love. But it wasn’t that way with his children. His love for them was instantaneous, from the moment of their birth. They had performed nothing to earn his love other than be born. It was the truest, most unconditional love he had known.

As a father, I completely related to this. I was the first person to physically touch my daughter Margaret when she was born. On that day nearly 9 years ago, I went from a father who wasn’t even going to consider cutting the umbilical cord at the doctor’s instruction to one who listened to the doc when he said, “Now Dad, but your left hand here…”

“…okay…”

“Put your other hand…here…”

“…okay…”

“Now catch your baby.”

As she came out, I caught her, confirmed to my wife that she was indeed the girl we were expecting, and handed her to my wife, tears rolling down my face. I felt that instant unconditional love that Miller described above. It was the same with my son two and half years later.

Even more powerful, though, is what John tells Miller about this love:

John said if his love for Chris was the tiniest inkling of how God loved us then he had all the security in the world in dealing with God, because he knew, firsthand, what God’s love toward him felt like, that it was complete.

“I’m just saying, Don, if God is our Father, we’ve got it good. We’ve got it really good.”

And it struck me that if I as a father, love my daughter and son as intensely as I do, and would be willing to lay down my life for them, how amazing is the love that God has for us that He would become human and lay down His Life for ours?

Yeah, we really do have it good.