Fasting has been a practice deeply rooted in diverse cultures and religions across the world, revered for its profound spiritual impact.
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By eliminating external sources of nourishment, fasting allows individuals to ease the mind, heighten self-awareness, and connect with the divine on a deeper level. If you’re curious about fasting and considering it for your spiritual journey, keep reading to discover how its unique benefits can enhance your mental and spiritual well-being.
Biblical Fasting: A Historical Perspective
For thousands of years, biblical fasting has been the practice of abstaining from food for spiritual purposes. Fasting might sound sensational today, but in Jesus’ culture, it was weird for a religious person not to fast.
Fasting is mentioned throughout the Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. However, when Christians discuss fasting, two key passages often come up: one from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah and one from Jesus himself. But neither of these passages gives us specifics on how to abstain from food. Rather, both focus on the heart of the person fasting.
In Isaiah 58, God sees the nation of Israel abstaining from food for a day in order to seek help from God. Through Isaiah, God tells the people that He doesn’t want them to go a day without food; He wants them to abstain from the ways they’ve oppressed one another.
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Likewise, when Jesus instructs His followers on how to fast, he tells them not to do so for show. Christians shouldn’t fast in order to look pious or righteous. Fasting is a practice of humbling yourself before God. If you’re turning a fast into a spiritual ego boost, you’ve missed the point entirely.
Examples of Fasting in the Bible
The Bible is full of examples of people who have abstained from food to seek God:
- Jesus fasted before He began His public ministry (Luke 4:1,2).
- Nehemiah fasted to help him confess his sins to God and turn away from them and to ask God for favor in the sight of the king of Persia to get permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:4).
- David fasted to ask God to intervene because of injustice (Psalm 35:13).
- Mordecai and the Jews fasted upon hearing news of Haman’s wicked plot for their extermination (Esther 4:3).
- The early church fasted while worshiping and committing their ministry to the Lord. They also sought the Lord through fasting for guidance when they appointed leaders (Acts 13:2; 14:23).
Fasting is not limited to the believers the Bible mentions. Many of the church’s most important leaders during an important time in history known as the Protestant Reformation - including Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox - fasted.
Why Do Christians Fast?
Biblical fasting is not a hunger strike between you and God. It can be easy to think of fasting as a way to add an extra oomph to your prayers. But biblical fasting isn’t so much about how God responds to your prayers: it’s more about how you bring your prayers to Him.
Fasting is a means of humbling ourselves before God. In the Old Testament, fasting was often accompanied by other signs of humility and brokenness, such as weeping, mourning, and lamenting, as well as wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes.
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Bill Bright, Cru’s co-founder, made it his practice to fast and pray. He believed it played a vital role in what God did through him and through Cru as a ministry. He listed several benefits he gained from fasting:
- Fasting is a biblical way to truly humble yourself in the sight of God.
- Fasting enables the Holy Spirit to reveal your true spiritual condition, resulting in brokenness, repentance and a transformed life.
- Your confidence and faith in God will be strengthened.
- You will feel mentally, spiritually and physically refreshed.
It’s important to understand that fasting is not a way to get a better response to prayer.
Exploring the Spiritual Benefits of Fasting
While the absence of food intake encourages the body to burn fat, the primary purpose of fasting goes far beyond mere weight loss.
Heightened Self-Awareness and Inner Clarity
Removing external nourishment fosters self-reflection and encourages one to live in the moment. The power of introspection also comes into effect, allowing individuals to uncover and release emotional blocks that may have been buried for years. Abstaining from water and food redirects the mind’s focus inward, creating a space where personal revelations and moments of clarity can surge, leading to deeper insights about oneself and one’s purpose in life.
Enhanced Intuition and Connection to the Divine
Fasting can encourage spiritual sensitivity by quieting the mind, which allows for an elevated sense of intuition. With distractions minimized, individuals often find themselves more aware of their inner thoughts and feelings. Experiences like meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices can be significantly enhanced, facilitating a more profound spiritual exploration and transformative insights.
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Physical Sacrifice as a Path to Spiritual Growth
No food or liquid intake acts as a form of surrender, where physical discomfort encourages humility, and the inability to fulfill bodily needs and desires compels individuals to yield to a higher purpose, teaching the lesson of letting go. Ancient beliefs in fasting view it as a powerful method of purification and a reset for both the body and mind. By cleansing the body from external nourishment and relying on inner resources, individuals promote self-discipline and cultivate a deeper connection to their spiritual essence.
Cultivating Gratitude and Inner Strength
Greater appreciation for the essentials also derives from fasting. The experience allows one to value life’s simple necessities, such as water and nourishment, often taken for granted. Moreover, fasting builds mental and spiritual resilience through its disciplined methodology. This approach not only encourages reflection but also reinforces inner willpower and cultivates spiritual strength. Physical discomfort makes individuals grateful for what they have, transforming their relationship with food and the world around them.
How Does Fasting Kill Off Evil Desires?
When we fast, we learn to say “no” to the body’s most basic and powerful desire: for food. Simply put, if you can gain control over your body’s basic desire for food, you can learn to control your body’s desire for anything. I often put it this way: once you learn to say “no” to food, lust is no problem. Mastering the highest level of spiritual discipline gains you instant mastery over the lower ones. Nothing teaches our flesh to submit to the Spirit more powerfully than fasting.
Fasting breaks spiritual bondages! It is a bitter death-blow to the flesh, and once the flesh is mastered by fasting, it no longer has control over us. It stops being our “default” reaction. We are free to live unto God.
Fasting Brings Spiritual Clarity
Fasting humiliates our tendency to rely on the natural world and forces us to live from the spiritual. As a result, God’s voice becomes clearer. Fasting is a great way to gain clarity for an important decision.
When I read Scripture on a fast, the Word speaks to me with so much more power, urgency and, again, clarity. It’s like a veil is lifted and I can see the mysteries of Scripture more clearly than before. As I noted in part two of this series, I learn to “feed” on the Scriptures (see Matthew 4:4) and gain real nourishment from the Word. I learn to crave the Living Food rather than the dead food of this world.
It’s easier to see where and how God is working when fasting. It becomes more natural to live, move, and perceive in the spiritual realm when we are actually living a spiritual lifestyle. Our fleshly nature is bridled and no longer “clouds” our spiritual perception.
I’ve probably spent less than 10% of my total lifetime fasting, yet I’ve probably received over 80% of my visions and direct words from God during or as a result of a fast. I don’t want to create unrealistic expectations of supernatural phenomena, but there is no question fasting causes one’s spiritual senstivity and submission to skyrocket. Ask anyone who has fasted unto the Lord for a length of time, and they’ll tell you the same thing.
Fasting Reveals The Things That Control Us
When we fast, some of our nastiest character traits are brought to the surface during the difficult portions. Fleshly lusts, anger, irritability, jealousy, and fear are just some of the things that come to the forefront. These revelations are good and healthy, however, because we are forced to deal with them directly.
Fasting Unlocks Spiritual Power
When we stop relying on inferior sources of power, the power of God is able to more fully envelop and fill us. I find I speak with more authority and power on a fast. I find I do EVERYTHING with more spiritual power and authority.
Building Trust, Falling in Love
Fasting teaches us to trust God at the deepest level. It forces us to depend on Him. That trust builds relationship, and relationship fosters love.