Why fast? What is the point? When should I fast and for how long? These are legitimate questions, because for many people the practice of fasting is unfamiliar and for some maybe even seemingly unnecessary. Depending on your faith tradition, fasting may not even part of your experience in church. So, when there is a call to fast you respond with some reluctance or even resistance, because we don’t understand the meaning and purpose of it.

This describes my personal experience. I have done seasons of fasting, sometimes in response to a call from the church and sometimes on my own initiative. But honestly my fasting in community was done more out of a desire to submit to the leadership of my church than a genuine commitment to intensely focus on my need for God’s intervention in my life or someone else’s. I have also fasted as a kind of muti purpose “I’ll do something spiritual and maybe lose a few pounds” effort. Unfortunately, both of those approaches miss the true motivation and objective of entering a season of fasting.

We shouldn’t let ourselves settle for an uneducated view of what a productive fast is and why we do it. The Bible speaks about fasting often enough that we should let it teach us how to engage in the practice in a meaningful way.

What does it mean to fast and why should we do it?

The Hebrew term used for fasting is part of the family of words that mean to weep, to morn, to deny oneself. In the Hebrew Bible people often fasted in response to a crisis or a tragedy. Fasting was both a personal and sometimes corporate expression of grief and often an expression of regret and repentance – (at least among the faithful.) Sometimes fasting was observed as part of seeking God’s favor and protection in the presence of a threat, so it was a response to fear.

The practice of fasting from food has its roots in the knowledge that we are both physical and spiritual creatures. The experience of being hungry connects our physical dimension to our spiritual need. Simply put, during a fast the gnawing sensation of hunger in our stomach serves as an unignorable reminder of our desperate need for God’s provision for all things in this life and for life beyond.

Our problems and failures and circumstances are not just physical or earthy in nature. They are reflections our mortality. They represent reminders that we are fragile and temporary creatures. The practice of fasting is intended to remind us of our humanity and physical limitations. Few things can connect us to our dependent nature than going hungry.

Through fasting we leverage a season of hunger to heighten our awareness and focus on the greater ways we need God’s grace and mercy. The need for food represents our need for God’s provision of forgiveness, healing, help, strength and faith.

You can see this almost universally in the narrative texts that describe situations in which fasting was employed by the people of Israel and the early church. The following sample texts are representative:

1 Samuel 7 – Because of Israel’s unfaithfulness God had allowed the Philistines to capture the Ark of the Lord. In the process of it’s potential return to Israel the prophet Samuel commanded Israel to rid themselves of idols and return to the Lord. Samuel gathered the people at Mizpah and they fasted and confessed their sin.

1 Samuel 31 – After king Saul was killed the Philistines took his body and displayed it as a trophy to humiliate Israel. When some valiant men of Israel recovered his body, they buried it and fasted for seven days in grief and remorse, for Saul and for the situation in Israel.

2 Samuel 12 – King David fasted over the sickness and death of his son by Bathsheba. His fast was in grief and desperation for the life of his son, but also in knowing his sin was the cause. He fasted in repentance and hope that God would forgive him and spare his child.

Ezra 8 – Ezra proclaims a fast in seeking the Lord’s protection on the remnant of people returning from exile to Judah.

Ezra 9 – Ezra fasted in disappointment and broken heartedness over the unfaithfulness of people who had intermarried with foreign, idol worshipping people.

Esther 4 – Mordecai fasts, laments, and weeps upon learning of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews. Esther asks that all Israel fast as she prepares to do the unlawful and enter the king’s presence to ask his favor.

Daniel 6 – King Darius fasted all night in anguish and guilt for unjustly having Daniel put in the lion pit.

Psalm 69 and Psalm 109 – David describes fasting in anguish, seeking God’s intervention and relief from the relentless torments of his enemies.

Acts 13 and 14 – Luke records church leaders fasting before sending out missionaries, and as part of committing men to the responsibility and burden of eldership in the local church.

If you read the referenced texts and the different situations that call for fasting, you see the motivation include seasons of grief, tragedy, remorse, desperation, fear. All things that should drive us into the presence of God in prayer and in his Scriptures. Fasting was a means of addressing the urgency and increasing the intensity of people’s declaration of dependence, trust, and petition of God’s response to significant moments in life and in the life of the church.

If we just use these texts as a general guide, we can identify many situations and seasons where we could practice fasting the same way they did – as a way to infuse our need for God’s help with urgency and intensity.