This morning started the process of breaking my fast. I had a couple boiled eggs, toast, and a small glass of apple juice. You would have thought I was in heaven if you would have looked on my face. The different flavors and textures were definitely something my taste buds were longing for. The only damper on my morning breakfast was the fact that I really felt like I was cheating the entire time I was eating. It’s crazy to think that normal food wasn’t the norm for the last month. I definitely am looking forward to not having to religiously pack my lunch everywhere I go and almost having to plan my day out according to my eating schedule.

Throughout this fast I have been very sensitive to it being called a fast, mainly because I started it off in need of losing a few pounds and didn’t want the focus of this fast to be on my weight. One of the ways I tried to keep the focus off of my weight was to not weigh myself throughout the fast. I’m not sure if this helped or not. It did give me the opportunity to talk about the purpose of my fast every time someone asked me how much weight I’ve lost. I weighed myself in this morning and I lost a total of 27 pounds in the last 30 days. That just goes to show how lacking this diet is that the refugees in Darfur are receiving. My prayer is that I can now try to use the amount of weight I lost to try and increase the awareness even more.

Throughout this fast I have taken every opportunity to talk to people about what is happening in Darfur. I have been on the lookout for opportunities in conversations to bring up the subject and help those around me come to a better understanding of the situation in Darfur. This also reminds me of Acts 17 when Paul preaches in Athens.

“Then they took him to the high council of the city. “Come and tell us about this new teaching,” they said. “You are saying some rather strange things, and we want to know what it’s all about.” (It should be explained that all the Athenians as well as the foreigners in Athens seemed to spend all their time discussing the latest ideas.)

So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.

“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.

“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.

“God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”

Every time I read this passage I am reminded of how the early apostles were on the lookout for every opportunity to tell people about what Christ had done in their lives and could do in the lives of others. They were always ready to share the gospel with anyone even if they might get put in prison for it. I think this is something we have lost in Christianity today. Our culture has deemed it inappropriate to talk about religion and politics at work or in public because of the controversy it may rise and we Christians are following suit. We worry about sharing the gospel with people because we don’t want to offend them or get in an argument.

If your reading this and you aren’t a Christian I would love to talk to you more about what Christianity is and means to me and how God has changed my life in major ways. Feel free to send me an email

If you are a Christian I would challenge you to start being on the lookout for any opportunity you may get to talk about how God has impacted you life. You never know how God may use you to impact the life of someone else. Remember what Peter says in 3:15:

“And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.”

On Sunday I was able to experience something that was really cool. It was communion! I have been a Christian for many years and have had communion many different times and it is always a very meaningful activity for me but I have never done communion while on a 30 day fast. It was incredible. It is hard for me to really explain what was going through my mind as the bread and juice were dispersed. It wasn’t the fact that I was able to eat/drink something new but it was the nourishing aspect of communion. In the Christian Reformed Church we believe that communion is not only a sign and a symbol of what Christ did for us on the cross but it is also something that nourishes our souls. That aspect of it never really hit home with me until Sunday because I have never been so under nourished physically before. This time as I took the bread and the cup I could feel it giving my body nourishment that was much needed. I think we tend to forget how “under-nourished” our souls are and therefore take advantage of the nourishing qualities of the Lord’s Supper.

When we finally realize how much help we need and that we can’t do it on our own, that is when we will begin to truly love God for who He is. He is not only the powerful God who created the entire universe but He is also the God who cares so much for us that He sent His son to die so that we can spend eternity with Him. It is impossible for us to do enough good on our own to get to heaven. We would have to live a completely perfect life! I don’t know about you but I mess up all the time, and that is how I know that I need God’s help. I hope everyone reading this will begin to understand who God is and how much He cares for us. He is offering us this free gift of salvation and all we have to do is realize that we can’t do it on our own, and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, then put your true faith in Him and let him transform your life.  If you are willing to do just that, you will be able to spend eternity in Heaven with the God who made the universe and the God who loves you more than you will ever know.

Relying on God’s strength had been something I have always struggled with throughout my Christian life. I not only grew up on a farm where you were expected to put in a hard days work but I have always had the belief that I could do anything as long as I put my mind to it and work hard. These are very good mentalities and have helped me be successful in life, but they both begin to take us away from a main point in our lives. When we start thinking that the only reason we accomplish anything is because we worked hard, we begin to put God on the back burner because we think we’ve got life under control. Eventually we will end up a mess and wondering how we got to where we are. When we finally begin to put the two ideas together we will begin to do more than we can ever imagine. We need to come to the point in our lives when we realize that we can’t do it on our own, that God is bigger, has better plans that we do, and we wants the best for us. When we begin to get it and start living life this way, we will be surprised daily at how God is working in and through our lives.

Ephesians 2:10

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago”

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

“Even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said,“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The whole weight part for those around me has really drawn the attention off of why I am doing this to the fact that I am losing weight. I started this off overweight and now have trimmed up quite a bit and that is the first thing I hear from everyone. I try to direct the conversations back to why I’m doing this but it usually ends going back to how much weight I’ve lost. I guess it shows how much value we put on image in our culture. Just to spite this type of mentality I still have not weighed myself because I am trying to make sure that the purpose behind this is holding pure. Some of the people around me know that if they call what I am doing a “diet” I have a few words with them very quickly to explain what and why I am doing this.

One of the things I have been talking about most lately is how much I have struggled with the lack of variety and blandness of my food. Even though I have realized how much this has effected my body and how unhealthy this has been, the variety has been the biggest struggle. It kinda hit me the other day that I think the reason that is my biggest struggle is because I started this fast overweight and I had a lot excess stored up for my body to feed on. I had been eating more than I should have for a long time before this and now have changed it for 30 days. The people of Darfur haven’t had that option. They didn’t start off as a refugee with a surplus of body fat to hold them over and they have been living in these conditions much longer than 30 days (some up to 2 years so far). I can’t even begin to imagine how their bodies are deteriorating and how much permanent damage it is causing. It amazes me that this all began because they stood up for their rights and wanted to be given the rights they deserved. Then Sudan began the process of genocide and is working on wiping the people of Darfur off the map by bombing, killing, and raping entire villages of innocent people. Sudan does everything in their power to cover up and hide any evidences that what they are doing is completely illegal but word is still getting out. I don’t understand why so many people don’t even know that this is going on. We need to keep putting this in front of the country and helping our people stay informed. Hopefully we as a people can raise up and do something about this. We can’t sit around and wait for governments to handle this.

I almost messed up on Sunday and cheated a little bit without thinking. The guy next to me in church offered me an Altoid and I grabbed one without thinking but before it got in my mouth I realized what I was doing and gave it to my wife. She has been joking that I am becoming slightly delusional lately. I had a dream the other night that I was eating a cinnamon roll and didn’t even realize that I was cheating until after it was done.  Then while I was away on my solitude I read the book of John and when I got to John 18:3 where it says:

“The leading priests and Pharisees had given Judas a contingent of Roman soldiers and Temple guards to accompany him. Now with blazing torches, lanterns, and weapons, they arrived at the olive grove.”

Instead of reading “they arrived at the olive grove.” I read “they arrived at the Olive Garden.” I even got all the way home and tried to show Rachel that it talked about the Olive Garden in the Bible only to realize that I had read it wrong. Rachel thought that was pretty funny

I realize every time I make my food how easy we have it in the US. I am struggling with my food intake but I am able to cook it on my nice stove or warm it up quickly in my microwave. These are luxuries that the people of Darfur don’t have. They need to put their lives in danger to gather wood in order to make a fire and most of the time it is the women gathering the wood. They can’t just stick a bowl of farina wheat cereal in the microwave for a couple minutes and then eat. It is an entire process that needs to happen. I am losing sympathy for those around me who mention that they are “poor” or “broke”. The majority of us in the US have no idea what it means to be broke or poor. We continue to forget what is happening around the world and base our “status” on the people that are around us. Hopefully that will start to change.

I have been enjoying many good conversations with people on the topic of Darfur because of this fast. I am hoping that the least I can do with this is to increase the awareness of my family, friends, church, and community and hopefully by doing so we can start something bigger as a whole. The people of Darfur need us to start doing something about it. We can’t continue to wait for the government to fix things because they are very caught up with their own agendas. What can we do to help bring peace to the people of Darfur?

I began to put a higher priority on my daily devotions and that helped out tremendously but I still felt that I was running on empty. I started making sure that I was having deep conversations with those who had more life experience than I did and soaking in every drop of wisdom that I could. That helped but still I needed something more. Then I remembered back to my days of Tentmakers Training and how they told us to make solitude time a part of our lives. I also remembered how many times Jesus went off by himself. He started off his ministry by going into the desert for 40 days by himself and often the gospels record him going off by himself. One example being after he fed the 5,000 John says: “When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, ‘Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!’ When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.” I decided to give this a try and it has played a huge role in the success of our ministry and I am sure it can play a huge role in yours as well.

Start off by taking just a couple hours a week all by yourself with only your bible and a journal and see how God uses it. Then after a while you will want to start incorporating in a 24hr solitude getaway at least every couple of months. Try to make sure when you take your solitude that you are in a place that you are able to relax and have no distractions, for me it is the woods.

Make sure that you go into it without any real agenda and see where God leads you in your thoughts and reading. The first couple times I took “solitude” I used it to either plan our Winter Retreat or to write a new curriculum. That isn’t really solitude then, it is more like a 24hr work trip. I have found that when I just go out and let God lead me that He has given me exactly what I needed. I just go back from one of my solitude retreats and went into expecting to come out with a clearer understanding of the thoughts that are floating around in my head. What God ended up giving me was a lot of rest and peace. I didn’t realize before that trip how tired and worn out I was, but God did!

Take some time this week and set it aside for some time alone and undistracted with the God of the universe and see how He uses it. I know He wont let you down!

The fast is going pretty well and it feels really good to be on the downhill side of this. I am very ready to sit down and eat a burger for lunch and I’m counting down the days. I continue to try and find interesting ways to make my food so that it has even the slightest variation in taste and texture. I have even gotten to the point of burning my “wheat buns” so that it adds a burnt flavor and crunchy texture to it. Tonight I am going to try and make some fry bread, but need to look up how that is done (my dad claims it is easy). The cracked wheat portion has been by far my hardest part of this fast and it takes up over half of my daily calorie intake. The farina wheat cereal had been good until yesterday when I messed up cooking it in the cabin. I really messed up the thickness of it and it also had a hint of wood ashes to it. I gagged about half way through and wasn’t able to finish the rest of it. That pretty much ruined me on it today as well as I choked it down for breakfast. It is crazy how one little thing like that can ruin that food for a while. I am hoping that I will get over it and will be able to finish out this fast strong. The split peas have still been the highlight of my day and the meal that I enjoy eating the most but it is even beginning to get really old.

I have really gained sympathy for my grandma through this whole process. She was diagnosed with a bunch of random allergies a long time ago and has had to eat the same thing every week ever since. I can’t imagine knowing that I will only be able to eat this food forever! The only reason I have been able to stick this out as good as I am is because I see the light at the end of tunnel. The people of Darfur don’t have that light. They are stuck eating this ration that is lacking in so many areas that I can’t even begin to explain. Although the hunger pains aren’t as bad as they used to be, I am very lethargic and get exhausted very easily. I can’t imagine having to live off of these food rations and having to do hard labor, I have a hard enough time having energy for our Wednesday night youth service.

I am continually amazed at how apathetic the people around me are about the situation in Darfur. They ask what I am doing and why but they really don’t wanna hear what I have to say. They are really only asking because they feel they should. When I begin to explain what is going on in Darfur it is like the lights turn off, they are hearing what I am saying but they aren’t listening. I can kind of understand that some may not be as passionate about this as I am but I don’t understand the I don’t care attitude. A lot of this ties into our Christian life as well. How many times have you or I sat in a Sunday morning worship service and heard what the pastor had to say but really didn’t listen? Or how many times have we opened up the bible and read Gods word, then closed it and walked away unchanged? It is easy for us to get in this type of a rut where we just keep doing the same thing day in and day out because we are comfortable with it (James 1:22-25). I think that God has called us to a higher standard, a way of life that isn’t comfortable. We do this because we know that we don’t need comforts in this world because we have even more waiting for us after we pass away. It is amazing how often the problems that we are faced with come back to us having an eternal focus. If we truly had an eternal focus we probably wouldn’t see them as problems but as opportunities for us to grow closer to Christ and His plan in our lives.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Cal and I have decided that we will be doing this for 30 days instead of all the way through Lent. That means that tomorrow I will be half way through this journey!! I went on my Google calendar today and plotted out encouraging reminder texts throughout the next couple weeks to help me stay on track. I am very excited that the final day of this fast is right before our church’s Adult Retreat and I will be able to enjoy some time away with friends.

I plan to get away on Thursday for 24hrs of solitude in a state forest. This is something that I have implemented into my life as a way to refocus and replenish. I am really looking forward to this time away and know that God will be using it for something big. I have had many different ideas floating around in my head but haven’t taken the time to process them yet. I realize that I might not walk away from this will all of it figured out but I am expecting that I will be much closer. Pray for me as I take this time. I might not be able to blog for the next couple of day, unless I have cell reception out there.