The Discipline of Fasting
Is fasting part of your spiritual practice?
Verse of the Day
“So we fasted and earnestly prayed that our God would take care of us, and he heard our prayer.”
Today’s Devotional
Let me start by answering the question I posed at the top: Is fasting part of your spiritual practice? My answer was a resounding, “NO.” I have always told myself (and quite convincingly) that I was unable to fast because of my tendency to get headaches when I don’t eat. But recently our church asked the whole church body to participate in a weekend fast during a weekend of renewal. No guidelines or rules were given. It didn’t have to be a food fast. We were just asked to give something up in order to more fully focus on God. I’ll tell you my experiences with that weekend in a couple days.
If you remember, I set out to practice a new spiritual discipline each month based on the 12 disciplines from Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline. Today is the beginning of the third month, and the third discipline is fasting. I will fully admit that when I flipped open the book again, my heart sank a little at the thought of fasting. I am fully human, and the thought of giving up food did not excite me…until I started studying it a bit more. Now I’m intrigued.
Let’s start by talking about what fasting is. Richard Foster says, “In Scripture, the normal means of fasting involves abstaining from all food, solid or liquid, but not from water. In most cases fasting is a private matter between the individual and God.” So, fasting is not eating and choosing to focus on God while our body is being deprived of something it needs or wants.
If any of you are anything like me, you have heard of fasting but never practiced it. You have maybe heard of someone doing some kind of fast, but probably that was rare. In the Bible, however, fasting was common practice. In a very quick search, I found over forty verses that mention fasting. Which makes me ask, “Why is this spiritual discipline not practiced widely today?”
Richard Foster says, “The constant propaganda fed us today convinces us that if we do not have three large meals each day, with several snacks in between, we are on the verge of starvation. This, coupled with the popular belief that it is a positive virtue to satisfy every human appetite, has made fasting seem obsolete.” I often hear people referring to intermittent fasting as a means of weight loss. But the Bible is referring to something entirely different than that. “Throughout Scripture fasting refers to abstaining from food for spiritual purposes. Biblical fasting always centers on spiritual purposes. (As opposed to a hunger strike for political purposes or dieting for physical purposes.)”
For me, perhaps the most compelling argument for adding the practice of fasting comes from Andrew Murray when he said this: “Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible. Fasting is the other hand, the one with which we let go of the visible. In nothing are we more closely connected with the world of sense than in our need and enjoyment of food. It was with fruit that the woman and man were tempted and fell in the Garden of Eden. It was with bread that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. But He triumphed with fasting.” Then later he said, “Prayer is reaching out for God and the unseen. Fasting is letting go of everything that can be seen and touched.”
I learn best with physical pictures of spiritual truths. And after spending the last month studying, learning, and practicing prayer, I am delighted (and a little scared) about adding a discipline that helps me reach out for more of God while I am tangibly letting go of something of this world. Something, mind you, that I love very much. I love food. Probably too much. So it makes sense to purposefully let it go for periods of time in order to experience God more fully.
We are going to spend two more days looking at this discipline to see if it is something we might each add to our spiritual discipline toolbelt. That is a decision each one of us will make for ourselves. But it’s fascinating (to me) to learn about something I had only casual awareness of that is mentioned so frequently in the Bible.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
What are your initial thoughts about fasting? Have you done it before? How did it go?
If the Bible mentions something many times that we do not do, what does that tell you?
Are you willing to go to any lengths to reach out for more of God?
Ask God to tell you if fasting is something you should add to your spiritual practice.