{"id":895,"date":"2009-03-02T18:16:51","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T02:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katylee.com\/blog\/?p=895"},"modified":"2009-03-02T18:16:51","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T02:16:51","slug":"prayer-and-fasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/02\/prayer-and-fasting\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer and fasting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We take a lot of things for granted here in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Our speaker at last year&#8217;s church retreat says that what Jesus did on the cross should not become too familiar with us, such that we take him for granted.<\/p>\n<p>As Easter approaches, I think it is an appropriate time for us to reflect on the significance of Easter.<\/p>\n<p>A friend decided to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ext\/share.php?sid=47274672167&amp;h=4F1P_&amp;u=3cbVn\" target=\"_blank\">abstain from Facebook<\/a> to spend time in prayer. This idea of fasting from Facebook as written in UPI.com is said to be in observance of Lent.<\/p>\n<p>As a Christian, I do not observe Lent. Traditionally Lent is a Catholic thing. It has the idea of paying penance for our sins. Fasting and other types of self-denial is suppose to earn you God&#8217;s favor.<\/p>\n<p>As a Christian, I believe what Jesus did on the cross is complete and enough to save us. There is nothing we can do to earn God&#8217;s favor. &#8220;By grace we have been saved &#8230;&#8221; I think it is after the Reformation that those who became Protestants did away with Lent.<\/p>\n<p>However, with that said, I do think that a type of fasting in order to focus on God is very appropriate. I wouldn&#8217;t call it Lent nor subscribe to the idea behind the word. Maybe there is another word we can use.<\/p>\n<p>I am planning on a few days of fasting. It won&#8217;t be fasting from FB. I&#8217;m not on it that much. I can&#8217;t fast from food because I have low blood sugar and low blood pressure (the automatic blood pressure machines can&#8217;t even pick up my blood pressure. The nurse always has to resort to using the stetoscope.)<\/p>\n<p>Fasting from the internet is a challenge for me. Instead of writing for my website, or looking for properties, or reading blogs on my reader, I will reserve some time for prayer and reflection of Easter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We take a lot of things for granted here in the US. Our speaker at last year&#8217;s church retreat says that what Jesus did on the cross should not become too familiar with us, such that we take him for granted. As Easter approaches, I think it is an appropriate time for us to reflect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}