Tag Archive for: Fasting

How Should We Fast?

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Why Should We Fast? listed several OT narrative situations when people responded by fasting. We observed that fasting serves as a means of intensifying our awareness of our dependence on God and intensifying our prayers.

Considering what we see in the experience of Israel when it comes to fasting, we can discern some things that can both encourage us to fast and guide us as we do so.

When and why should we fast? Generally, when we identify a specific need or situation that requires a season of intensity in prayer. For example:

  • Whenever you care deeply about a situation that is out of your control. If fasting serves to increase urgency and intensity, what is going on in your life or another person’s life that needs God’s intervention? Maybe a ruptured relationship, maybe the need for protection in the midst of conflict, may in a big decision that must be made when you can’t predict the outcome. We can fast and pray on behalf of someone who gets a bad diagnosis, who has a big job interview or a big test. We could fast and seek God to move in the life of the people on our Top 5 list.
  • When you need to go to God in grief, in a season when tragedy has occurred – in your life or someone else’s. In these seasons fasting acknowledges our utter dependence on God for life and acknowledges his will is sovereign and good.
  • When you need to confess sin and commit to a life of repenting from sinful actions.
  • Whenever you want to intensify the focus of your prayer.

How should we fast? In ways that make it possible for us to feel the physical longing that remind us of our mortality and dependence on God. We can fast privately about personal situations, and we can join in fasting seasons with the church or with other communities of faith (such as our small group). Fasts can be:

  • Private, about personal situations.
  • Corporate, in response to a call of the leadership of the church or to a group of faithful friends.
  • Spontaneous, for a short time, maybe just one meal, as we pray for God to work when we are surprised or overwhelmed.
  • Strategic, planned ahead of time and practiced for a specific duration or rhythmic periods. (i.e. One day a week for a month; one evening a week; every morning for 30 days.)
  • From food, to be reminded of our spirit need by our physical hunger.
  • From habits or cravings, a fast from media, exercise, or work can serve to break patterns of mindless indulgence and replace them with intentional devotion to God.
  • With urgency and intensity, utilizing the fasting season to focus our minds and hearts on being in God’s presence.

One thing Jesus makes clear us that fasting should be discrete, in the sense that the point is to intensify our interaction with God, not to make an impression on other people. (Matt. 6)

We can still fast in community, in response to the call of the church, but we need to always remember fasting is just a vehicle, a tool, it is not an objective.

It is important to understand that the practice of fasting does not make a person more “spiritual” or somehow more acceptable to God. The prophets point out that fasting (like any other religious action) in the absence of willing obedience and the pursuit of Godly character in other parts of our lives is a waste of time (Isaiah 58, Jeremiah 14; 36). Fasting can be a productive discipline when it is accompanied by true repentance or desire to turn to God in worship and obedience. When we have pure motives for why we fast we have great freedom to do it in a variety of situations and with different things.

After my survey of the Old Testament narratives about fasting I had a real sense of personal conviction. Partially because I hadn’t ever taken the time to consider what there is to learn from how and when the people of Israel fasted. But also because it made me wonder why I am not more often so broken, desperate, repentant to employ a season of fasting to intensify my prayers for the lost, the sick, the sinning.

But God is gracious, and I have learned, and I will use fasting as a gift God has given to draw me close.

Why Should We Fast?

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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.