Should you fast? Fasting is abstaining from eating. Sometimes it could be considered abstaining from drinking as well.
There are various degrees of fasting. Perhaps the most common fast is the water-only fast. You abstain from all solid foods and just drink water and no other liquids or beverages besides water. That’s somewhat of a pure fast.
You could go beyond that and fast both food and all liquids, so no solid food, not even any water. You wouldn’t want to do that for very long, because your body needs to say hydrated to stay alive. You can go without food for weeks, probably. The average person could. But you can’t go without water for weeks, or liquids going in you. You could only survive a couple days, so I’m not an advocate of the total fast of no liquids and no solids either.
But there is such a thing as a partial fast, where you can eliminate some foods. Some people do, for example, juice fast, where they just drink juice. Hopefully more nutritious and healthy liquids than soft drinks and so forth, because that provides the nutrients that their body needs to function. They can still kind of go about their daily business because they have strength, something that you don’t have after a few days if you fast entirely from food and only drink water. You’re going to feel a loss of strength.
Practical Considerations When Fasting
So there are some practical considerations to think about if you’re going to fast. Fasting is certainly a biblical topic. Jesus gave some instructions about fasting Himself, and He said when you fast, don’t put on a long face like hypocrites do, so everybody knows they’re fasting, but anoint your head and so forth and don’t try to let everyone know. Keep it a secret. Fast in secret (see Matthew 6:16-18).
So Jesus didn’t say “if” you fast, He said “when” you fast. And He’s giving some instructions about making sure our motives are right. Basically, don’t do it to show off how spiritual you are, or how disciplined you are, to other people.
Paul gave a little bit of instruction about fasting. Not a whole lot in the New Testament, but he talked about husbands and wives not depriving each other of conjugal rights. But he said unless by agreement you agree to suspend your conjugal rights for a while, that you might devote yourselves to prayer and fasting (see 1 Corinthians 7:5).
That’s definitely the main reason for fasting. Fasting just for fasting’s sake, from a spiritual standpoint, doesn’t have a whole lot of value, other than the fact that it does require some self-discipline. Therefore, it’s somewhat akin to the kind of self-discipline that we need in other things. So for that, I suppose, fasting in itself is a good practice.
The Main Reason Christians Should Fast
But the main reason that anyone would want to fast, from a spiritual standpoint, is to be able to spend more time in prayer. I would also include more time in the Word. That’s kind of a form of prayer, isn’t it?
When you’re studying and meditating upon God’s word, that’s communicating with God. He’s communicating with you through His unchanging Word. So to spend more time doing that, wow, that’s a valuable thing. To spend more time communing with the Lord, and praising and worshiping Him and seeking Him is a wonderful thing. If that means skipping a meal, then so be it.
Fasting Doesn’t Always Have to Be for a Long Time
Again, we don’t have to think that fasting has to be some long, drawn out thing, that every fast needs to be at least 40 days.
I would also caution anybody against trying to do a 40 day fast, because that can be medically dangerous. Not everybody can handle that. In fact, the couple of 40-day fasts we read about in Scripture, they had a supernatural element to them. At the end of Jesus’s 40 day fast, Scripture talks about how angels came and ministered to Him (see Matthew 4:11). Of course, He was being tempted by the devil during part of that time. Moses, during his 40 day fast was up on a mountain in the presence of God.
So I just wouldn’t recommend that.
If you’ve never fasted before then I highly recommend fasting, but don’t try a long fast. Maybe skip one meal and make it spiritually valuable. Spend some extra time seeking the Lord in prayer and His Word, and see what happens.
What Happens When You Fast For the First Time
Now I can tell you what’s going to happen. If you’ve never fasted before, you’re going to go, “Oh my goodness, am I ever hungry! I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t eat something.”
Then when you finally break your fast, after you skip one meal and then eat at your regular time at your next meal (if you can wait that long), you’re going to feel really hungry and that food’s going to taste really good.
But if you practice fasting on somewhat of a regular basis, it actually becomes easier. I can’t explain why that is physiologically, but it is. Your body just can become accustomed to it.
Just like you sleep all night long. You don’t eat while you sleep, and somehow your body adjusts to that. If you’re a person who travels a lot internationally, like I have done, you’re messing up your sleep cycle and you’re also messing up your eating cycle. You find you’re overseas on the other side of the world, and during the day time you’re hardly hungry all day long because you’re sleeping during the time when you normally eat. Your body clock doesn’t wake you up for some reason, if you’re able to sleep all night. So it’s actually easier to fast when you’re many time zones away from where you normally live.
Advice For Those Fasting For the First Time
I’d say skip one meal or fast for one day, to see how that goes. It can be very difficult the very first time you do it. It’s going to take some self-discipline, and you’re going to be tempted to break your fast earlier than what you expected to.
But if you fast, again, on any kind of regular basis, you’ll see it gets easier. If you fast enough, you could fast for a day and hardly even miss food at all. It’s just the simplest thing that your body gets used to.
Once you reach about the third day, that’s perhaps one of the harder days of an extended fast. But maybe the third or fourth day, hunger leaves you. Of course, you’re very weak, you don’t have much strength, but you don’t have those hunger pangs that you had at first.
If you fast longer than two or three days, when you break your fast you need to do it gradually. Don’t got to McDonald’s and get a hamburger and milkshake. Just sip on a little bit of juice, or take something that’s easy to digest. If you fast for a week, you’d better be very careful when you break your fast with just small quantities of easy-to-digest food or diluted juices or something, because you want to be safe about that.
All right, well that’s just a Little Lesson about fasting. There’s some more information here on my website, if you’re interested in exploring the subject a little bit further. Thanks for joining me! God bless you.
