There are several spiritual disciplines that we seem to have reinvented into our own form of acceptance and possibly none more than fasting. Giving up social media for a morning, skipping an afternoon snack, going without coffee for a day… while this may have some practical value it does not quite come up to the ‘fasting’ as God describes it in Isaiah 58.
There follows a series of possibilities of what we would share with others who may not be in our convenient circle of friends. There is a decided ‘them that have’ and ‘them that have not’ with the fasting being God’s way of entering into the needs of the have-nots, of the ‘haves’ sharing what God has given them to meet needs of others. I would be ashamed to remember a pattern of fasting many years ago where I would gorge, fast, then gorge again and nothing other than prayer was given to anyone else. It was a spiritual discipline but it did not fit God’s desire in Isaiah—while it did focus me on God, it was not to benefit those God wanted to touch beyond myself.
While there is nothing wrong with humbling oneself, bowing down, repenting, Isaiah 58 is God’s call to take that pious practice and let it have not only the inward impact upon our relationship with God but to allow the results to flow out into actions attesting to this work of God within so that lives are changed, needs met, bondages broken, God glorified.
If we were to allow this inner discipline to have an outward flowing, God promises His participation:
But what about Me? What do I get out of submitting to the Lᴏʀᴅ, of participating in His desires for others beyond myself? Isaiah 58:8 is smack in the middle of these verses:
Yes, by the time ‘your light breaks forth’ you will no longer be proud of ‘your’ good works for they will have become the Lᴏʀᴅ’s and He will get the glory. So be it.