Fasting Part 1

Hi everyone,
It has been a while since my last post, but I have something that I want to talk about, so I think that I will do that over the next few weeks. So let me give the back story first.

Two weeks ago was the Japanese holiday period know as Golden Week, a time when there happens to be a bunch of holidays close to each other. I did not have to work on Monday or Tuesday, so I went to Kobe from May 3rd to May 6th. In Kobe I attended the JCF Retreat. JCF stands for Jet Christian Fellowship. I had an amazing time of worshiping and learning more about God, meeting new people, and praying. One of my new friends shared a devotional from her church back in America, which was three weeks long, and I decided to do it. The devotional mentioned that it would be a good idea to fast while doing the devotional, and I decided to do that. The devotional detailed several different kinds of fasting, but I wanted to do what I usually do, which is a juice fast. What I would like to do in this series of blog posts is describe what fasting is like, and give some tips for anyone else who is interested in fasting. Before I go any further though, I want to advise anyone who is interested in fasting to look at the excellent guide over on the Cru website by Dr. Bill Bright. Probably most of what I do for fasting, and what I am going to say about fasting is taken from Dr. Bright. Here is the link to the website if you want to check it out. http://www.cru.org/training-and-growth/devotional-life/7-steps-to-fasting/01-personal-guide.htm

I first started fasting when I was in college with 30 hour famine. They had an event on campus, and I decided to try it out. What I usually do is a juice fast which means that I don't eat any food, but I drink juice in addition to water.I feel that fasting is a very positive experience for me and I have done it periodically through the years since then. I have gradually increased the time that I have fasted and the longest that I have gone so far is 10. I am trying for 21 days now, so it is definitely going to be a challenge. So why am I doing it? Well I have a couple of reasons. First off the time that I have been spending with God recently has been very sparse. I have been very busy, and it has been squeezing God time out. The retreat was a great wake up call for me, and I don't want to lose what I gained during that time. Also, as the devotional specifically requests fasting I feel that this is a great opportunity to do that. So that's all for now, but if you want to learn more about fasting please check out my future blog posts.