Have the holiday goodies started showing up in your office or home? About this time of year, those open boxes of chocolates, homemade cookies and, yes, even fruitcakes appear almost everywhere you go, tempting us to eat food we don’t really need. This will soon be followed in the New Year by all kinds of health club membership offers and dieting crazes. There are literally thousands of diets: some for losing weight, others for gaining weight, for lowering cholesterol, for diabetics, for vegans, for paleos… and the list goes on. No wonder it’s a $60 billion a year industry!
Biblical fasting is NOT a diet; it’s a process for seeking God’s will and purifying ourselves inside and out. It was an expected discipline in both the Old and New Testament eras. For example, Moses fasted at least two forty-day periods. Jesus fasted forty days and reminded His followers to fast: “when you fast,” he said, not “if you fast”. Fasting is a biblical way to truly humble yourself in the sight of God (Ezra 8:21). King David said in Psalm 35:13, “I humble myself through fasting.” Isaiah 58 makes it clear that true fasting is about aligning our hearts for God with our actions. Both are required. If we aren’t seeking God’s will and His ways, it’s not fasting; it’s just going hungry.
Fasting was practiced individually as well as in groups. When God’s people sought the LORD and asked Him to work, they often did it with fasting and prayer. Acts 13:2 “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’.” Acts 14:23 “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.”
Fasting is going voluntarily without food — or any other regularly enjoyed, good gift from God — for spiritual purposes. Fasting sounds so simple, yet the world, our flesh, and the devil all work to make it complicated and difficult for Christ’s followers. Christian fasting seeks to take the pangs of hunger and transform them to advance a greater cause, an eternal investment, or for even deeper hunger for Jesus Christ.
Here are some simple instructions for those who haven’t fasted before.
1. Start small – Don’t go for 40 days and nights at first! Start with one meal; then try two meals, and work your way up to a day-long fast. Perhaps eventually try a two-day juice fast. It’s not recommended that you abstain from water during a fast of any length. A juice fast means abstaining from all food and beverage, except for juice and water. Allowing yourself juice provides nutrients and sugar for the body to keep you operating, while also still feeling the effects from going without solid food. Watch out for being “hangry” (hungry + angry) and give those around you more love, more space, more kindness, more grace!
2. Plan what you’ll do instead of eating – One significant part of fasting is the time it creates for prayer and meditation on God’s word or some act of love for others. Connect it to your purpose for the fast. Ask God to search your own heart and to reveal Himself to you through extra time in His Word.
Please join the pastors and elders on the first Tuesday of the month (starting tomorrow) as we fast and pray for the mission and vision of Valley Church. We want to move forward with God’s guidance and blessing. You can pray through a one page description of our mission and vision at https://valleychurch.org/v/about/mission/
3. Fast from something other than food – Fasting from food is not necessarily for everyone. If the better part of wisdom for you, in your health condition, is not to go without food, consider fasting from television, computer, social media, or some other regular enjoyment that would bend your heart toward greater enjoyment of Jesus and alignment with His purposes for your life.
Our text for this Sunday, Hebrews 13:8,9 describe people focused on food instead of grace! It’s of no benefit just to emphasize diets and food, or FASTING from food! Fasting isn’t a way to lift yourself up, make yourself “holier than thou”, or to impress other people (Matt 6:16-18); if anything, it will show you how needy and dependent you are! It’s a reminder that “it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace.”
Grace and peace,
Kurt