My money fast begins this coming Sunday and lasts 21 days until Easter. This was not such a good week of preparation for me, maybe because I thought of all the things I would be trying to refrain from buying beginning next week and impulsively bought some of them. Ughh.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners is doing a food fast this Lent in sympathy with the vulnerable who would be negatively affected by proposed U.S. budget cuts. Read about it here.
In Sojourner's weekly electronic SoJo Mail, he includes a number of quotes about fasting from Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth.
Here are some amended quotes he mentions (I have changed the word "food" to "spending" and made some other changes in order to apply the quotes to our money fast):
"Fasting must forever center on God. … If our fasting is not unto God we have failed" (54, 55).
"More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us" (55).
"We cover up whatever is inside us with spending and other good things, but in fasting these things surface" (55).
"Fasting reminds us that we are sustained 'by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God' (Matt. 4.4). Spending does not sustain us, God sustains us" (55).
"Fasting helps us keep our balance in life. How easily we begin to allow nonessentials to take precedence in our lives. How quickly we crave things we do not need until we are enslaved by them" (56).
"This is not excessive asceticism; it is discipline and discipline brings freedom" (56).
"In many ways the stomach [our appetites] is like a spoiled child, and a spoiled child does not need indulgence, but needs discipline. … You are to be the master of your stomach [appetites], not its slave" (57).
You can sign up for Sojourner's SoJo Mail here.
Tomorrow, another guest blog from Alicia! Watch for it.
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