Fasting

How many of you start the new year by fasting and praying to seek God's will and direction for the year, or to seek revival and/or His blessing and favor on your nation or city? This has become increasingly popular. More and more believers find themselves fasting as they seek God's will for the year. Some people fast and pray for a day or two in early January. Others fast and pray for a week, others for the whole month of January and others begin a 40 day fast on Jan 2. Some people don't fast at the beginning of the year, but at other times during the year as God puts it on their heart to do so.

If you are a "faster," you know what I mean. If you are not a "faster," then you may find yourself wondering why people would bother to fast and pray. Someone who was not into fasting once told me, "God loves me. I don't have to starve myself to get His attention or to get Him to answer my prayers." And that is true. God loves you and He hears your prayers whether you fast or not. So why fast?

Before I answer that, let me define what I am talking about when I use the word "fast." A fast is to deny yourself physically, to go without food because you are seeking God. A lot of people have begun to use the term "fast" in other ways, such as "fasting television" or "fasting the Internet." I think it can be a very good practice to deny yourself things that become a hindrance to spending time with God, to cut back on things that distract you from God.

For instance, God recently told me to stop playing computer games for a while. At first I used them as a distraction while I was waiting for a process on the computer to complete, but over time I became sort of compulsive about them. When I had a bad day or felt frustrated about something, I would bring up computer Hearts or Spider Solitaire to escape from what was bothering me. One time had trouble sleeping at night and I compulsively played computer games for three hours solid in the wee hours of the morning. So God told me that for a week, I was not allowed to play them at all because they had gotten out of control in my life.

When an area of our life gets out of God's lordship, He will want to take it back. It was computer games for me. Some people do that with going to movies or watching television or talking in an Internet chatroom, etc. All of these may be "good things" in and of themselves, but they stop being good when they become a compulsion that controls us or that distracts us from God. And God may tell us to cut back on things at various times, to do without them for a season, so that He regains Lordship over that area of our life. That happens. If God tells you to deny yourself in an area that has wandered outside of His Lordship, then you better do it.

But that type of denial (things that got control over some area of your life) is not what I mean when I talk about fasting. And it is not what the Bible means by the word "fast."

God defined fasts in the Old Testament as denying yourself food. He explicitly spelled out some fasts in Old Testament law and we also see fasting and prayer modeled in many places in the Bible. God's commanded fasts all had to do with what people put in their mouths to nourish and sustain their bodies/life. Personally, I believe that the reason He asks us to deny ourselves food is because fasting is a prophetic acting out of "dying to the flesh so that we might live in the spirit" (Rom. 8:13).

As my friend pointed out, God hears our prayers whether or not we fast, so why fast?

There are several reasons to fast. One of them is that God felt fasting and prayer was so important that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to fast and pray and be tempted by Satan at the beginning of His ministry. Jesus did a 40 day fast under the harshest of conditions, wandering around the wilderness without any type of shelter from the elements or place to rest and relax. The Bible says that after He fasted 40 days, He was VERY HUNGRY. Why would Jesus subject Himself to that type of discomfort and difficulty if fasting did not play an important role in God's plan? Jesus is our role model. If He fasted and prayed, then we need to follow His example.

Another reason to fast is because Jesus said that His disciples would fast. John's disciples came to Him in Matt 9:14-15 complaining to Jesus because His disciples did not fast. Jesus' reply, verse 15, was that His disciples didn't need to fast right then because He was physically with them, but after He was crucified and rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, then His disciples would fast and pray. That shows us that Jesus expects His followers to fast.

Another reason to fast is because fasting gives us some sort of spiritual authority in deliverance and physical healing. We see this from the incident in Matt 17 where an epileptic boy is brought to the disciples but they couldn't heal them. So the father appealed to Jesus for help. Jesus responded by rebuking a demon and it left the boy and he was healed. Later on the disciples asked Jesus why they could not heal this boy. And He said, in verse 21, "This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting." That statement gives us an indication that there are times when fasting gives us some measure of authority for healing and deliverance.

There are times when people fast to demonstrate to God how serious they are in seeking His help or direction. We see this in Esther's case. You are probably familiar with the story, but let me recount it for you. Esther was a Jewish girl who became the queen. She did not publicize that she was Jewish so the king did not know. One of the king's officials hated the Jews, and passed a law allowing people to kill all Jews on a certain date and take all of their possessions. Mordecai, Esther's uncle, approached Esther and told her to petition the king to repeal this law. But there was a problem that made his request difficult. The problem was that the court rules made it a death penalty to come to court unsummoned and the king had not summoned her for a long time. She was afraid that she would die if she tried to approach the king at court. Mordecai suggested that she'd probably be killed anyhow if the edict was carried out to execute the Jews. He also suggested that maybe the whole reason God allowed her to be queen was to save the Jewish people. So Esther said she would approach the king on behalf of her people, even if she died in the attempt. This was a very serious (life and death) situation to Esther personally and to the all of the Jewish people. She wanted God's help in this. She wanted to demonstrate to God just how serious she was for His help/intervention, so she went without food and water for three days. That is the most severe type of fast there is. In fact, a person will die if they go much longer than three says without water. Esther fasted in this intense manner to demonstrate to God how desperate she was for God's help. (By the way, God helped her. Read the book of Esther for the details.)

Those are all good reasons to fast. But most of the time when I fast, it is for an entirely different reason. I am not sure whether or not there is a Scriptural basis for this. But fasting has two really important effects on my life and they are my primary motivations to fast.

One is that I can hear God much more clearly when I am fasting. I don't know why that is, but it seems to hold true each time I fast. So if I really need to hear from Him in some area and I am having trouble hearing Him, I will often do a fast to hear from Him. I don't usually set a given number of days to fast. I plan to fast until I hear from Him in the area where I am seeking Him. Most of the time I hear clearly for God three or four days into the fast. Sometimes He speaks faster and sometimes He makes me wait longer. But when I fast, it is like my spiritual senses quicken and I become more aware of Him and more aware of what He is saying. In general, I hear God pretty well on most topics. But at times I feel that I need to hear Him more clearly and I will fast and pray and seek Him to speak to me in a given area. I am usually the one who initiates this type of "listening fast," e.g., fasting explicitly to hear God clearly on some topic. But at times God will instruct me to fast because He has something He wants to talk to me about.

The other reason I like to fast is to draw close to God, to enter into deeper intimacy with Him. Typically I don't initiate a fast on my own for this purpose. At times God calls me to fast because He wants to draw me into greater intimacy and fellowship with Him. It reminds me of the verse from John 14:15 where Jesus says something to the effect of, "If you love Me, then you will obey Me." At times God calls me to demonstrate my love to Him by obeying His call to fast and pray. And when I demonstrate my love to Him that way, He usually demonstrates His love back to me even more, by drawing me closer and allowing me to perceive His nearness and His presence. It is such a wonderful place to be. I love these types of fasts. It is like my spiritual senses awaken and sharpen and it is so much easier to perceive Him and what He is doing. It becomes so much easier to feel His love for me, to be aware of His presence surrounding me and to feel closer to Him than I normally do. In fact, there have been times when I have felt "far" from God or have been in a desert experience, and I have begged God to call me to an intimacy fast. Those fasts serve to break the spiritual dryness and to bring me into a new dimension in my walk with Him. There have been a few times where I have asked God to call me into an intimacy fast, and He has not done so. But most of the time when I find myself hungering and yearning for Him in that manner, He will say "yes" to my request and initiate one of those marvelous intimacy fasts. And I love it when He does that.

There are a lot of good reasons to fast. I have already listed several: Jesus was our role model and He fasted, Jesus expects His disciples to fast, fasting gives us increased authority, fasting demonstrates to God how serious we are for His help or intervention, fasting enables us to hear His voice more clearly, and fasting draws us into deeper intimacy with Him. Of course, these are not the only reasons to fast. Perhaps you and the Lord might want to sit down together and come up with some additional reasons to fast. Why don't you try asking Him about fasting and prayer and see what He says to you?