Why should we practice fasting? Can we achieve spiritual growth without it? Can fasting influence our salvation? How can we serve God by practicing fasting? These are wonderful questions which underline the sense and the purpose of fasting.
Firstly, fasting is a spiritual sword, given to us by God so that we could fight and achieve victory in the invisible spiritual world. It’s also used as a trainer to make us humble and dead to the lusts of our flesh and soul (1Cor. 9:25-27). In order to hear God better we don’t need fasting. We achieve this purpose by everyday trainings: both with fasting and without it. By the way, during your fasting the spiritual world around you gets more sensible and you feel it much better, and there is a chance to hear a voice which is not coming from God. To spend time alone in the presence of God and practice fasting in order to receive a word from Him, holding in your hands the closed text of the Gospel is just wasting your time. Of course, in order to break through in spirit, to get rid of the burden of pressure or problems, you can use different means including fasting, but fasting is not necessary to do this. Just find a lonely place, sing praises to God, or cry to Him until you get connected with Him and get the answer from Him for a certain situation, or get peace at heart, or a word from Him – it doesn’t matter. Fasting doesn’t make us closer to God – He is already in us – can He be still closer? We shouldn’t look for the ways of God in fasting, because we won’t find them there! We can find the answers when we fulfill the Gospel and follow the Lord in our everyday life. Sometimes fasting humbles and makes weaker our carnal nature, while strengthening our spiritual perception, so that we could hear better the information coming from the Holy Spirit, or the information written in the Word, in order to be in maximum compliance with Him and do His will.
For sure we can’t speak about spiritual growth if we avoid fasting or if it’s something like a hard work for us. For me it’s also not a holiday, but a very essential part of my life in faith, without which the devil wouldn’t allow me to even stir a finger and without which I wouldn’t have achieved numerous victories. Paul tells about himself that he is constantly in fasting. And because you are not different from Paul, follow his way of life, if you like to quote him… do what he did and live like he lived. Just quotations (confession) is not enough. And the last thing: when the Lord told that after the Bridegroom is taken away his disciples WILL FAST (Matthew 9:15), it doesn’t sound like a request or recommendation, but it sounds like one of the commandments!
If we assume that fasting is a commandment from God, a spiritual sword (but only together with a prayer) and a part of our life in faith, then it’s clear that fasting also influences salvation, and helps to finish the race and to keep faith, and in the end to fulfill His will on earth for our life.
By fasting we gain victory over the lusts of our flesh inspired by the Devil. The Holy Spirit took Jesus to the desert and while fasting there He took victory over Satan’s temptations and came home in the power of the Holy Spirit and started His ministry, having given us an example. But most of Christians just can’t do it because of their minimal devotion, because their love to the joys of this world is much more than their love to God. The Apostle Paul directly says that only those belong to Christ who have taken the victory over their carnal desires: «Those who belong to Christ have crucified their sinful nature with its passions and desires» (Gal.5:24), but it changes nothing in reality of today. The same way like sinners do, the Christians after waking up in the morning run to their refrigerator (maybe some of them pray a little before doing that). Of course there are exceptions but hardly a few.
Fasting and prayer strengthens the influence on the spiritual invisible world so much (like nuclear weapons) that Paul compares a prayer without fasting to mere beating of the air (isn’t it true that if God had answered at least 50% of our prayers, Jesus would have returned long ago). «…no, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize» (1 Cor.9:25-27).
Isaiah 58:6 «Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the joke, to set the oppressed free and break every joke». What is God doing during our prayer and fasting? Firstly, according to Isaiah 58:6 He looses the chains of injustice. But who creates the chains of injustice? The Satan does. The Lord looses the chains of injustice, breaks every joke and sets the oppressed free (those who are oppresses by demons). God doesn’t create the joke. It’s evident that fasting and prayer ruins the kingdom of the Devil and his works, making free those who are oppressed by their sins.
When the body is fasting, the soul is also fasting, and it dies for the lusts and passions of this world. Due to such a purification we get connected to God’s Spirit, which speaks in our hearts, and we hear it better because we do away with every obstacle on the way of hearing God, and these obstacles are created by the sweet desires and passions produced by this world. Halleluyah!
Cornelius answered: «Four days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me and said «Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor» (Acts 10:30,31).
In the New Testament people had the courage to ask God for mercy while they were fasting in order to put to death their carnal desires. They had the courage to ask God to annul His punishment and judgement. So we can also influence our faith by means of fasting, and we can chase the demons out of those who are possessed by them, or clean the territories occupied by the demons.
He replied: «Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, «move from here to there» and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. But this kind goes out only by prayer and fasting.» (Matthew 17:20,21). It means that prayer and fasting chases out any kind of demons!
While praying with fasting we have the courage to intercede for our close ones in a prayer to God, thus serving God and people: «There was also a prophetesse, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.» (Luke 2:36,37) Don’t think that the birth and the first coming of Christ happened automatically, because somebody had to pray and ask God so that the prophesy might come true (Anna, for example, was one of such people), because God will do nothing until somebody asks Him about it with a prayer and fasting, with a full faith and on the base of His Word! Isn’t it ministry to God? Amen!
P.S.
Copied from a Christian, and I fully agree with it.
«I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked» (2 Cor.11:27).
«Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body». (Phil.3:17-21)
«We put no stumbling block to anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love» (2Cor.3:6).
«Then the Israelites, all the people, went up to Bethel, and there they set weeping before the Lord. They fasted that day until evening and presented burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord. And the Israelites inquired of the Lord. (in those days the ark of the covenant of God was there, with Phinehas son of Eleazer, the son of Aaron, ministering before it.) They asked: «Shall we go up again to battle with Benjamin our brother, or not? The Lord responded, «Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands.» (Judges 20:26-28).
By means of fasting we have the power to bless others: «Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church, and with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust» (Asts 14:23).
While fasting we even restrict ourselves from sexual relations with our spouse:
«Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer» (1Cor.7:5). Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.»
Biblical fasting is not just a diet, this is not a refusal to eat meat, milk or cakes on certain days, and it’s not a vegan style of life. The real fasting is when you refuse from any food and drinks for a short period of time.
The optimal fasting for a healthy person is a 24-hours fasting. If you have illnesses or if you do a hard job, then it’s enough to fast from morning till evening (this is the shortest period of fasting described in the Bible): «…and there they set weeping before the Lord. They fasted that day until evening and presented burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord…» (Judges 20:26).
General recommendations: fasting without food or drinks for a healthy person can last about three days, in case of necessity (I’ve described the reasons above). The longer fasting can be only with water and according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you plan a very long fasting, you have to enter into it in the right way – for a certain period before fasting you have to stick to a diet and to clean your intestines. Also you have to come out of this fasting in the correct way: to include the usual food products into your menu step by step, not to make harm to your stomach, (otherwise you will sin against your own body). From the medical point of view a one-day fasting (on the water and without water) has also been known long ago and it’s recommended to people in order to improve their health, and to restore many functions of the organism. And in case of the long fasting the body gets often healed from numerous serious diseases, the reason of which was love for food. Some scientists devoted their whole life to studying a short and a long-period fasting, (Paul Bregg, Yuriy Nikolayev, etc.). There exist a lot of books on the subject! For example, Hippocrates cured his patients from diseases by means of fasting, presenting it as one of the most effective dieting days. That’s why you shouldn’t be scared of fasting as a threat to your health, quite on the contrary! You should devote to fasting at least one day per week, but it’s better – two days per week. If your work and the state of health permits it, then you can take even three days a week.
I don’t have a definite schedule of fasting, but some Christians have it (for example, Wednesday and Friday). I take fasting according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
for myself and for the others.
You have to enter into each fasting period with a prayer, and to come out of the fasting with a finishing prayer and with gratitude to God, so that your fasting won’t be just like mere starvation.