Last week I invited members of my church to fast with me on Monday’s. Fasting doesn’t really have much of a place in our lives today. As I sit here at about 1:00 pm on a Monday, I am hungry. I haven’t eaten now for over 19 hours. So what exactly is the benefit to this and why would you ask others to join in? These are excellent questions and so I thought it would be good to talk about the value of fasting of why it could be beneficial even today.

But what if I have a medical condition that doesn’t allow me to stop eating? Well then I would suggest fasting something else…TV, a leisure activity, exercise, social media, smart phones, etc. Anything can be fasted as we will see when we see the purposes of fasting below.

Fasting isn’t mentioned much in the New Testament. Most frequently we see that it mentioned in the gospels, but the fasting mentioned there relates more closely to fasting in the Old Testament, which I believe to be a bit different from why we fast today. In fact, the only place we really see fasting in the church is in Acts 13 and 14, and in both chapters fasting is connected to prayer.

Though there are more reasons for fasting, I want to share with you 3 reasons to fast.

Replace

The first purpose of fasting is to replace the time you spend preparing food and eating with prayer. Again, fasting is connected to prayer. We all live busy lives and sometimes it can be hard to devote everything to prayer. So fasting allows us to devote ourselves to prayer regarding something specific…we replace eating with praying.

Remind

Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8 in Matthew 4 when he said that man shall not live by bread alone. There is something we need more than eating and drinking. We need Jesus, the bread of life and living water. When we fast it creates a desire. We gut hunger pains, or maybe other cravings if we are fasting something other than food. These hunger pains/urges/desires serve to remind us that we are to desire God more than other things.

Request

The third purpose of fasting is to make a request to God. Maybe it is for someone’s healing, even as David fasted and prayed for the healing of his first child with Bathsheba. Maybe it is for a successful ministry endeavor as in Acts 13. Maybe it is for a wayward child, wisdom for a decision, or any other matter that God lays on our hearts. Fasting is an opportunity to make a request of God.

So what did I ask the church I belong to to fast and pray about? Great questions…

I keep hearing statistics about how many Christians have no urge to return to church after covid. I also see that in many ways both personal and corporate evangelism have been almost completely shut down during quarantines. I don’t believe that either of these things are pleasing to the Lord or good for the church.

For the time being I am fasting breakfast and lunch on Mondays, that means a 24 hour fast, for the purpose of praying for the gathering of believers (aka church) and for the spread of the gospel here in Walla Walla and around the world. Would you consider joining me? Maybe it’s just for breakfast…maybe lunch too. Maybe its something other than food that you fast. But let’s pray for the health and well being of the church and for the spread of the gospel.