By Lydia Showalter
My first Wednesday in Costa Rica, we woke up later than normal and my stomach was already growling. It was the first week of our discipleship training and my first day of fasting. I grew up seeing the example of my parents fasting as well as reading about many biblical examples, but I had never fasted.
One of the things I soon came to appreciate about the Vida220 training is that it provides a place where the students can build foundations for spiritual disciplines in community. We prayed together, worshiped together, had silent retreats together, and fasted together. Slowly the spiritual disciplines seeped into my daily life and started to become life-giving habits for me. The Wednesday 24-hour fasts on the Vida220 campus soon became a regular routine. Through these fasts and in my classes, I learned a number of things.
I learned that one aspect of fasting is that it’s a physical representation of a spiritual reality. The Bible is steeped with objects, rituals, and places that remind us of who God is, our dependence on him, and our human brokenness and redemption through him. Psalms 125:2 says, “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”
I felt myself looking at God, God looking at me, and feeling deep joy in his presence.
Whenever I catch a glimpse of the mountains peeking out between buildings, it reminds me of God’s faithfulness and presence with his people. Fasting, in the same representative way, can be a reminder of our dependence on and spiritual hunger for God and God’s word. I also learned that fasting is inextricably linked with prayer from the examples of the Early Church in Acts.
Even with all this information, I still felt like there was a disconnect between head and heart, between knowledge and true understanding. It wasn’t until I did a 72-hour fast that I began to truly understand what fasting meant. I woke up the second day and prayed to God for patience and perseverance.
I realized how much I had been relying on my own strength to get through the Wednesday fasts. I was also struck by a story that our teacher told about a priest who asked an old man what he did when he sat in the church pew every morning. The old man replied, “I look at Him, He looks at me, and we are happy.”
The next morning during quiet time, I went out to my usual spot at the edge of a field. I lay on the logs, watching the clouds float by, and for the first time in those three months, I spent time truly abiding with Jesus. I felt myself looking at God, God looking at me, and feeling deep joy in his presence.
Fasting along with prayer does the mysterious work of drawing us close to God so that our desires and perspectives align with his. I realized that all of my doing needs to flow from that place of abiding and spending time talking with him, praying, with words or without.
Lydia Showalter serves with Vida220. She finished her outreach as an intern with Viva Youth in Bogotá,
Colombia, and is now back in Costa Rica at the base.