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What Is Fasting?
Our Spiritual Need
I used to wish I could eat toast for every meal. Toast with peanut butter. Toast with Vegemite (an Australian classic). Occasionally, the sweet delight of toast with jam. I wanted to live on carbs.
But as the years have passed and I’ve left my twenties behind, my body has let me know I need vegetables. Lunchtime has increasingly featured soups in the winter and salads in the summer. And to my surprise, my appetite for healthier foods has grown (though I still love my morning toast). I sometimes even look forward to loading up my salad bowl.
Our spiritual appetites need a similar recalibration so that we find pleasure in Christ instead of in the world’s offerings.
We look for satisfaction in the next swipe of the credit card, the next glowing report about our kids, the next career milestone, or the next hundred Instagram followers. Yet contentment eludes us time and time again. The solution isn’t to continue pursuing the sugar rushes of what this world can offer but to seek what truly nourishes.
The practice of fasting can be part of this recalibration because it helps us draw near to God. Our famished souls learn that there’s no one more satisfying than him. If you’re worn out trying to capture elusive joy in this world, join me as we explore how fasting can give you the only hunger that leads to lasting satiation.
Fasting
Cassie Achermann, Winfree Brisley
This volume of TGC's Disciplines of Devotion series invites women to stir their affections for God by cultivating the biblical practice of fasting.
What Is Fasting?
In my early teens, I did World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine a few times with my sisters, which meant going without food to raise money for people facing poverty.1 We’d wander around church clutching our sponsorship books, and kind folks who knew I was shy would take pity on me and offer to donate.
When the designated weekend came, we’d lay at home groaning for what felt like endless hours while our dad intentionally wafted his food aromas in our direction. As soon as the clock struck noon on Sunday, we’d rush to McDonald’s and down triple-cheeseburger meals.
Until a couple of years ago, the 40 Hour Famine was my only fasting experience (apart from some blood tests). But these periods of white-knuckle deprivation and constant complaining are a far cry from biblical fasting. They had a different purpose—to raise awareness and money rather than to help me spiritually.
In contrast, the kind of fasting we want to consider now refers to going without food for a limited time to aid prayer. Let’s consider each part of this definition.
Fasting is going without food. People fast from things other than food, such as social media or television. Those fasts can be beneficial and may be your only option if you can’t fast for medical reasons.2
Our focus here is only on abstaining from food (going without water for a fast of any length is dangerous).
Fasting is practiced for a limited time. The goal of fasting isn’t to go as long as you can without food. It’s not meant to be a continual state of life. Food is a good gift from God, and most of the time we’re to enjoy it with thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:4; cf. 1 Cor. 10:31). After all, there is “a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1)—a time to fast and a time to feast.
Fasting aids prayer. We’re not talking about fasting for medical reasons, as a weight-loss strategy, or even as a mere exercise in self-control. It’s always a Godward practice done for the Lord and by his strength.
Don’t think of fasting as a burdensome task to add to your already overflowing to-do list—it is rather a means of helping you bring all your neediness and weakness to God’s throne.
I began fasting out of a sense of deep need for God. A Bible study I had worked through left me yearning for God to bring revival in my heart as well as in my church.3 I started small, skipping lunch once a week and instead spending that half hour praying. Not long after, I added a second day in the week. These weren’t aimless, wandering prayer times; I was asking the Lord urgently for help in two specific areas: first, for a breakthrough in an area of ongoing sin, and second, for spiritual revival in my church, where I’d been facing discouragement and difficulty for a while.
I’ve never regretted a time of fasting. It has pushed me toward heartfelt prayer more than almost anything else in my life. Any pain and discomfort has been worth it for renewed closeness to the Lord.
I haven’t always received the specific outcome I’ve wanted, but even when my situation hasn’t changed, my heart has.
Fasting in the Old Testament
God’s people have fasted in all kinds of ways throughout history. Let’s briefly tour the Bible to see why God’s people fasted.
Obeying God’s Command
There’s only one instance in the Bible where God commanded people to regularly fast. Under the old covenant law, Israel was to observe the Day of Atonement once a year. They gave offerings, abstained from work, and “afflicted” themselves (Lev. 23:26–32), meaning they fasted.4 This demonstrated how serious their sins were and how much they needed God’s mercy. It was an outward sign of inward humility, and the whole nation was to do this together.
Believers under the new covenant do not observe the Day of Atonement, given that Christ fulfilled what it foreshadowed in his death. But the principle behind it resonates with the example of others in Scripture who fasted, inviting us to continue the practice today.
Fasting can give you the only hunger that leads to lasting satiation.
Expressing Repentance and Grief
Fasting in the Old Testament was often a sign of mourning, particularly for sin. One notable example is in the book of Jonah. God instructed the reluctant prophet to go to the wicked city of Nineveh and announce its impending destruction. Jonah was reluctant, but he eventually obeyed. Surprisingly, the people of Nineveh didn’t just mourn what was coming to them but mourned their sin. They put on sackcloth, wept, and fasted as a display of genuine repentance (Jonah 3:5–9). And God relented from destroying them (Jonah 3:10).
Throughout the Old Testament, people expressed grief over their sin or the sins of others through fasting and prayer.5
Seeking God’s Protection, Provision, or Guidance
Expressing repentance often involved petition— people asked God for mercy or deliverance from the consequences of sin. But there are also many passages where fasting served to intensify other requests.
In the book of Esther, the Jews faced eradication under the king’s edict. Only Esther could persuade the king to change his mind, but she could be killed for coming before him unbidden. She called on all the Jews to join her in fasting for three days and three nights (Esther 4:15–16). Though it’s never explicitly stated, this fasting would have been accompanied by prayer.6 By God’s miraculous hand, the king was favorable toward Esther, and the Jews were spared.
God’s people also fasted and prayed for deliverance in battle, protection while traveling, guidance for decisions, fulfillment of the Lord’s promises, and more.7
Fasting in the New Testament
Fasting continued in the New Testament, even after Jesus’s arrival. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness before he was tested by Satan.8 When the evil one tried to convince Jesus to turn a stone into bread, using his divine power to serve his own interests, Jesus quoted Scripture and gave us what may be the key attitude for fasting: “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matt. 4:4). Going without food reminds us that there is something more important and satisfying than food.
Jesus also explicitly taught his followers about fasting. In the Sermon on the Mount, he instructed them not to fast to impress others (Matt. 6:16–18). He condemned those who boasted in their fasting before God as if it made them righteous (Luke 18:10–14).
In Matthew 9:14–15, Jesus spoke about the right time to fast. He was questioned by John the Baptist’s disciples about why his own disciples didn’t join the customary fasts. His answer implied that the Jews had forgotten what fasting was meant for. Jesus, the bridegroom, was bodily present with his people. Fasting with Christ made as little sense as mourning at a wedding celebration. One day, he said, they would fast again, when he was taken away from them at his ascension. The church did this in the first century (Acts 13:1–3; 14:23). In other words, Jesus’s disciples didn’t need to fast because he was physically present with them. Fasting is helpful for us, however, because we’re physically separated from our Lord and long for him to return.
Across the Old and New Testaments, God’s people have fasted. And Christians have continued ever since. You might see your needs reflected in these biblical stories. Do you feel weighed down by your sin, grieved by evil in the church or world, or desperate for God’s presence and guidance? Though fasting doesn’t seem common in evangelical circles today, many throughout history have followed the example of the early church and the rest of the biblical witness. Might you join them?
Notes:
- For more information, see https://40hourfamine.com.au/.
- If you have any medical conditions that may make fasting inadvisable, talk to your doctor first. Those with eating disorders will likely find fasting more harmful than helpful. Those with a history of eating disorders should likewise exercise caution and seek godly counsel. Remember, fasting is an aid, not a requirement. You’re no less godly if wisdom dictates that you shouldn’t participate.
- Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Tim Grissom, Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival (Moody Publishers, 2019).
- John Currid, notes on Leviticus, in ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2008), 239.
- For example, see 1 Sam. 7:6; 1 Kings 21:20–29; Ezra 9:1–5; Neh. 1; Dan. 9:1–19.
- Wallace P. Benn, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther: Restoring the Church, Preaching the Word (Crossway, 2021), 163.
- For example, see Judg. 20:26; 2 Chron. 20:3–4; Ezra 8:21–23; Luke 2:36–38.
- Jesus’s forty-day fast paralleled Moses’s fasts (see Ex. 34:27–28; Deut. 9:18–19) and the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness for forty years (Deut. 8:2). This was a special period when Jesus proved himself as God’s obedient Son. God preserved both Jesus and Moses, as his representatives, beyond what a human being can normally handle. So these examples aren’t normative for us.
This article is adapted from Fasting by Cassie Achermann.
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