Fasting Part 4

In preparation for the Easter fast coming up this weekend, I am continuing this series on fasting. I hope it will be informative and encouraging for you and that you will join me and others in abstaining from food following the Good Friday worship service and continuing until after the Easter morning worship service. (Coffee and water are acceptable)

But why fast? What does it mean to “fast?” Here’s a quick definition for you: “Fasting is the deliberate abstaining from physical gratification in order to obtain a spiritual reward from the Father. It is a denial of the flesh in order to gain a response from the Spirit.  I like that latter definition because it doesn’t restrict fasting to mere food.

In fact, we shall see that there is even such a thing as sexual fasting, and by inference we can say that fasting is denial of anything that brings momentary pleasure to the flesh. Giving up TV, watching your favorite football team, golf, whatever your flesh would miss if it didn’t have it.

Personally, I would recommend starting with food simply because Jesus said, that “man does not live by bread alone”  and fasting from food is a great way to drive that point home. 

Let’s see if we can dig up some spiritual principles as related to fasting. In Zech 7:5,6 we find two rhetorical questions, questions with obvious answers. When you understand this, it will help you understand what is being said here by God through the prophet Zechariah.

 “Say to all the people of the land and the priests. When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh for these seventy years was it for ME you fasted? (The obvious answer is “yes, God we fasted for You!) .”And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? (The obvious answer is, “yes, we eat and drink for ourselves.”  

What’s the point?

You can’t eat for someone else other than yourself.  Now I don’t mean that I can’t clean up my wife's plate at the restaurant, I mean I can’t eat on her behalf. She does not benefit physically in any way at all based on what I eat.  She receives no nutrients from that cheese omelet I had this morning. I eat to satisfy my flesh, my belly, not hers “Do you not eat and drink for yourselves?” “Yes we do God!”

Eating and drinking is to satisfy our selves. But in fasting, we cease to eat in order to satisfy God.  By that I mean, eating is meant for us, but fasting is meant for God. “Was it for Me you fasted?” It should be, if not, verily verily I say you have your reward.

Food satisfies, pleases, and energizes our bodies. Proper fasting satisfies and pleases God and it energizes Him on our behalf. This is His “reward” spoken of in Mt 6: 18.

And when the disciples wanted to know why they couldn’t deliver a certain boy from a demon Jesus said in  Mr 9:29 "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." It is prayer and fasting that energizes God on our behalf, in order to enhance our spiritual performance and bring glory to Him.

So that’s why we are fasting over the Easter weekend! We are asking God to expend His energy…..His grace, on our behalf in the midst of this COVID 19 plague. We desire for Him to protect us and deliver us from this plague for sure, but ultimately we want Him to strengthen us spiritually in order for His glory to be magnified in a world that so desperately needs Him.   

Father, let us fast, that You may be glorified!