Do you remember those parental scoldings that turned into lectures — where all you could do was get comfortable and endure while Mom or Dad went on and on in an attempt to get something through your “thick skull”?

These usually came because our repeated behavior revealed we just really didn’t get it, whatever “it” was.

Our Father God occasionally launches into one of those; as exhibit number one (can you tell I used to be a legal secretary?) I offer Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58 is a lecture intended to help us “get it” about God’s true values and purposes for fasting, explaining how easy it is to miss His heart altogether in our religious-ness.

In fact, a common theme of God’s lectures is how his people turn the festivals, disciplines and acts of worship He established into self-serving rituals. This diverts us from their original purpose: to provide continual pathways back to Him, to greater love and life with Him and others.

Don’t just read the scriptures, ponder them.

I write in my Bible. After reading a section, I lay the Bible down, sit back and ponder, What did God just reveal to me about Himself?

When the answer comes, I make a note somewhere, either in my Bible study journal or in the margin of the Scriptures, so that a truth about God connects forever in my mind with that section of scripture. Frankly, I’m terrible at memorizing scripture, so this helps me internalize God’s truths in a way that stays with me.

The truth that lives in my heart, and the subtitle I have written for Isaiah 58 is this:

God meant fasting to be, above all, a fast from selfishness.  A turning away from pre-occupation with my comfort or my religious performance, in order to know my God, understand His will, and carry out His work of loving people to life.

When I fast from business as usual in order to know him, I do something far better than deny myself: I forget myself.

In forgetting myself, I can see and hear Him more clearly. Because I managed to get myself out of the way.

For some Christians, a veil remains, blocking our view of God

A.W. Tozer was my first favorite author mentor. He shared in his excellent book “The Pursuit of God,” his theory of why Christians, for whom the great veil separating men from God has been torn down, still seem unable to see and know their God.

Tozer proposed that a veil remains, one which blinds us to the truth about God. He describes this veil as the close-woven veil of the self-life, woven of fine threads of what he calls the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. Sins such as self-reliance, self-righteousness, self-pity and self-love.

These are the things which blind us to God’s true purpose behind asking us to deny ourselves. These “self-sins” often contort our acts of worship into lifeless religious ritual, done with our selves in view, not God. I confess that on a few occasions I have caught myself, head bowed in prayer, thinking not of the God I was mouthing prayers to, but of myself and the good example I was setting for others around me. Of course, God knows when your heart is gazing at Him in faith, and when it is gazing at itself.

No wonder God hates religion. It is fake love and worship.

Religion is often a posture we assume that becomes a substitute for real relationship with God. It is not only empty towards God, it robs us of the treasure of His Fellowship.

Our Father’s rant in Isaiah 58 greatly validates Tozer’s theory. There He makes it clear that He is not at all pleased with the self-serving “Look at how I deny myself!” type of fasting. Fasting that demands a reward from God while simultaneously failing to effectively love and serve God and others, robs everyone in the transaction.

My takeaway from Isaiah 58 is that God’s preferred way to for you to destroy the veil of self is to be so busy loving God and others that self dies while you’re not looking.

And He promises in Isaiah 58 that if you will fast in such a way, He will provide you with all the healing and blessing you could ever desire. That if you spend yourself on behalf of others, He will spend Himself on your behalf. It’s an ideal covenant relationship construct: each party is busy taking care of the other’s needs.

That’s kingdom love and blessing, and religious duty has no place in the equation.