Fasting God’s Way: See What The Bible Says
"Fasting and prayer? Don’t you think my stomach ulcer will exasperate badly beyond containment? I’ve been fighting the monster sickness for quite some years now, and I wouldn’t want to pull the trigger myself.” The lad who said this to me wasn’t trying to escape participation in the both good religious exercises customary in almost all religions of the world. Almost all religious traditions observe fasting and prayer, though in ways unique to each tradition.
My discussion with the lad hinged on how best to participate in this year’s ongoing Lenten period so as to reap the full benefit therein. To walk in the spirit means training the spirit to mature and gain full mastery over the flesh, which rebellious tendency is capable of boxing the spirit into the box when left without regular examination. Brother Paul didn’t mince words admitting this fact; hear him, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Rom 7:19-20). The flesh, no doubt, is a frantic driver. Your spirit must rise above its reckless actions and commitment to vanity, in order to gain control over the mutinous thing and its unruly inclination to evil. There’s no other way than this; and this explains the need for ‘true fasting’.
Almost all religions of the world hold fasting to be a spiritual exercise which when undertaken engages the soul on a marathon work out that helps it shed off accumulated spiritual toxins which afflict the spirit with dreadful spiritual bugs. These bugs cause the spirit to suffer greatly; and sadly, very often, without the needed attention to effect its cure. Fasting in this case seeks to call the soul’s attention to the affliction of the spirit. This it does by taking the soul on a journey of profound introspection with the aim to diagnose it of possible encumbrances suffocating the spirit. These encumbrances trap the soul into hedonism, thereby paralyzing the spirit severely. The human spirit needs a free and healthy soul to function to its finest, hence the need to free the soul of worldly inclinations, which drag it into restlessness. The prevailing opinion today is that fasting, serving as a period of psychological cum spiritual diagnosis and cleansing, must involve abstinence from food and or some other pleasurable things very dear and customary to oneself. This idea isn’t a bad one, anyway, as such could even be traced to the Bible, hence could be termed Bible-based. But ‘true fasting involves more than just embarking on a hunger strike. It goes beyond the usual to the unusual, beyond the realm of routine and empty performances, Pharisaic in nature, to the realm of truth, to the realm of realism where honesty trashes sycophancy and mere rites observance. I shall return to this in a jiffy.
However, there are some people, Christians in this context, who believe, at least subconsciously, that fasting and prayer aren’t for today’s Christians’ use. In some way, they think that the practice was something of the medieval times, which was unlucky to survive the harsh wind of modernism. I do not blame such people as nobody can grow beyond what he or she knows, and good knowledge is but a product of sound teaching. The fact is that today’s religious leaders have a case to answer in this regard as is so in other visible areas where they err greatly. In many churches, presently, Gospel preachers scarcely teach about ‘true fasting and prayer’ as a vital part of the Christian faith. Greed won’t let them teach their followers, many of them ignorant ‘sheeples’, gospel truth. Rampant in today’s churches are teachings about God’s grace, which many preachers have distorted to mean, “Receiving everything good from God without having to put in any effort whatsoever.” But true grace of Yahweh does not promote lackadaisity, nor does it expunge discipline. In as much as fasting may have been largely misunderstood , especially in Church world, and among those who still practice or want to practice it, yet its rewards cannot be undermined. I have read so many opinions on fasting, and to a very large extent almost all the opinions I have read on the subject seem to promote mainly abstinence from food, together with pleasurable things of life. This isn’t bad in itself; but Scripture points out some practicable things that make a good fasting.
True fasting is, first and foremost, submitting to God’s will in all matters of love and justice. The duo reflect God’s true nature; and noteworthy is the fact that what God demands of us is simply that we reflect his true nature inherent in our human spirit. Being created in His image and likeness, we resemble Him in our human spirit, meaning we have his nature already running in our human spirit, only that the flesh, being a rebellious wrecker, very often, does not allow it to show. The idea of fasting, then, is to subdue the flesh, rid it of its rebellious inclination, detoxify the soul of toxins inherited from the hedonistic flesh and that way enable the spirit exercise full dominion and reflect the God-nature innate in it. But this we can achieve not buy merely abstaining from food and walking about hungry and gloomy in an annoying pharisaic demeanor, but by detaching completely from those things that pollute the soul and in consequence yoke the spirit down. All acts of injustice, wickedness, and mad quest for ephemeral acquisition, of which majority of the time exposes the heart to monstrosities and sinful inclinations, are such things to be resisted for a true fast to be achieved. Complete detachment from those things that do not add value to the human spirit is panacea to all the evils ravaging humanity; and I think this kind of detachment could be made possible through giving.
Egotism being the mother of greed—a deadly virus that eats up the soul-- is the root cause of evil in our society. Thus, giving becomes the ‘antiretroviral drug’ that can combat this virus to a near insignificance in our souls. Selfless giving is the kind capable of achieving this wonders, as it is a sign of love and as such is a strong factor in the promotion of justice, and vice versa. No unjust person can claim to be of God. God hates injustice with passion, whether done passively or intentionally. Often we manifest injustice in many ways, yet we shamelessly bow our heads in fasting and prayer thinking we’d be heard in the throne room of Justice. It doesn’t work that way. It’s clearly more important to treat one’s neighbor well than to seal one’s mouth in a show of hunger strike capped with so-called prayer. True fasting should be able to identify affliction in other people’s lives and cure it. Fasting in Scripture is always linked with prayer, and true prayer manifests itself in changing the mindset of the one praying to reflect the personality of God in his or her own character. Fasting God’s way, then, is imbibing God’s nature and living it out.
The Lord speaking through the prophet Isaiah explains what true fasting implies, that’s fasting God’s way. His words, “Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul?(I take this affliction of the soul to involve denying oneself food and pleasurable things of life.) is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To lose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not”(Isaiah 58:5-11KJV). God Bless You.