40-Day Devotion, Day 12

Preparation: Matthew 9:15

God, Have My Stomach
I find it amusing I’m writing a devotion on fasting, and it happens to be five days before Thanksgiving! Kind of ironic, huh? After all, Thanksgiving is the one time of year when most Americans gather around the dinner table with family and friends and eat and eat and eat until they can’t eat anymore. Then for the next three days we gorge ourselves with leftovers. The celebration of Thanksgiving revolves around food, and I’m glad for that. Even though this year my family has seen some hardships with health problems, I am thankful to God for His blessings and mercy. This will be a good Thanksgiving. And I plan to eat a lot to celebrate it!
The Church today doesn’t talk very much about fasting, but we should. Fasting is one of the most powerful spiritual disciplines. It is a way to align our hearts with a desire for God! The psalmist wrote: “My soul thirsts for God, the living God” (Psalm 42:2). Fasting is meant to strengthen and sharpen our affections for God. Through fasting and prayer, the Holy Spirit can transform your life.
Dr. Bill Bright lists six insights about fasting to help us understand this neglected discipline:
• Fasting was an expected practice in both the Old and New Testament eras. For example, Moses fasted for at least two recorded forty day periods. Jesus fasted forty days and spoke to His followers of “when you fast,” not “if” you fast.
• Fasting and prayer can restore the loss of your “first love” for the Lord and result in more intimate relationship with Christ.
• Fasting is a biblical way to truly humble yourself in the sight of God (Psalm 35:13; Ezra 8:21). King David said, “I humble myself through fasting.”
• Fasting enables the Holy Spirit to reveal your true spiritual condition, resulting in brokenness, repentance and a transformed life.
• Fasting can transform your prayer life into a richer and more personal experience.
Fasting can result in a dynamic personal revival and make you a channel of life change to others.
Let’s look at what fasting is not. Fasting is not a form of dieting. There is nothing wrong with dieting, but the Bible teaches that fasting is a spiritual discipline. Its purpose is to discipline your spiritual life and grow you closer to God.
Fasting is not a way to bargain with God. If you fast to make a deal with God (“I’ll go without food if You will give me what I’m asking for”), you are fasting the wrong way. Jeremiah 14:12 says, “Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry. Though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead I will destroy them with the sword, famine, and plague.”
So why do we fast? Denying our bodies food for a period of time is not natural, but we do it because we want to seek God and His will for our lives. In doing so, we discipline our minds, spirits and bodies in order to communicate with God on a deeper level. Fasting in the Bible is always associated with prayer. Someone once said you can pray without fasting, but you cannot fast without praying.
How do you know when to fast? This is between you and God. No one else can tell you. In the scriptures listed at the end of this devotion, you will see fasting usually takes place in times of urgency, trouble, trial, or when feeling distant from God. Sometimes fasting is needed in matters of the Church. Fasting is a powerful weapon against the devil and his schemes
(read Matthew 4:1-11). Consider fasting when there is a death or serious illness in your family, a marriage or relationship problem, a besetting sin in your life. Fast when you are seeking God’s direction or face a situation of danger or fear.
When thinking about how to fast, you might start by skipping a meal like lunch each day and using that time for prayer. Eventually, you may want to try a twelve or a twenty-four hour fast. (Make sure you don’t have any health issues that make this unsafe.) Just remember, the length of your fast is not as important as what you do when fasting. Pray, speak to God and listen to His voice in your life.
This year has been a very difficult time for my family. Satan is attacking in several different ways, but he will not gain the victory. God is in control and He will walk with us through good times and bad. He gives us plenty of weapons to fight Satan and one of those is fasting. I admit I do not fast often enough, but this is something I am going to work on. How about you? How will you respond to God’s commands about fasting? I challenge you to read Matthew 6:16-18. Notice how God expects Christians to fast and promises to reward us when we do. Write a prayer asking God to help you learn how to grasp this powerful discipline.
FASTING REFERENCES:
Nehemiah 1:4 Esther 4:16 Psalm 69:10 Deuteronomy 9:9-18 Daniel 9:3 Acts 13:3; 14:23 (to continue reading, go to my comment below.)