The DoorDash Order I Placed Halfway Through My Fast
# The DoorDash Order I Placed Halfway Through My Fast
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 6, 2026
I told my wife on Sunday night that I was fasting for three days over a situation at work that has had my stomach in knots for a month. No food, just water and coffee, the way I used to do back when fasting felt like the one spiritual discipline I could still manage even on my worst years. By Tuesday afternoon I was standing in the kitchen with my phone in my hand, and before I had fully decided anything, I had already typed in my address and picked a restaurant. I told myself I would still pray just as hard with food in my stomach. I believed that sentence for about four minutes, right up until the delivery driver texted that he was outside.
I used to think temptation showed up loud, the way it did in my drinking years, a craving with teeth. What that Tuesday taught me again is how often it shows up reasonable instead, dressed as a small adjustment nobody would even notice. Nobody was going to fault me for eating. The temptation was never really about the food. It was about whether I would finish what I had committed to God, or quietly talk myself out of it in a voice that sounded a lot like common sense.
Jesus faced the exact shape of that pull, at the exact moment His body was weakest. "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, 'If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.' But He answered and said, 'It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."'" (Matthew 4:1-4, NKJV). The devil did not tempt Jesus with something evil. He tempted Him with something that would have felt completely justified after forty days without eating. That is the pattern I keep missing. Temptation rarely asks me to do something wicked. It asks me to do something understandable, at the exact moment understandable and faithful stop lining up.
Paul put words to the war happening in me long before I ever broke that fast. "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice" (Romans 7:18-19, NKJV). Reading that again standing in my kitchen with an empty takeout bag was almost a relief. The gap between what I intended on Sunday night and what I did on Tuesday afternoon is not a secret shame unique to me. It is the plain condition Paul described in his own body, centuries before mine.
Here is where my own reasoning could never have gotten me anywhere good. I could have spent the rest of that day rebuilding my case for why the fast still counted, or tearing myself down for failing at something as basic as not eating for three days. Neither direction was going to fix anything, because both were still me trying to manage the outcome with my own thinking. "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:5-6, NKJV). Life and peace were never going to come from a better argument. They come from where my mind is actually set, and that afternoon it was set entirely on the failure instead of on Him.
What actually moved me off that spot in the kitchen was not resolve. It was grace, offered to a weakness I had not even finished confessing yet. "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV). I did not have to hide the broken fast from Him or dress it up into something smaller than it was. His strength was never waiting on my strength to show up first. Peter gives the exact motion for a moment like that one. "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7, NKJV). I set the shame down the same way I had picked up that phone, almost without planning the motion, and something in my chest actually settled that no amount of self-correction had managed.
I picked the fast back up the next morning, not because I had found better willpower overnight but because abiding is not a single decision you make once and never revisit. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25, NKJV). Walking, one ordinary hour at a time, back toward Him every time I notice I have drifted. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which small, reasonable-sounding compromise you are negotiating with yourself right now. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you resisting it perfectly, and He will never leave you alone in that kitchen to sort out the failure by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Matthew 4:1-4; Romans 7:18-19; Romans 8:5-6; 2 Corinthians 12:9; 1 Peter 5:7; Galatians 5:25.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 6, 2026
I told my wife on Sunday night that I was fasting for three days over a situation at work that has had my stomach in knots for a month. No food, just water and coffee, the way I used to do back when fasting felt like the one spiritual discipline I could still manage even on my worst years. By Tuesday afternoon I was standing in the kitchen with my phone in my hand, and before I had fully decided anything, I had already typed in my address and picked a restaurant. I told myself I would still pray just as hard with food in my stomach. I believed that sentence for about four minutes, right up until the delivery driver texted that he was outside.
I used to think temptation showed up loud, the way it did in my drinking years, a craving with teeth. What that Tuesday taught me again is how often it shows up reasonable instead, dressed as a small adjustment nobody would even notice. Nobody was going to fault me for eating. The temptation was never really about the food. It was about whether I would finish what I had committed to God, or quietly talk myself out of it in a voice that sounded a lot like common sense.
Jesus faced the exact shape of that pull, at the exact moment His body was weakest. "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, 'If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.' But He answered and said, 'It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."'" (Matthew 4:1-4, NKJV). The devil did not tempt Jesus with something evil. He tempted Him with something that would have felt completely justified after forty days without eating. That is the pattern I keep missing. Temptation rarely asks me to do something wicked. It asks me to do something understandable, at the exact moment understandable and faithful stop lining up.
Paul put words to the war happening in me long before I ever broke that fast. "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice" (Romans 7:18-19, NKJV). Reading that again standing in my kitchen with an empty takeout bag was almost a relief. The gap between what I intended on Sunday night and what I did on Tuesday afternoon is not a secret shame unique to me. It is the plain condition Paul described in his own body, centuries before mine.
Here is where my own reasoning could never have gotten me anywhere good. I could have spent the rest of that day rebuilding my case for why the fast still counted, or tearing myself down for failing at something as basic as not eating for three days. Neither direction was going to fix anything, because both were still me trying to manage the outcome with my own thinking. "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:5-6, NKJV). Life and peace were never going to come from a better argument. They come from where my mind is actually set, and that afternoon it was set entirely on the failure instead of on Him.
What actually moved me off that spot in the kitchen was not resolve. It was grace, offered to a weakness I had not even finished confessing yet. "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV). I did not have to hide the broken fast from Him or dress it up into something smaller than it was. His strength was never waiting on my strength to show up first. Peter gives the exact motion for a moment like that one. "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7, NKJV). I set the shame down the same way I had picked up that phone, almost without planning the motion, and something in my chest actually settled that no amount of self-correction had managed.
I picked the fast back up the next morning, not because I had found better willpower overnight but because abiding is not a single decision you make once and never revisit. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25, NKJV). Walking, one ordinary hour at a time, back toward Him every time I notice I have drifted. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which small, reasonable-sounding compromise you are negotiating with yourself right now. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you resisting it perfectly, and He will never leave you alone in that kitchen to sort out the failure by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Matthew 4:1-4; Romans 7:18-19; Romans 8:5-6; 2 Corinthians 12:9; 1 Peter 5:7; Galatians 5:25.
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