4 Reasons not to Fast
Throughout the Scriptures, we see the practise of fasting – people deliberately abstaining from something (usually food) to add focus and intensity to their prayer lives.
Some Christians today are big on fasting, some are not – some of us do it occasionally when a need arises, others of us fast regularly as part of the rhythm of the spiritual life, and still others of us will never fast.
In this blog, I’d like to give us four reasons not to fast…
(1) Lobbying God
Fasting is not a protest. It’s not the spiritual equivalent of a hunger strike…
In Isaiah 58 – The people have a complaint against God:
‘We have fasted before you!’ … ‘Why aren’t you impressed?
We have been very hard on ourselves, and you don’t even notice it!’
Like any spiritual practise fasting is simply a tool that God gives us, not a weapon that we can use to pressurise Him into doing what we want Him to do. It’s not about brownie points, bargaining chips, or battering rams… We fast for His purposes – not ours…
(2) License for Sin
Like any other spiritual practise, there’s a real danger that the good that we do becomes an excuse for the bad – as if one balances out the other…
Again, in Isaiah 58, God answers their earlier question -
Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
God then tells us the kind of fast He requires – which is less to do with what we’re not doing when we fast… and more to do with what we are doing.
How might our surplus food be shared with the hungry?
How might our extra time be spent on the hurting?
(3) Losing Weight
We do hear a lot these days about intermittent fasting (like the famous 5-2 diet) or fasting from certain types of food. Although it is good to look after the bodies God has given us – biblical fasting is not about looking good or losing weight.
Through Prophet Zechariah, God probes the people:
“When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?”
In the Books of Acts, the Holy Spirit spoke to the Church:
“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting…”
Worshiping and fasting – God has to be the centre of fasting
We fast from food to feast on God!
Final reason not to fast:
(4) Looking Spiritual
When Jesus taught on prayer He used the phrase: “When you fast…” so clearly it’s His expectation that we will…
But Jesus says:
“...don’t make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won’t make you a saint.
If you ‘go into training’ inwardly, act normal outwardly...
Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn’t require attention-getting devices.
He won’t overlook what you are doing; He’ll reward you well.”
Jesus tells us not to allow fasting to become a bragging right… so to cut off that temptation – He tells us to keep quiet about it, so that we’re sure about our motives for doing it.
Allow the deep rumblings to prompt you to pray,
the cravings to stir you to seek God,
the hunger pangs to hanker after His Word,
until the prayer and fasting flow as one –
and prayer becomes as regular and natural as eating.
No-one else needs to know – it is God who sees.