A wise friend once said to me that the Christian life is like trying to climb up the downward escalator: if you don’t keep climbing, you’re going to move down; there is no sitting still in the Christian life.

How do we keep climbing, then? Is it through the actions of prayer and bible reading, or through fasting? It’s actually much deeper than that; it’s about abiding.

Abide in Me

At its heart, fasting is replacing food during mealtimes with prayer and Bible reading. It is a deeper form of what should be our daily devotional time with Jesus. And our daily time with Jesus causes us to abide in Him.

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5 NRSV

The word “abide” means to remain, to continue, to endure.

There are many days when John 15 is all I read, and it is all I need. I return to it over and over in the mundane and the routine. The more I ponder it, the more it nourishes me.

How does fruit grow? Jesus gives an example of a grapevine. It is almost a silly question: the fruit lets itself be nourished by the vine; it abides, or remains, in the branch, and all the nutrition and water it needs will come to it. That is all it takes, and in some ways, the branch does nothing, but it abides.

The Discipline of Abiding

Christian life is not a matter of doing, but of being. This is what it means to abide in Christ, to abide in His love. It is an intimate connection to the life-giving Vine of Christ. If we disconnect, we die. Beyond the cultivation of healthy spiritual discipline (fasting, prayer, Bible reading), our goal is to be in constant fellowship with God throughout the day. In other words, to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

The spiritual nutrition we need, to live and to produce fruit, is the love of God. He is our Source, and we must abide in Him. It is the only way for us to thrive, for us to keep climbing upward toward heaven.

So think of fasting as holistic abiding; body, mind, and spirit. Fasting brings an outside-in and then inside-out transformation: we begin with a sacrifice in our bodies (fasting), which causes us to strengthen our willpower (using our minds) to choose Christ over food, which makes us more aware of our deep hunger for God’s love. As our spirits are nourished by His love and presence, He renews our minds (Romans 12:2), gives us His peace (Philippians 4:6-7), and this in turn gives life to our bodies!

A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot. –Proverbs 14:30 NRSV

When fast, we sacrifice something good right now in order to receive God’s best for our lives. And the more we abide in His love, the more we see that God’s way really is the best. We begin to crave Him like we crave air.

As It Is in Heaven

We enter a heavenly way of being when we simply abide. Heaven is not a goal, it is not something to reach and check off the list. It is the place where all time will be transcended and we will abide in God’s love perfectly and continuously.

When we choose to abide we are letting God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We make His name holy (hallowed) in ourselves first and foremost, presenting our bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). We must pattern our lives after heaven, not because it is the goal we will achieve, but because it is the end result of our lives in Christ.

Abiding in Christ is a state of being, undefined by time, unhindered and unburdened. It is firstly by abiding, by BEING that we fulfill and enact God’s will, and not by doing or striving. Because He is the one who created time, He will be faithful to fill our days with things for His glory and our good. All other cares fall away when we re-center ourselves around the love of Christ. And in this simple way, we will produce fruit.

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. –John 15:8-9 NRSV

(This is part three of a series on fasting. Part One is here, and Part Two is here.)