Fasting to Resume

When are my gun parts supposed to get here? I know they’re coming from Israel, but it’s taking so long, you would think they’re carving them from bar stock with a Dremel tool.

I guess you can’t carve plastic parts from bar stock. But still.

There should be plenty of stuff to keep me busy until the parts arrive. Tomorrow I’ll be making pizza at church again, assuming the oven is working. I hope they get it fixed. It’s depressing, making ten portions of dough, baking six, and throwing the rest out while customers wonder why we won’t sell them pizza.

I’m also working on a handbook for the armorbearers at my church. The big hindrance here is that I’m a lowly, relatively new armorbearer, and I’m the one writing the book. The higher-ups know much more than I do. My strategy is to lay out the chapters, fill them with blather that seems right to me, and then go to my superiors and work with them to fix it. Editing is always easier than writing from scratch.

Okay, it’s usually easier. Sometimes the best thing to do with something a person wants you to edit is burn it.

The church is putting on a play pretty soon. A passion play. Today the head Servant Leader asked for armorbearer volunteers to help strike the set on the Sunday night after the last show. I had to refrain from signing on. The last time I tried to help strike a set, the stage was filled with volunteers who had no leaders and no directions, and somebody dropped a huge piece of plywood scenery on me and left me with an injury that hurt for weeks. I feel that my career as a stagehand has come to a close. But I did send a return text, mentioning the possibility of cooking.

I got out my book and started looking for likely dishes, but all I could come up with was baked ziti. My other real crowd-pleasers have wine or liquor in them, and I would feel a little funny slinging a bottle of Marsala around in a church kitchen.

Baked ziti is a fine thing. That is especially true when you use pizza-quality ingredients. But I’m not sure it’s far enough from pizza.

I could do chicken curry, but while the Jamaicans and Trinis would eat it, the Haitians would probably think I was trying to poison them. Not everyone in the Caribbean appreciates a good habanero.

All I know is, I don’t want any more sets falling on me.

I’ve decided to get more serious about fasting. Last year, I got permanent deliverance from gluttony after a fast, and my behavior improved in other respects. But fasting started cutting into my week very badly, and I scaled back. I think I’ll do a good long session. I truly believe ordinary people have demons assigned to oppress them, and that these things show up in bad habits that are hard to control. I know of three proven examples in my own life, plus an illness that left as a visible spirit fled my body, and I’m sure I’m not alone. And I’m not the only person who believes this. You don’t have to be running around naked in a cemetery, eating rats, to be under the influence of a demon.

Maybe the way I was fasting last year was wrong. Maybe fasting a lot every week is not as good as long fasts, farther apart. I’m supposed to do one partial-day fast each week as an armorbearer, but other than that, maybe it’s not a great idea to clutter every week with fasting.

I look forward to this, because I know how powerful fasting is. I hate every second of it, but look what it does for you. I make pizza semi-professionally twice a week, and I’m still losing weight. Slowly, sure, and with little fluctuations, but it’s happening. And yesterday while I made pizza, guess what I ate? Two crummy protein bars, half a tuna sandwich (forgot to eat the second half), and half a chocolate bar.

Fasting evicts trespassers. I think the story of Jesus’s forty-day fast is an example for everyone. Even Jesus was oppressed demonically. His demon was Satan himself, and after the fast, Satan gave up and left, just like lesser demons fled the people Jesus and the disciples freed. It was after the forty-day fast that the real power began to flow. I suspect that the same principle applies to all of us. God probably doesn’t want to drop major power on people who are subject to a lot of malevolent influence from hidden co-pilots.

How long would the average bariatric surgery patient be willing to fast, in order to get what I got? It’s an incredible blessing. In my own small way, I know how people who have been healed of cancer feel. It’s fantastic to get free of something you ordinarily would be unable to conquer. The general rule with fat people is that they stay fat and get fatter. And the worst part is, you do it to yourself, and you can’t stop.

I love being free. What if I can get free of the majority of my big behavioral and attitudinal problems by fasting? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s highly likely. It’s clearly worth a shot.

When I fasted last year, some beings that were accompanying me through life realized I was going to be doing this kind of thing for the rest of my days, and they said, “We have had ENOUGH of this guy. We QUIT.” I need to resume deportations.

God willing, my testimony is going to be even better later this year than it is now. I can’t wait.