Every year, our church does a fast in January. I love that they perfectly time it to be done in time for the Super Bowl (because chips/queso/wings aren’t on the Daniel fast the last time I checked.)

Ever year, I do the fast with my church. This year was no different.

Not everyone does the same thing but just whatever they feel led to do. So, I figured out my fast and felt good about it…until the 21 days started.

I guess it isn’t a fast if you don’t feel like you are depriving yourself in some way, which I did. But I soon realized, that’s all I was doing.

If it’s even possible, I was just going through the motions of a fast.

You might be thinking..but you gave up stuff! Yes, I did. But when I found myself consumed by WHAT I was giving up more than what I was giving it up FOR, I knew I was missing the point.

God began to show me that after a lot of years of doing life, that had happened in other areas too.

As a wife, a supervisor at work, a leader in ministry…
As a daughter, as a friend…

I was doing what I was suppose to do but had lost some of the heart behind it.

Revelation 2:3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

It seems like the church in Ephesus was going through the motions a bit too. They were doing what they were suppose to but had lost the why behind the what.

It is easy to get into a rut when you have been doing the same thing for a while.

Being on a fast becomes more about the food with less focus on the prayer.  It used to feel like breakthrough was on its way but this time, it just felt like a break from things I didn’t really want a break from.

Being a wife becomes more about doing chores at the house than a companion to our husbands.  After years of waiting for the right guy, if you could have told me that one day I would come home after work and be engaged more with my phone than my husband, I would have said no way…but it has happened.

Being a leader becomes more about carrying the responsibility and not serving the people we are leading.  What I once embraced as a God-given assignment began to feel like a burden…because I was operating in my own strength instead of His.

If it’s my 10th time or my 100th,  in every part of my life, I don’t want to just go through the motions.  I want to do the right “what” with the right “why”.

2 Corinthians 8:11 Now finish the work, so that you may complete it just as eagerly as you began…

~Anu

*Photo by Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash