So there I was in January-- listening to so many voices and trying so hard to keep all the plates spinning. I knew that Jesus was inviting me to rest...to rest in Him in a way I had not previously known. Jesus was inviting me to explore Him through fasting. I had only ever fasted a couple days-- back in college! Fasting was not a practice that I had ever seriously considered taking on, not that I was opposed to it, but more from the standpoint that I didn't see how it could fit into my life. After all, I'm not some monk on a Greek island monastery, or a prophet in the wilderness. I'm a regular guy. I'm a father of 4 active children, a husband, a pastor of a (maybe too) busy church. I just couldn't see how fasting could fit into my life.
In any event, I knew that Jesus was calling me to it. I couldn't shake the thought...and it thrilled me. So I began preparing by reading. As I read, I discovered that some Christians say that fasting is not an activity that followers of Jesus should participate in. They say that since Jesus is resurrected, and the Kingdom of God has come, we are to rejoice and follow our King, which does not include fasting. While I understand this view, I do not accept it for the simple reason that Jesus, Himself, seems to endorse the practice. In Matthew 6:1, 16-18, Jesus teaches:
In any event, I knew that Jesus was calling me to it. I couldn't shake the thought...and it thrilled me. So I began preparing by reading. As I read, I discovered that some Christians say that fasting is not an activity that followers of Jesus should participate in. They say that since Jesus is resurrected, and the Kingdom of God has come, we are to rejoice and follow our King, which does not include fasting. While I understand this view, I do not accept it for the simple reason that Jesus, Himself, seems to endorse the practice. In Matthew 6:1, 16-18, Jesus teaches:
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven… And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Jesus solemnly warns that a fast, as well as giving and praying, must be done with pure motives and a right heart. We fast for an audience of one, not to build the perception that we are super-Christians. When our hearts are right, fasting draws us closer to the Lord. After the warning, Jesus gives clear instructions about fasting. Notice he says “when you fast, not “if you fast.” When you fast, don’t make a show of it. Wash you face and do it for your Father in secret. Jesus assumes that his followers will fast, though this activity is never recorded in the Gospels while Jesus is with them on the earth.
Later in Matthew 9:14-17 we read:
Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
When questioned why his disciples don’t fast like other Jews, Jesus declares that while He, the Bridegroom, is with them they rejoice and don’t fast, but when he is taken away, they will fast. What is Jesus talking about? What is the timeframe? His disciples will certainly feast after the resurrection, and the Holy Spirit will come and abide within them at Pentecost, but they will not feast with Jesus until the consummation when the Kingdom of God comes finally, totally and fully. Believers fast in faith, knowing that Jesus has come, is raised and will come again. We fast because the world is not yet right. We fast because we know His goodness and yearn—hunger—for His presence.
John Piper in his excellent book on fasting entitled, A Hunger for God, ends his exposition of this text from Matthew 9 by saying:
Is fasting Christian? It is if it comes from confidence in Christ and is sustained by the power of Christ and aims at the glory of Christ. Over every Christian fast should be written the words, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). In fasting, as well as in all other privations, every loss is for the sake of “gaining Christ.” But this does not mean that we seek to gain a Christ we do not have. Nor does it mean that our progress depends on ourselves. Four verses later Paul makes plain the dynamics of the entire Christian life—including fasting: “I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
This is the essence of Christian fasting: We ache and yearn—and fast—to know more and more of all that God is for us in Jesus. But only because he has already laid hold of us and is drawing us ever forward and upward in “all the fullness of God.”
My prayer for the Christian church is that God might awaken in us a new hunger for himself—a new fasting. Not because we haven’t tasted the new wine of Christ’s presence, but because we have tasted it and long, with a deep and joyful aching of soul, to know more of his presence and power in our midst (pages 48-49).
Next time...the nuts and bolts of Christian fasting.
