In Conclusion... Well Sort Of.

           Well I finished the Daniel Fast but I guess I didn't really finish. I went back to my normal vegetarian diet with milk and eggs and sugar and after about a week of that I just felt yucky. I felt myself falling back into my old habits and I hated it. I was off the fast for three weeks and after that first week I started looking into the idea of going vegan. The more I looked into the more wanted to do it. I got a couple books and decided to try. The first couple days I kind of "yo-yo-ed" it, trying to eat mostly vegan but still slipping, (especially when it came to chocolate!). But I still felt icky after eating those foods. Going vegetarian was a little different for me then most people because I didn't do it solely for the animals, I love animals but it was more for health reasons. It wasn't until after being a vegetarian for a little while that the idea of eating something that was once alive just weirded me out. Just as the more I looked into going vegan the more I saw how terrible all animals are treated and how miserable their lives are just for our purposes. So while I was contemplating this decision I asked God to show me if this what He wanted for me.
       I've been a little slack on my Bible-in-a-year Bible lately and got a little behind; I just kept putting it off or just wanted to read my other Bible. But anyways I picked it yesterday and the story I was on was one in Numbers where God uses a Donkey to speak to this guy named Balaam. An angel appeared on the road that Balaam and his donkey were passing through but only the donkey could see it. The donkey turned and ran in fear of the angel but Balaam didn't see the angel so he beat the donkey. When Balaam tried to go that way again the donkey lay down behind Balaam but again, Balaam beat the donkey because he was unable to see the angel. This happened one more time and then the Lord gave the donkey the ability to speak. Only then did the Lord open Balaam's eyes as well and he saw the angel. The angel told Balaam that he was there because Balaam was stubborn and if the donkey wouldn't have shied away, the angel would have killed Balaam and spared the donkey. I know that was drawn out but I want to share one more thing before I relate that to my decision to go vegan.
      I've had this idea I guess you would call it, especially after reading the Chronicles of Narnia and seeing how all the animals responded to Aslan, that if God would inhabit the earth in all His glory that the animals would just know it was Him, that they would just automatically know Him as their creator and follow Him. Unlike us who have a choice as to what we worship, some of us would see God as the Creator and Father while others would wonder what He was. I don't know if that makes sense, but I just think that the animals just know. Kind of like the donkey that was able to see the glory of the Lord before the stubborn human was.
      I also don't think God designed us to eat animals or anything that comes from them. We didn't begin to consume anything from them until after the fall and I don't think we will be enjoying a nice juicy steak in heaven. I don't know anything about what happens to animals when they leave this earth, but while they are here I do think they need to be respected as God's creations. I don't feel like I have the right to take something from another being just because it tastes good. (but so far the vegan recipes I have tried have been DE-liscous!)
I know that from being vegan for about 3 weeks, to not for three weeks, and this first week back on being a vegan I definitely feel a whole heck of a lot better choosing vegan.
     I'm not saying you’re a horrible person of you eat meat or that you’re a bad Christian or anything like that, these are just my reasons for going vegan and how I feel about it. God has made everything clean and everything permissible for us but that doesn't mean its right for everyone. I hope to choose compassion in every area of my life even the food I eat and make a difference in standing up for the animals that can't do it for themselves.
     Please don't take offense to this!! And I won't give you a nasty look if you eat meat or milk or eggs! :) I just had to organize my thoughts and this help to kind of affirm my decision. These are just some verses that God used to move my heart in this direction.

 The story of Balaam and the donkey was Numbers 22:21-41

"Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is helpful, everything is permissible for me, but I will not be brought under the control of anything."

                                               1 Corinthians 6:12

"Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed."

                                               Proverbs 31:8   

"Everything on Earth will worship You; they will sing your praises, shouting your name in glorious songs"
                                               Psalm 66:4    

Day Twenty Two and Twenty Three.

     Well, I'm done!! I'm excited to be done and have finished but I really enjoyed these past three weeks so I feel kind of weird about stopping. I started this fast because I wanted to rely on God for my only source of comfort and well... everything else. To be totally committed to God and willing to give all of myself for His purpose and because that is the only way I can truly live and live abundantly. I've loved learning to depend on God's word and to soak in it as I go through each day and the difference it makes in my day. I read the Bible before, but I it was more of reading a book then reading the living word. Claiming that living Word is part of walking in the Spirit and choosing to act through Him instead of acting out of my flesh. And while I'm a little nervous to stop because I don't want to fall back into walking by my flesh and feeling trapped, I know that I can always choose the Spirit over my flesh and always claim that freedom, regardless of where I am. I needed to do this fast and I don't think it was coincidence that I did it when I did. I'm excited for a new year and leaving behind the old. I was made a new creation when I accepted Christ as my Savior, but I was still holding on to my sinful ways, Christ saw me as new, but I didn't. As I enter into a new year for me, I'm ready to claim the newness and forget my former ways. I am new and I am free only through Christ and nothing I can do on this earth can give me that feeling. That is why I can't focus on the things of this world but the things of the Spirit. This is way jumbled because I have so many thoughts and emotions bumbling inside my head. I began this fast to draw closer to God and I know it won't be my last. I feel refreshed and and excited about continuing to grow with God, all of Him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and excited for whatever may come because I know I can always have perfect peace in Him. This fast has also gotten me to journal a lot more and I definitely think that has had an impact. It gets me to focus more on what I'm thinking and look at it more in depth to help me understand it more even though it might sound like rambling to others who read it. I can't say I enjoyed every moment of this fast, but I loved doing it and I know it won't be my last. 

          "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

                                                           Isaiah 43:18-19

Day Twenty One.

         Today should be my last day of the fast based on Daniel fasting for three weeks, but I want to enter in to my first day as an "adult" doing something bigger than myself. I don't know why, its kind of silly. I'm also a little scared to stop. I don't want to go back to my old bad habits and let go of this freedom I've been feeling. It's kind of ironic how having the freedom to eat whatever I want could just make me feel trapped all over again. I knew of it before and heard about it, but I never actually claimed the freedom that God offers for myself. My own sin was keeping me tied down and I was too selfish and wrapped up in it to let it go. If only I could have seen before that the freedom is so much better than any momentary gratification I got from the sin I had such a hard time surrendering. We get so wrapped up in our own lives and pleasing ourselves that before we know it, were cuffed to our ways and putting our desires, our gods, before the One True God. If I have learned one thing from this fast its that the only way to freedom, true freedom, however ironic it is, is total and complete surrender. Its difficult to force yourself to focus on God instead of your own wants, but what God offers is so much better than any pleasure sin can offer. Saying sin might throw some people off because they don't think a lot of what they do is sin. But looking at God's standards most of what I do and think would be considered sin in God's eyes. That's why He sent His Son. He knew we fall into sin so easily and can't keep His standards, so Jesus took all that on Him so we could be forgiven and be connected to the God who loves us so much. Without Him, there is no ability to overcome our sin and no freedom. It is only be giving up myself and Him coming in, that I can be free. The more I let go and become one with Christ, the more my mind can focus on the things God wants me to focus on, not the things of this world.  The thing I have to remember constantly is it is only by, through, and in Him that I can do anything pleasing to Him. Turning the "I" into a "we" and anything is possible.
So two more days...

Day Twenty.

         I did another blog on faith, but that's what I guess the theme for my day was. Putting all my faith in God and nothing else. This fast for me is all about surrender and that's what I hope my life to be, a surrender to God each and every day in every area. My prayer has been a lot that if God were taken away from me like you could physically see God on me, if you took Him away, there would be nothing left. I know it takes time and effort, but I believe that is the only way this life will mean anything, is if I give it up to Him. This fast has been the first physical way of me surrendering and it just keeps showing me how the body, soul, and spirit are connected and how to live by it. How surrender is not always an easy thing to do, but if I rely on my faith in this small thing, my faith will be all the stronger when its a not so small thing. 

   "His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master's joy!"
                                                            Matthew 25:23

Day Nineteen.

        Day Nineteen, I didn't really think I would get here due to my previous attempts at things like this. But this has been different than any other thing I've done for many reasons. One I stuck to it, I usually give up on any sort of diet after the first couple of days and second was that I'm not doing this focusing on me. Dieting is focusing on how much weight your losing, how you look, how your clothes fit, all things about physical, nothing about the spiritual aspect. I keep talking about that, but I'm just so thankful for that understanding. While I feel good physically, it's not about that. Fasting is not about losing weight or detoxifying the body or just feeling better, yes it does those things, but if you go into it with that attitude its not going to be very rewarding and it might not even be able to be classified as fasting, restricting food for a spiritual purpose. I've prayed for strength before to help me on this diet, which just made me more disappointed when I failed, like I was letting God down or something. But the diet was still focused on me, not on God, which is were all my focus needs to be or I can't do anything. When I turn my eyes, all my attention in every part of my life, when it all points to God, He will not leave me stranded.

         "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."
                                                                                                Proverbs 16:3
      

Day Eighteen.

          It's been a great day. Not because I had some great revelation or something incredible happened, I'm just excited about things happening now and things that are going to happen soon. I'm excited to be turning  eighteen and graduating and working at the camp this summer, going off to college, and continuing to walk in this amazing freedom. I was so frustrated the past two days and it just amazes me how God can take that completely away. I'm taking to the practice of finding a verse and claiming it for that day, repeating it over and over through out the day kind of praying it as I let it soak in my heart and mind. Today was Matthew 26:41 which says to "watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak." I found it last night as I was journaling and its what stuck today. I like finding a verse and sticking with it because it helps me memorize it, but also it becomes my prayer, and God's word really seeps in. That verse helped me to remember to repeatedly commit myself to The Spirit in order for me to overcome temptation because I know I couldn't do it on my own. I find it so neat how restricting myself has actually brought on freedom, not just freedom to do whatever I want, that freedom led me to make choices that I now want freedom from. Freedom through Christ, In the Spirit that I am not bound to this world but am able to over come it, because the One who did lives in me.

      "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
                                                            John 16:33

Day Sixteen and Seventeen.

        I began this week thinking it was going to be a lot easier or it was going to to be really hard. Its a little bit of both. Its kind of hard to explain but its been easy because I feel good that I've done this, the hard part being that I keep having to fight of thoughts of just stopping. The chocolate covered strawberries and the chocolate chip cookies my mom keeps laying around the house are also not helping silence that whispering but screaming voice. There will always be temptation around me, its how I respond to it that makes it a victory or a fall. I was getting frustrated these past couple days because I was responding out of my flesh. My flesh really wanted a cookie so I got mad that I couldn't have it. I was used to satisfying that want by doing it and then wanting another and another and so on. Instead of turning my attention away from myself and my desires of this world and choosing to walk in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit takes practice and my body is going to revolt a little because it craves sin, it was born into sin and that was all it knew until Christ came in. It's kind of weird talking about my body as if its separate from me but it kind of is. Not that I'm comparing myself to God, but just as God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but all three are still God, I am a body, soul, and spirit, but I am still me. Its going to take discipline to train myself to walk in my spirit which is committed to God, instead of letting my body control my decisions because it will always want the things of the flesh. Part of the reason I was getting upset was because I wasn't setting time apart to get into the Word and revamp so to speak. I can't expect myself to be able to overcome the things of this world when all I have is my power, because I have none. If it weren't for Christ and His strength in Me, I would be hopeless, there would be no way I could quiet the voice in my head that tells me to just do whatever I want to do when I want to do it. If I'm not daily seeking God the One who is Holy or set apart from this world, there is no way I can be set apart from this world. It is only by Jesus' blood that I am made holy, so I have to make a choice and claim it every single day. The only victory I have is through Christ and by Christ. It is not by power or strength, but only by His Spirit.

   "So he said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty."
                                                      
                                                       Zechariah 4:6

   "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."

                                                       Matthew 26:41