Another Look at Fasting

David Mathis on fasting (from Habits of Grace):

Fasting has fallen on hard times— at least, it seems, among our overstuffed bellies in the American church. I speak as one of the well-fed.

While the New Testament includes no mandate that Christians fast on certain days or with specific frequency, Jesus clearly assumes we will fast. It’s a tool too powerful to leave endlessly on the shelf collecting dust. While many biblical texts mention fasting, the two most important come just chapters apart in Matthew’s Gospel. The first is Matthew 6: 16–18:

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites,

The key here is that Jesus doesn’t say “if you fast,” but “when you fast.” The second is Matthew 9: 14– 15, which may be even more clear. Should Christians today still fast? Jesus’s answer is a resounding yes:

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

When Jesus, our bridegroom, was here on earth among his disciples, it was a time for the discipline of feasting. But now that he is “taken away” from his disciples, “they will fast.” Not “they might, if they ever get around to it,” but “they will.” This is confirmed by the pattern of fasting that emerged right away in the early church (Acts 9: 9; 13: 2; 14:23).

What makes fasting such a gift is its ability, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to focus our feelings and their expression toward God in prayer. Fasting walks arm in arm with prayer —as John Piper says, fasting is “the hungry handmaiden of prayer,” who “both reveals and remedies”: 

"She reveals the measure of food’s mastery over us— or television or computers or whatever we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. And she remedies by intensifying the earnestness of our prayer and saying with our whole body what prayer says with the heart: I long to be satisfied in God alone!" 1

Fasting is a desperate measure, for desperate times, among those who know themselves desperate for God.

We fast from what we can see and taste, because we have tasted and seen the goodness of the invisible God—and are desperately hungry for more of him.

 Fasting is for this world, for stretching our hearts to get fresh air beyond the pain and trouble around us. And it is for the sin and weakness inside us, about which we express our discontent, and long for more of Christ.

Fasting for Beginners, an article by David Mathis can be found here

1. When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, John Piper