Revisiting the Sacred Practice of Fasting
The ancient practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline has deep roots in Christianity, stretching back thousands of years. How can revisiting this sacred practice deepen your faith?
Hey friends!
Autumn is slowly fading away in London and the days are getting colder. The wind was relentless this past week, careening down the streets carrying leaves and debris as it whipped around the rows of old Victorian houses where my flat is wedged within. There’s one tree left in the park outside our home whose leaves have only just begun to change, the vibrant yellow foliage holding on as long as it can before the frosty grip of winter sets in.
There’s something I really love about the changing of seasons. Perhaps it’s the lingering in the in between which feels like home to me. Lately transition has been a place I’ve occupied for longer than I anticipated. As the days of November tick away and December peaks its head around the corner, I am beginning to reflect on the year past as I set my hope on Jesus for what’s to come.
For those new to this space, we’ve been in the middle of a series on the practices of Jesus, and today my hope is that I can continue on with this series while also leaning into Advent which begins on Sunday. Fasting has been deeply intertwined with waiting for me, so I suppose it makes the most sense to follow that trail down with you today. It also feels quite timely since, as an American, tomorrow is a day of feasting.
So, let’s dig in together…
Let me begin by saying, I come from a big Italian-American family where food has always been the center of things — if we’re not eating, we’re talking about eating and if we’re not talking, we’re planning what we’re going to eat next.
Being raised in a family who loves food and treasures meal time has been a great joy and blessing. Growing up, my mom always cooked our dinners, we sat down as a family each night to eat together, and I don’t ever take it for granted what a privilege that was. The gift of hospitality was woven into our upbringing and as adults, my siblings and I all take great joy in hosting dinners, cooking for others, and treasuring the company of people gathered around a table to share a meal.
I am all about food and feasting. If you know me well, you know this is true. There is nothing I enjoy more than a good meal shared between people. When planning a visit to a new place, my first thought is always to find out where the locals eat to try the local food. When I enjoy a good meal, I’m full of gratitude for the creativity of the chef, the blessing that is food, and the gift of God’s goodness in sharing a meal. I mention all this to say that fasting was never a practice I was thrilled to try. I had no grand plan of including fasting in my rule of life and could not have foreseen it becoming one of my most treasured practices.
And yet, here we are.
I am nearly four years into incorporating fasting as a practice in my life and I couldn’t be more grateful for the transformation and great joy this discipline has brought me. For the last two years, I’ve incorporated fasting as a weekly rhythm in my rule of life from sundown on Tuesday night to sundown on Wednesday. I’ve also participated in longer fasts, praying for breakthrough in various areas of my life.
Fasting has unearthed things in me that none of the other practices have. In emptying myself, I am somehow more aware of my disordered desires and the ways in which I attempt to hide them. It is through fasting that I come face-to-face with the things I grip most tightly to. It is through fasting that the locked doors to my messiest rooms swing wide open, allowing God to access all of me. It is through fasting that I’ve experienced breakthrough in some of the areas I’ve longed to see God move. It is through fasting that I’ve felt closest to the Lord, beholding his goodness, aware of myself in his loving presence. It has been a practice that has been both challenging and deeply rewarding for me.
However, before we dive deeper into fasting, it’s important to acknowledge that this practice isn’t suitable for everyone or for every season of life. If you have a history of disordered eating, fasting may not be the right practice for you. Similarly, if you have a medical condition that makes fasting unsafe or harmful, it’s wise to consider other spiritual disciplines instead.
If you fall in one of the categories above, may I suggest having a listen to Dr. Alison Cook speak about knowing when and if fasting is healthy for you in this episode of the Rule of Life podcast. Throughout this post, I will be speaking about the benefits of this practice in my own life, but please know that God can and will meet you powerfully in all the practices of Jesus.
While contemporary secular culture embraces fasting for its health benefits, its ancient roots as a spiritual discipline span thousands of years across nearly every religion.
All the major religions in the world incorporate fasting as a practice. In the Christian tradition, fasting creates sacred space for surrender and closeness to God, feasting on His presence rather than the ways of the world.
For early Christians, this was taken quite seriously. Most people fasted twice a week on Wednesday and Friday and then participated in longer periods of fasting in accordance with the church calendar. Somehow, along the way, fasting has largely faded from practice in much of the contemporary Western Christian tradition. In my own experience, it was rarely mentioned except during Lent, where it was often framed as abstinence—giving something up for the forty days of the season.
When Jesus speaks about fasting he does so under the assumption that everyone fasts because culturally this was a regular practice. Jesus tells his disciples, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” 1
Followers of Jesus fasted weekly. Jesus fasted too. Although it is not a commandment, the emphasis on fasting as an important practice in both the Old Testament and New Testament is clear. We see the radical importance of fasting throughout scripture in the lives of Moses and all the prophets, and even in Jesus’s own life. In fact, Jesus begins his ministry by fasting for forty days in solitude in the wilderness. If fasting is such an important and powerful practice of Jesus, why is it one we so often neglect?
My guess is we neglect fasting because it sits in stark opposition to our desire for comfort, convenience, and instant gratification. You see, prayer and worship are lovely but fasting, fasting is a sacrifice. It requires us to experience physical discomfort, to delay gratification, to confront our worldly desires. Fasting is a huge inconvenience.
And yet, fasting has a pretty remarkable track record for breakthrough. One of my favorite stories of prayer and fasting in history is the story of Dunkirk. Pete Hughes, Lead Pastor of KXC in London, explains it well:
“Let me give you a story, the story of Dunkirk. So we're going back to May 1940 and 338,000 British troops were stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk…they know they are sitting ducks, the choppy waters of the English Channel mean that boats can't get to the soldiers to free them, the German tanks are advancing towards them getting really close, German bombers are overhead that are going to literally drop bombs on the 338,000 soldiers on the beaches. They were absolutely terrified and without hope facing annihilation.
Then three crazy things happen that historians cannot explain… Out of nowhere Hitler commands that the German tanks stop advancing towards Dunkirk…It makes no sense but that command came straight from the top. Secondly, a mist, a fog descends upon Dunkirk, and the region’s meteorologists can't work out how it happened, but a fog descended which means the German bombers couldn't fly overhead and just drop bombs on the British soldiers —that's miracle number two. Miracle number three, the English Channel became incredibly still for three days. Historians basically say for three days the English Channel was like bathwater, literally completely still which meant hundreds and thousands of citizens in the UK got in their boats and started moving across the channel to rescue 338,000 British soldiers that were getting ready for death.
Anyone living during that season…they refer to it as ‘The Miracle of Dunkirk’. It was a miracle, complete miracle, that took place. How did that miracle take place? The answer is we'll never fully know, but I want to suggest a potential link… on the Friday the 24th of May, 1940, the day when these three crazy events took place, King George invited the whole nation to a day of prayer and fasting. Basically he said, get to your Cathedral, your local church, get on your knees and pray to God for mercy. We need to fast not just with our minds, not just with our hearts, but with the entirety of our beings. Pray heart, soul, mind, and strength. We need to pray for a miracle.
Now you could argue that those three events took place because of fate or coincidence — I just don't have enough faith to conclude that. I believe God heard the cries of his people. They were praying not just with their minds and not just with their hearts, they were praying with their bodies. They were fasting and praying for breakthrough and God heard their prayers. You see this is what happens when we fast.”2
Through fasting we offer our whole selves to God in prayer — we pray not only with our hearts and our minds, we pray with our bodies. We sit in the discomfort of hunger, emptying ourselves before God, in order to experience his presence.
Fasting is a practice which can be both a rhythm in order to offer our whole selves to God and a response in order to pray with our whole selves for breakthrough. In both instances, we fast to draw near to God in order to experience his closeness and be filled with his presence.
When we are waiting on God to move in areas of our life, fasting is one of the best practices to sustain us through the waiting. When fasting becomes a regular practice, we open up space weekly for God to move in our lives. We are saying, God, I need you more than food. I need you more than I need the things of this world. We lay ourselves before the Creator, begging for more of his presence in the brokenness of our world.
And, here is the truth. God responds. He is always present with us in our surrender. The reward is always more of his presence within us. And, sometimes, we experience a miracle. Sometimes breakthrough comes crashing in and flows into our lives in ways we could have only hoped for or imagined. And other times, we contend and contend in prayer and fasting and we don’t see the breakthrough we want, but even still, God’s presence in us burns like a wildfire and we shift from desiring our will to contending for his. Fasting shifts things internally and our focus turns towards God powerfully.
Although fasting can open the door to breakthrough in the areas where we long to see God move, it is not a means of forcing his hand or engaging in a divine transaction. Instead, it is an invitation to draw closer to him, humbly emptying ourselves so that we may be filled with his presence.
The first day I fasted, I was counting down the minutes until it was time to eat. I was planning how to break my fast moment by moment with a meal ready the second the sun set. It took me a while to shift my focus onto God instead of my hunger. And I still have days when my fast doesn’t feel quite holy. My focus is scattered. My heart is not in it. My prayer time is eaten up by distraction. My fasting is often a work in progress.
But, there are some days during my fast where the ground shifts beneath my feet and my worries which once swallowed me whole suddenly are held by God. There have been days in fasting where I have found that as my belly emptied, more space within me was filled with God’s joy and grace and endless love. It’s in those days of fasting that I find somehow the space between heaven and earth feels thinner. There is this electricity in the air around me, a magnetism drawing created to Creator, and my prayers feel weightier, more powerful, and raw.
And somehow in the emptying and the filling and the prayer and the surrendering, breakthrough tip toes along the edges of the cliff side. I am suddenly what feels like a breath away from answered prayer. Fasting creates space for me to notice how near God really is, which is the greatest reward.
And yet, none of this is transactional. God doesn’t only answer prayers when I fast nor does he not answer my prayers because I don’t fast.
Fasting cultivates an internal place of emptiness which when I surrender it to God, he fills me. My prayers feel more powerful in fasting at times because I have emptied myself of my desire for what the world can give me. The space between heaven and earth feels thin because it is thin; I’m just not always aware of it.
As Julian of Norwich famously said, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. And fasting empties us, that we may be filled with this joy."
God honors the emptying by filling me afresh. And with more space for God, there is something powerful that awakens in me which makes me more capable of carrying the title of image-bearer. There is something about fasting that shifts the atmosphere of my life, bending my will toward his.
My fast becomes a simple act of resistance to the world and all it demands of me, slowly changing me. When I fast I am saying, God I am hungry for you more than I am for food. Nothing this world can give me will satisfy the longing I carry for you. It is in fasting where I wrestle with the things that grip me the tightest. I wrestle with God who loves me too much to let me stay unchanged. I wrestle with the reality that I am on a journey to become the person God created me to be — fully Jamie in every space I occupy.
When I fast, I am saying God I need more of you in order to know me fully. I rattle the cages of the parts of me which I long to keep locked up — the shadows I don’t want to face. My fasting loosens the chains and I find myself free in ways only God can orchestrate. And even when the promise I’m waiting on still feels far away, fasting reminds me to lay it down again, faith bubbles up, and I find myself longing for God’s will and trusting that his word will never fail.
There’s a reason this practice has been carried out by millions of Christians for thousands of years. Fasting has the power to shift things, yes, but most importantly, it brings me closer to Jesus. And that is the most important reward of them all.
The Poetry Nook
The following poem has sat collecting dust for some time. I don’t think I ever saw how closely it related to fasting until recently. When I find myself worrying about all the things the world has convinced me are necessary to worry about, I need to empty myself and remember again who God is.
Here I am
Lately the nights have stretched themselves out longer and later than I’d like. I wrestle with all the things in my head the questions the silence the longings the tatters of hope which tangle like lost prayer tassels in the wind.
Why is it my mind has become an owl in the night perched on its ledge, wide awake and searching. My thoughts tick on and on and on looking for something in the darkness to swoop down and claim. Instead I’m left bouncing from branch to branch. Before long the morning comes and there is nothing in my talons.
It’s only when I empty myself that I find you’ve been waiting to fill me. There wasn’t much room before, all my worries and desires fill me to the brim. It’s in the emptying that I find there is actually more of you in me that I ever thought. Somehow I forgot where the well was. Because you see it’s the living water I need. And so I empty myself again and again, giving my whole self to you in prayer, knowing it was always my whole self you wanted.
And here you are. Here I am.
There’s a Book on That
The following is one of the most popular books out there on fasting in the Christian tradition. God’s Chosen Fast is not only a helpful resource on fasting and a practical guidebook, it is also a proclamation to the church to pick up this practice again.
As always, here is a taster:
“Fasting is an opportunity to push the pause button and slow down for a brief period of time to draw near to God, to come to Him for critical needs, to discover His wisdom, and to get back in touch with our first love and our life purpose.”
Just in case you missed these recent posts:
Into the Quiet: Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.
Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?
Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.
Building a Rhythm of Prayer: Prayer is the most natural thing we can do as human beings because it is in our very design to communicate with the one who created us. Can a rhythm of prayer lead to transformation?
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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!
With love,
Jamie
Matthew 6:16-18
KXC Podcast, “Practising the Way · Fasting · Pete Hughes”. 10 Nov 2024.