The Spiritual Practice of Fasting

On March 19, 1982 I stood up from the lunch table and my back spasmed. The pain was excruciating as the spasms twisted and bent my spine against its will.

With previous episodes, the spasms abated after a few weeks. But as time passed, this occurrence was different: The spasms persisted and became chronic.

Incessant pain is a powerful motivation.

As time dragged on, I became more and more desperate for relief. I saw numerous doctors, who performed numerous tests, prescribed various meds, and offered little in the way of a diagnosis. Nothing worked worth noting.

My options for answers and healing were getting slim. I needed God to intervene, to heal, to reinstate my physical equilibrium.

So, I prayed. And I prayed. And I asked others to pray. I prayed through a list. I prayed for others. I prayed lying down. I prayed kneeling down. I prayed naked, I prayed clothed. I prayed impromptu and I prayed in Jesus’ name.

Nothing. As Lewis observed, “Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

I needed help. Real help. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, couldn’t find anything to ease my discomfort.

Desperate times require desperate measures.

There was nothing left to do but go on a fast. Get God’s attention.

For forty days, I fasted. It was a fast of biblical proportion.

Mr. Gore had not yet invented the internet, so research about fasting was not at my fingertips. It didn’t occur to me to read anything on the subject. Fasting was in the Bible. The men and women of the faith fasted. Jesus fasted. If it worked for them, it would work for me. I hoped.

As I write to you, I’ve endured the pain that began on that March day in 1982 every moment of every day since. On a good day, when I lie down at night there is about twenty seconds of blessed relief. On a bad day, I just start searching for sleep as soon as I’m prone.

In retrospect, I didn’t go on a fast all those years ago. I went on a hunger strike.

But fast, hunger strike. Whatever.

Fasting didn’t work, even a biblical fast of forty days and forty nights. Yet, any list of the spiritual disciplines includes the practice of fasting.

Why?

First, as I’ve come to realize, fasting is not a hunger strike to get God’s attention, for the simple reason that God doesn’t need His attention gotten. He knows all. He never sleeps, doesn’t even slumber. He knows the number of hairs on your head and considers you the apple of His eye. He loves you without reservation, is dedicated to your wellbeing, and promises His faithfulness, goodness, and lovingkindness to you all the days of your life. He knows you—knows everything about you. He wants the best for you. You don’t need to get His attention.

Second, to approach fasting as a means to gain God’s favor, impress Him, improve your standing with Him, or to convince Him you are serious, godly, or more dedicated than ever before to living a spiritual life is a misuse of the practice of fasting. Your standing with God is based upon one thing: whether or not you are in Christ.

Either you are or you aren’t—in Christ Jesus.

If not, then you are outside of God, apart from His life, and not included in the family of God. If you are a Christian, a Believer, a person who has accepted God’s salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, then you are in Christ.

You are close. You are endowed with a new identity, set apart for God, forgiven, justified, and redeemed. Everything that separated you from God has been reconciled. Nothing stands between you and Him. The person who is in Christ is as close to God as Christ Himself. Nothing can enhance this position you have. Nothing can diminish it either.

If you are in Christ, you are close.

If you are not in Christ, then you are far away.

So, why are we supposed to practice the spiritual disciplines if our standing with God is secured and complete?

The obvious answer is that the spiritual disciplines are not intended to restore, enhance, or otherwise amend your standing with God. Practicing the disciplines of the faith must be for another purpose.

Candidly, you cannot do, perform, or enact any behavior that will improve who God has already declared you to be as a result of being included in the life of Jesus Christ. Throughout the New Testament, but especially the Book of Hebrews, Scripture references the work of Christ as finished, complete, and entirely fulfilling of God’s standards. Thus, if you are in Christ, then you are complete in Him.

This is an amazing thing! No matter how we may try, I seriously doubt our earth-bound selves will ever comprehend more than a smidgen of God’s magnificent grace and mercy.

Yet, we know God’s mercy and grace are there. We know they are true. We comprehend that we are the beneficiaries of His lovingkindness toward us.

But the fog of our humanity, the noise of life, the residuals of the Fall, the bumping grinding of (fill in the blank) renders a chasm, almost a schism, between what we know spiritually and what we think about, feel, and the choices we must make. In short, it feels as though our spirits live in one world and our souls in another. It feels as though our spirit speaks one language and our soul another. Yes, we are new creations in Christ… who contend with duplicity, intrigue, impurity, and conflict inside our souls.

This felt incongruity is where the the spiritual discipline of fasting comes into play.

The McKays write, “Fasting is the most concrete and viscerally embodied of the spiritual disciplines, and its intersection of the physical and the metaphysical [spiritual] produces uniquely potent, perceptible, senses-arousing effects that bridge the often too-wide gap between body and soul.”

The McKays and I are not defining the components of our humanity in the same way, but we are saying the same thing: Often, given all the distractions and demands of life, a gap emerges between our spiritual lives and our earthly lives that renders our spiritual reality seemingly irrelevant to our earthly reality. We know this irrelevance must not be the actual case, but bridging the chasm is daunting.

Fasting creates leverage, acts like a bridge, and provides the incentive necessary to seize the day, gain momentum, or produce the clarity our faith needs to take the next step of trust. The discipline of fasting, like any form of discipline, produces congruity—synthesis—between our spirit, soul, and body.

The practice of fasting does not change your standing with God, but by engaging in a viscerally demanding activity while focusing on a spiritual truth, the practice of fasting facilitates the aligning of your soul with your spirit and this is indicative of your heart’s true desire. Hebrews puts it like this: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

Virtually all religions teach the practice of fasting—for different reasons and motivations, obviously, but the point is: In our quest to fill the God-shaped vacuum designed into us, we recognize a chasm between this life and God’s life. Even though complete in Christ, as Christianity teaches, there remains the struggle to align what we believe spiritually with what we live daily. By deliberately challenging this life with fasting, an intensity is created that facilitates congruence between spirit and soul.

The most common fast is from food and/or drink. After missing a couple of meals, your attention is gotten. You are hungry. Fasting from your favorite drink, or routine snack, or an aspect of your habitual diet garners your attention.

Once realized, you seize upon this heightened awareness, your discomfort, and use it to fuel the tenor of your prayer with a different intensity than is customary. This fast is not to get God’s attention, as I illustrated earlier in my misguided zeal, but to focus your attention on how the Spirit of God is speaking to you, guiding you, and illuminating for you in your heightened sensitivity just how His perspectives may guide your earthly existence.

Using a fast to reset or recharge your physical health is great and something health counselors advocate, but to gain spiritually from a fast means that you make a determination to use the demands of fasting to focus your spiritual and soulical attention on a common objective: to comprehend and understand to a greater degree the spiritual reality of your life in Christ and how this applies to and superintends your daily life.

The practice of fasting keeps you honest about what is true, what is truly in your heart, and what you truly need to live as God intends.

Over the last weeks, I’ve grown dissatisfied with how much time I was spending browsing Instagram. I was reading less, contemplating less… but I enjoyed Instagram and the images fed to me by its algorithms. I felt conflicted. I also felt weak, deprived, less vital.

Then my phone needed replacing—right before I departed for a demanding week-long conference, followed immediately by a camping trip, followed shortly by an off-grid retreat.

This was the incentive I needed.

When the new phone arrived, I booted it up with the simplicity of no Instagram app. I capitalized on a period of demanding and remote travel obligations to deny myself Instagram. The next sentence is critically important: And with the denial, i.e. the fast from Instagram, I determined to use the time gained to pray, to read Scripture, to journal, and to more clearly take inventory of how I wanted to spend my time while asking God for guidance on how He envisions me spending the time I have been granted.

Will I restart Instagram one of these days?

I don’t know. That’s TBD. For now, my denial is a fast from technology that is serving my spiritual purposes.

Over time, I’ve practiced fasting by living more simply. By this I mean, deliberately reducing the overhead of my earthly possessions to explore more earnestly God’s provisions for me. At the same time, to more honestly consider the poor around me.

I’ve fasted for a time from forms of literature I enjoy to listen more intently to God via literature that transports my soul more reliably into the focus of my spirit. I’ve also fasted from simplistic Christian literature in order to digest Christian literature that demands more of me.

You can employ a fast with almost any aspect of life. The critical component of the fast is to discern and determine your intent in fasting.

Once again, you hear me identifying motive: What underlies the reason for your practice?

If there is a hint in your motive of performing a practice to gain favor with God, your practice is misguided. You are already favored by God because of the finished and completed work of Jesus Christ.

If your motive is to position yourself such that you hear more clearly, understand more deeply, and apply more consistently the spiritual reality that is yours upon your earthly life, then your motive is pure and your spiritual practice is working as intended.

You don’t have to read your Bible and study. You don’t have to journal and practice personal reflection. You don’t have to practice confession, submission, fasting, or any other of the remaining spiritual disciplines.

Neither do you have to eat vegetables, exercise, get a good night’s sleep, moderate your drinking, be diligent with your work, honor your word, hug your spouse and kids, or prioritize a family meal together.  

But if you desire to get the most out of life and family, you will discipline your life such that you seize each day to your advantage.

Likewise, if you desire to more fully comprehend who God is, who He has declared you to be, and what it means that you are endowed with the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you will put yourself in place to practice the disciplines of the faith. Not to make yourself more holy, acceptable, or endeared to God since enhancing your standing with God is not possible.

You will practice the disciplines because doing so puts you on the path your heart desires to walk—the place where God walks.