A few months ago a team came to visit one of my favorite places in Madagascar. Manakara is a little seaside city on the Eastern edge of the Indian Ocean. It boasts no major attraction except for a few modest hotels near the beach. Yet, there is something quaint about the little town nestled along the Pangalane Canal. This 450 mile long canal was created by the French in the late 19th century to facilitate maritime transportation to some of the most inaccessible places on planet earth.
We are working with a little church on the other side of the canal in an area known as Manakara B. The church was planted by one of my dearest friends in the world, Paul and his family. The congregation has been meeting in a little thatched hut for the past year or so. The team visiting from Nebraska wanted to partner with this local church by assisting them to purchase their own land for the construction of a new building. That Sunday AM, the heat was sweltering, and the humidity was overwhelming.
Some 40 people had crammed into the little room exhausting what little oxygen remained in the oppressive conditions. Everyone was sweating! The kids, the youth, the grannies, the grandpas, the visitor from America and yes, even the local chickens. (Okay maybe the chickens are a bit of an exaggeration.)
The pastor's wife, a beautiful Malagasy woman translated for one of the visiting pastors. I was seated on the front row trying to listen to the message as the sweat beads poured down my face. Our visiting pastor friend had just warmed up and was about to really start preaching when a funny thing happened. Our translator took a stutter step, asked for a bottle of water, and almost did a face plant into the ground. Of course, the building was so crowded that it would have been more like crowd surfing had she actually collapsed. Fortunately, she caught herself just in time.
The pastor looked at me to continue. The only problem was that my Malagasy was too limited to translate. And no one in the building spoke French to translate for me. So we all kind of looked at each other. We smiled. We sighed. We stared. And then we all decided to do what we should have done initially- pray for our translator. So we started to pray for her. She was barely coherent. Clearly, something was seriously wrong.
Some prayed for healing. Others cried out for the forces of darkness to be broken that were attacking her.
As I prayed quietly in the Spirit, the thought kept coming to me. She hasn't eaten anything.
So I decided to ask her. "Have you eaten anything today?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because Sunday is our fasting day."
"Do you think if you ate something you would feel better?"
WIthin moments she was back on her feet and able to finish out the day.
This mindset isn't new to me as the majority of Malagasy pastors fast on Sundays. What shocked me is that I knew her to be several months pregnant. Yet, she still felt the need to fast, in the heat, humidity, and suffocating lack of oxygen in that little building. Obviously, her body couldn't handle such rigors. The more we talked to her about it, the more her rationale for this decision became evident. They needed to fast to help God out.
Now let me be clear, I believe in fasting. And I have witnessed first-hand the incredible influence fasting has played in my personal walk with the Lord. Increasingly, I'm realizing that God doesn't need our help. He's done a pretty good job healing, saving, delivering, guiding, and empowering people who respond to His word in faith for thousands of years.
So where does fasting come into play? Someone once said this, fasting doesn't change God; fasting changes us. It teaches us to rely and depend on Him not ourselves. To submit to His purposes and plans not offer Him our suggestions and agendas.
The team from Madagascar bought the land. The church is thriving. Our translator has her strength back. The chickens are no longer sweating. And God is still God- changing lives across this planet by using people humble enough to get their pride and ambitions out of the way.
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