Fasting: A Key to a Better Year

“Losing doesn’t mean the same thing as stopping.”

_Ben Lerner, Body by God

The beginning of the year is a time that people often take a fresh look at their spiritual disciples.  It is not uncommon for them to go on a beginning-of-the-year-fast to consecrate themselves and examine their relationship with God in preparation for the year to come. 

In my years as a pastor I have led the congregations I served in numerous beginning-of-the-year-fasts and there is one thing I’ve learned: there is nothing that will help you recalibrate and realign your life like fasting.  It strengthens your self-control and puts a backbone in your personal disciplines and clears your mind and awakens or revives your spiritual desires.

Bottom line, fasting is good for you.

Is not this the fast that I have chosen…then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you… (Isaiah 58:6,8)

There are many facets to fasting.  But there’s one thing I’ve come to understand about fasting – it can be about a lot more than giving up food, but it is never less than giving up food.

There’s nothing that will cause your body to cry “Foul!” like depriving it of food.  Yet that deprivation can have life-transforming benefits that can impact you positively in many different ways.

I encourage you to take a look at this time-honored spiritual discipline. 

Following is an excerpt from a devotional I wrote to the wonderful Fort Mill SC congregation I was privileged to serve for many years.  It sums things up well…

It is going to be hard to have a fulfilling and life-transforming 40-days of prayer & fasting without being intentional about giving up eating in a meaningful way.

What this means for you is between you and God. It can be giving up a certain food(s) that has a hold over you or giving up a number of meals or days or a combination of any of these. The real issues are these:

1. Do you have health issues or potential health issues looming because of your eating habits?
2. Are there things you could do at your age if you were in better shape?
3. Does your stomach rule? (Do you eat to live or live to eat?)
4. Is your body a living testimony to the world of Christian temperance and surrender to God?
5. Bottom line: At the stage of life you are at, are you presenting to God (for your reasonable service) the very best body you can?

Remember, repentance is not about being sorry, it is about changing course. Fasting is one of the ways you change course. So which way should you go?

Prayer: Oh Creator God who crafted my amazing body, forgive me for those times I have allow my appetite for food to rule me, for those times I willing compromised my health and ability to leverage my life to the max for you in order to indulge my appetite. Today I repent–I shall begin changing how I live. Please guide me as to what I should immediately do and please give me the strength to follow through.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Romans 12:1 (NKJV)