Fasting is an amazing gift from God to the believer!
I feel the need to start there because fasting is so often seen as the most obscure of the spiritual disciplines. Often it is looked at as a painful burden rather than as a beautiful gift.
We live in an amazingly prideful world. From a biblical perspective, this pride is the very root of our sinful condition. This truth can be seen all the way throughout the Bible. Consider our first parents with me for a moment. In Genesis 1-2, we see that Adam and Eve, like us, were created to glorify God and to enjoy God by walking in obedience to His design.
As we move forward in this narrative, we quickly come to Genesis 3. In Genesis 3, we witness a conversation that took place between the serpent (Satan) and Eve while Adam stood passively by. In a series of lies from Satan, we finally come to the root of it all. In Genesis 3:5, the Great Deceiver says, "God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
You will be "like God". There it is, plain as day! Sin came flooding into all of humanity through one painfully prideful attempt to be "like God". (Praise God that He graciously sent Jesus, and Jesus obediently came to set our affections back on Himself.) Interestingly, as mentioned above, this same pride is still the root of all of our sin today, and I believe it is the very reason why we look at fasting with such obscurity. See, pride consists of thinking that we need something other than God for fulfillment. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that all we need for fulfillment is God Himself.
Fasting, and really all of the spiritual disciplines, are the antithesis of human pride. Why? Because Christianity is the antithesis of human pride. In his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald Whitney describes fasting as, "a believer's voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes... It is for believers in Christ, for the Discipline must be rooted in a relationship with Christ and practiced with the desire to become more like Christ." See, ultimately, the primary purpose of fasting is Christ!
Further, fasting is a discipline that is expected of believers (Matthew 6:16-17), and is always coupled with prayer. I have heard it said before that fasting is a prayer intensifier. Think about it this way: From a physical perspective, there is nothing more vital to human life than food and water. By fasting, Christians are temporarily giving up that which is incredibly vital to life, and thus, prayerfully declaring that there is something far more vital to life than even food: Jesus! So, as we fast, every time our stomachs growl, we are reminded that Jesus really is all that we need.
May we be a people who enjoy the beautiful gift of fasting!
|
|
