40 Day Fast Day Twenty-Three: Hungry for God

That blindfolded horse makes me think it met its end at a firing squad.

I took a day with the Lord today. It was, to be honest, often interrupted and didn't really translate to a full day spent focused on God. I got a couple phone calls from overseas and basically got distracted by my job. I didn't spend much time in prayer, though I did take a trip down to Western Seminary to get a big pile of books on fasting from the library.

While I was sitting out on the Western Seminary lawn I saw my dear friend Callie Goodman. I haven't seen her much lately, but it was really great to run into her. She asked why I had so many fasting books and I told her that I was actually in the middle of a longer fast and she said "PRAISE JESUS!" I thought that was a funny response. I laughed and asked her why she was having such a strong response, and she said that just that day in her class they'd been talking about how Protestants don't really fast much. Her classmates couldn't come up with any examples among their friends or at their churches of people who fast (or at least, people they were aware of who fasted). We had a long chat after that, and it was a really peaceful, enjoyable time, and felt like a blessing from God that I had run into her.

Awww, look at that tiny little man! So cute!

Today, I was struck by this fact… if I’m really “hungry” for God, if I’m desperate to be with him and thinking about it constantly in the same way that I’m thinking about food all the time… why did it take me 23 days to set aside even a few hours of time with him? My "day with the Lord" worked out to 5 hours, cut short by a variety of things, and less time than I’ve spent at the grocery store and cooking meals and then eating them at plenty of other times. I've spent more time than that watching television plenty of times in my life. I love to say God is the most important person in my life, that he's the biggest priority, but my life sure doesn't show it. Not in my time management, not in my choices in how to spend my free time, not in anything. When we sing songs in church that say "I'm desperate for you" or "You're all that I want" and I sing the words, I am full of it. I'm not desperate for him. He's not all that I want. Not today. I'm not hungry for God. If I wrote a book about myself it would have to be titled "Hungry for God and Cheeseburgers." It's a sobering realization.

I think I should try a do-over tomorrow.