“Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?”
Isaiah 58:5
The topic of fasting is not a very popular one in Christian circles today. You seldom hear preaching or teaching about its importance. In the American Church we are not often exhorted to fast regularly. It is something that is associated with mystics, ascetics, and fanatics—not with mainstream Christianity!
If we are honest, we will all confess that we greatly prefer feasting to fasting. I certainly do, because we were created by God to eat, and we naturally prefer eating to starving. From the moment of birth, one of our strongest drives is for food and liquid. Without it we cannot long survive.
Fasting, then, goes against our basic instincts to eat and drink. It is a conscious resisting of our hunger pangs that constantly drive us to food. Therefore, it takes a willful decision for a person not to eat and drink. It is a subjugation of our natural appetites with a supernatural expectation.
Fasting is a constraining of the outer man in order to release and strengthen the inner man or woman. It is not something that we do thoughtlessly, unconsciously, or involuntarily—unless we are physically, emotionally, or spiritually sick.
Let’s look at several examples of what we might call false fasts. First, there are involuntary fasts that millions of people in the world face regularly simply because of a lack of food to eat. The Apostle Paul experienced this type of involuntary fasting from time to time in his ministry (2 Corinthians 6:5; 11:27).
Secondly, a person may give up eating temporarily because of physical sickness. There are a number of illnesses that can cause one to lose their appetite for food for a period of time. Thirdly, a person who is emotionally sick will sometimes consciously starve themselves through some disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia.
Finally, there are millions of sincere, well-intentioned people who starve themselves physically in order to gain merit or “appease the gods.” You often see this kind of voluntary fasting in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. In a similar way, millions of faithful Muslims fast yearly during the month of Ramadan. From a Christian perspective, all of this fasting has little or no authentic spiritual merit before the true and living God. So, if there are so many counterfeits and false fasts, there must be an authentic faith fast that pleases the Lord.
In the Old Testament, the word fast comes from the primary Hebrew root tsuwm and means “to cover over the mouth.” In the Greek of the New Testament, the word is nesteia (noun) and nesteuo (verb), which means “not to eat.”
There are only a couple dozen references to fasting in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments. But one thing is absolutely clear, and that is that fasting was definitely a normative practice in Judaism and later in Christianity.
As Christians, we fast for a season for at least seven reasons: humility (Ezra 8:21), humiliation (Psalm 35:13), helplessness (2 Chronicles 20:2–4), healing (Isaiah 58:6–9), holiness (Mathew 6:16–18), hope (Mark 2:19–20), and harvest (Acts 13:2–3). It is my prayer that God will use fasting to add these spiritual virtues to your life.