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March 25th – March 30th:
There are different types of fasting in the Bible, however, and not all of them involve food. Many people in the Bible fasted, including Moses, David, and Daniel in the Old Testament and Anna, Paul, and Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Fasting is a time when Christians, individually or together, seek after God, His direction, His forgiveness, His intervention, and His presence. By fasting, we are saying that we totally rely upon God for everything, even our very sustenance. Many important figures in Christian history attested to fasting’s value, as do many Christians today. Biblical fasting is often closely linked to repentance, as in the examples of David, the nation of Israel, and the city of Nineveh. Fasting is also related to passionate prayer, as in the examples of King Jehoshaphat and Queen Esther. Biblical fasting comes from a humble heart seeking God (Isaiah 58:3–7).
Begin your fast down the slow path with a healthy mindset on completing it and coming out with a new focus on your ambitions, dreams and perspectives on life.
Listed are six ideas to help you along this fasting/lent pilgrimage:
1. Start Small:
You can start with one meal; maybe fast one meal a week for several weeks. Then try two meals and work your way up to a daylong fast. Perhaps eventually try a two–day juice fast. A juice fast means abstaining from all food and beverage, except for juice and water. Allowing yourself juice provides nutrients and sugar for the body to keep you operating, while also still feeling the effects from going without solid food. It’s not recommended that you abstain from water during a fast of any length.
2. Develop an Alternative Plan
Instead of Eating:
Fasting isn’t merely an act of self–deprivation, but a spiritual discipline for seeking more of God’s fullness. Which means we should have a plan for what positive pursuit to undertake in the time it normally takes to eat. Many spend a vast amount of their days with food in front of them. One significant part of fasting is the time it creates for prayer and meditation on God’s word or some act of love for others. Before diving headlong into a fast, craft a simple plan. Connect it to your purpose for the fast. Each fast should have a specific spiritual purpose. Identify what that is and design a focus to replace the time you would have spent eating. Without a purpose and plan, it’s not Christian fasting; it’s just going hungry.
3. Practice Patience:
Fasting is no license to be unloving. It would be sad to lack concern and care for others around us because of this expression of heightened focus on God. Love for God and for neighbor go together. Good fasting mingles horizontal concern with the vertical. If anything, others should even feel more loved and cared for when we’re fasting. So, as you plan your fast, consider how it will affect others. If you have regular lunches with colleagues or dinners with family or roommates, you must assess how you planned to abstain from food without offending others, and let them know ahead of time, instead of springing it on them at the last moment that you will not be eating.
4. Test the Various Types of
Fasting Until You Find Your Fit:
The typical form of fasting is personal, private, and partial, but we find a variety of forms in the Bible: personal and communal, private and public, congregational and national, regular and occasional, absolute and partial. Consider fasting together with your family, small group, or church, so you can share this experience together in some special need for God’s wisdom and guidance. It can help you when there an unusual circumstance or situation that may arise in your home, your place of employment, your church, and even in your community, for which you need God’s intervention. It helps us keep the Second Coming of Christ in view. It also helps one plead with special earnestness for God’s help by linking arms with other believers to fast together.
5. Fasting Will Help You Rid Ungodly Behavior and Habits:
Fasting from food is not necessarily for everyone. Some health conditions keep even the most devout from the traditional course. However, fasting is not limited to abstaining from food. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Fasting should really be made to include abstinence from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some special spiritual purpose.” If the better part of wisdom for you, in your health condition, is not to go without food, consider fasting from television, computer, social media, or some other regular enjoyment that would bend your heart toward greater enjoyment of Jesus. Daniel would not yield to temptation nor be seduced by the pleasures of the king’s food and drink. Rather than jeopardize his relationship with God, Daniel developed a healthier diet for himself and the three Hebrew boys. With the favor of God upon his life, Daniel was able to succeed in pleasing God and the king. To him, fasting was more than a physical exercise, it was a spiritual discipline and commitment to God.
6. Maintain Your Spiritual Focus:
Christian fasting turns its attention to Jesus or some great cause of his in the world. Christian fasting seeks to take the pains of hunger and transpose them into the key of some eternal anthem, whether it’s fighting against some sin, or pleading for someone’s salvation, or for the cause of the unborn, or longing for a greater taste of Jesus.
Focus your attention on God not the issue or concern. Pray. Come before God with confidence that He will answer your prayer and meet your every need from the abundance of His riches in glory. Once you have given what you are fasting over to the Lord, now release it, believing that God can, and God will. ““Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!”” Esther 4:16 (NKJV). A fast is declared in the book of Ezra as he was preparing to lead the people of Israel to go up to Jerusalem. Ezra sought the Lord for guidance, protection and peace. Before going to see the king, I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.” So, we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer. (Ezra 8:22–23).
"Ultimately, fasting helps us enjoy Christ through our
spiritual disciplines".
Fasting is a spiritual discipline that is not meant to be used as legalistic rule, but it is a tool that can and will bring us closer to God. And it must be said, the strict or even casual adherence to any of the disciplines is not necessary for salvation. Hypocritical fasting resulted in contention, quarreling, and pretense, excluding the possibility of genuine prayer to God. Fasting consisted of more than just an outward ritual and a mock repentance, it involved penitence over sin and consequent humility, disconnecting from sin and oppression of others, feeding the hungry, and acting humanely toward those in need. Choose to focus on one and express your commitment in writing. This act alone will motivate the development of a disciplined spirit to strive, harder with faith and determination. With God, you will succeed.