End of the fast: what God has taught me

I ended my fast today. I was really hungry, and I was stuck doing homework all morning and early afternoon. I prayed and realized that I was starting to focus too much on the physical benefits of fasting. Now these benefits are great, but they are not the reason I first began the fast. I felt I was losing focus on the real reason for the fast, so I decided to end it. During these 6 and a half days, here are some of the key things that God revealed to me:

God's at the center of it all, not in bits and pieces of my life.
Although in my mind I've always said that God is at the center of my life, the truth is that there are parts of my life in which God has very little, if any influence. Instead of relegating God to certain times (like when I'm at church, or reading the bible, or when I'm with my Christian friends), God should be at the center of all I do. So God should be at the center when I brush my teeth, when I do my laundry, when I talk to my coworkers, when I'm driving on the road, when I'm praying, etc.

So many people have so little hope.
It hurts me when I see people who have little or no hope. It especially hurts me when it's my friends. When I hear my friends say, "I'm unfulfilled", or "I feel like my life is on a loop; I wake up and go to work, then get home. I wake up the next day and do the same, looking forward to the weekend. The weekend comes and goes, then it's back to the same routine." When I hear my friends say that they don't get any real satisfaction from anything.

God calls us all to Him. He does it in different ways, and He calls us to do different things, but it's always a call to come closer to Him. He doesn't ask us to follow certain rules, or go to certain places, or socialize with certain people. He simply calls us to Him, and asks us, "Do you know Me?" Then, after we've entered a relationship with Him, a true relationship, where we can go to Him and say, "Daddy" (the literal translation of Abba, an Aramaic affectionate form of "father") He give us the desire to do the things that we used to think we had to do to please him. So we do those things out of love, not out of a sense of obligation or duty.

Will you devote your life to a stranger, and focus your affection and care on him or her?

Will you devote your life to your spouse, and focus your affection and care on him or her?

Can you devote your life to God if He is a stranger to you? But you are not a stranger to Him. For those of us who love God, why do we love Him? Because we're "good"? Because we're special? Because we're self-righteous? Because we make God happy by not cussing or drinking? Because we read the bible and can quote it?

No.

Why does God, in His word that He gave to us, say we love Him?

"We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).