The spiritual practice of fasting is well-known, but not always well understood. It can be practiced corporately as when a group or a congregation might set aside a day of fasting and prayer for something such as healing for instance. Since this is a study on individual spiritual practices, we’ll not concentrate on the corporate side of things.

As an individual practice, fasting is the abstinence from food, drink, entertainments (which would probably include electronics) or anything else that would occupy one’s time and take them away from God. As such, it is a private matter and would not normally be announced to others.

Of course, even in Bible times, people were known to forget that last part, preferring instead to announce their fasting to the community to impress others with the person’s superior righteousness and piety. If you recall, Jesus took a rather dim view of that.

It might surprise some that I added “drink, entertainments (which would probably include electronics) or anything else that would occupy one’s time and take them away from God” to abstaining from food.  We are talking about Classical Spiritual Disciplines here and so we have the other additions. To be clear, fasting is about considerably more than not eating for a while.

Like several of the other spiritual practices, fasting is all about the denial of sensory stimulation so that a person can focus on prayer and/or their closeness (relationship) to God.

As such, I have never actually seen anyone who was fasting as a spiritual practice, but I have seen and heard about quite a few people who were fasting because they wanted something from God. Often, they wanted God to forgive them for something, a few times, they wanted something specific like a job or a new car. I must tell you that if you approach fasting in this way, you’ve probably missed the point entirely. First off, if you are looking for forgiveness and you are a follower of Jesus, you already have it; maybe giving thanks would be more appropriate. However, if you observed a time of fasting and prayer as an act of repentance from sin, you would probably be on the right track.

Do you see the difference?

Second, you might pray for a job or a new car that you need or whatever the case may be, but adding fasting to the mix is a bit too much like you’re trying to coax God into something He doesn’t want to do. As the Scriptures teach us, put your requests to God and let His will be done.  Remember, Jesus didn’t fast to get out of the cross, He asked, and then prayed for His Father’s will to be done.

I mentioned that I have never seen or heard of anyone fasting for the “classical” reasons, and that shouldn’t be any great shock. I do know people who use this practice from time-to-time, but it is entirely private; between the person and God. They don’t tell anyone about it, other than in the abstract, which is the classical approach to the matter. In fact, it brings up another of the Classical Disciplines, which is called the Discipline of Secrecy.

“Secrecy” is the practice of keeping the things a person does for God entirely private. They may provide acts of kindness, generosity or mercy for others, but they do so in secret, anonymously, and they never reveal it to anyone save God, so that in all that they do, God gets all glory and credit. Very frequently, such people do not reveal their other practices, other than in a context of private discipleship.