Christian Living

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Fasting for Favor

Many of God’s precious children are struggling to earn favors from Him through self-denial and fasting. And if their personal circumstances improve after the fast is finished, they will tell everyone what fasting has done for them. See, fasting makes me healthier, see, fasting makes me trimmer, see, I have won favor with God through fasting.

And in the process God’s Son and His benefits, hard-won on of the Cross of Calvary, are relegated to the background of consciousness. Rather than seeing fasting as just one of many tools to get a job done, fasting is exalted to the primary means of softening God’s heart to persuade Him to give a person's prayers first priority on His "to do" list. There is a time for earnest prayer, whether you eat during the prayer time or fast during it. But fasting must never degenerate into a hunger strike to force God’s hand. We must continue with God the way we began: receiving good things from Him by grace through faith, not as wages for works.

Many saints of all sizes regard their bodies as a loathsome thing, promising God that they will eliminate as much flesh as possible through fasting, because their material bodies are unspiritual and unholy. That is the spirit of Gnosticism, an ancient heresy the early church warred against. Gnosticism holds that all matter is nothing but a necessary evil. Another popular belief of the second century, A.D., Montanism, emphasized frequent, rigorous fasts as a remedy for weak human nature. But to say the body is evil is a lie of satan. The body should not be regarded as a nuisance which has no spiritual significance. Our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Ghost (I Cor.6:19). That alone sanctifies them and makes them holy. We need our bodies to carry us around to do God’s will in the earth while we’re here. Our bodies might not be perfect, but they’re a blessing and while they should not be over-indulged, they should be properly cared for and nourished. If our body is God’s Temple, how can it be called an evil thing?

Adam's sin did not lie in the act of eating, as such. Before the Fall, Adam was free to eat all he wished of every other tree of the Garden except the forbidden one. The root of Adam's sin was rebellion and lust for power, not a yearning to kill hunger pangs. It was a mind of rebellion, not a hungry stomach, which induced Adam to partake of the forbidden fruit. Many saints are at war with their own bodies, thinking that the material of their body is evil and responsible for the original sin committed by Adam. But the sin proceeded from Adam's heart, not his stomach. I believe Adam sinned the second He decided to take the fruit. In that split second between the time Adam decided for sin and against God he fell from God’s favour. It was only after that sinful decision was made that his arm reached for the fruit, his hand took it, and his mouth ate it. Adam was no longer circumcised in heart, separated as holy unto the Lord. It is circumcision of the heart which pleases God and leads to holiness, not the starvation and neglect of the body.

God is tired of guilt being heaped on people who eat instead of fast. God’s own Son "came eating and drinking (Matt.11:19), though in time of crisis or necessity He did fast. Not once in God’s Word do the New Testament Apostles actually command Christians to fast at all, but they allowed the saints to settle that issue between God and themselves. God’s people are given a list of things they must do, such as pray without ceasing, rejoice evermore, and be filled with the Spirit (I Thes.5:16-22), but fasting appears nowhere on that list of commands.

It is not God’s will for church leaders to impose fasting as a commandment. That is irresponsible and risky. Some of God’s people have already done without good things in their lives because of satan's attacks. Their soul is already humbled by privations, and they feel too emotionally fragile to endure the additional emptiness of a lengthy fast. Unless God’s anointing is upon their abstinence, they might suffer clinical depression or even panic attacks if they stop eating for too long. Others may be on medication which requires them to eat. Some might be diabetic. Others might have metabolic disorders or be recovering from eating disorders. Some of God’s people are too ill to fast and must eat to keep their blood sugar from plunging. Many Christians are always on crash diets to lose weight and they feel weak anyway, and would suffer from cutting their calories to zero. A very few, and I don’t know who those impoverished people are, might even be underweight or chronically malnourished. Who is to say to those people that if they don't fill their personal fasting quota to earn it, God won't hear and answer their prayer? Even the priests of Baal tried to purchase their own god's favor through suffering (I Kings 18:28).

What stinks to high heaven is the superior attitude of believers who are puffed up with pride about the fasting days they log. They imagine God keeps meticulous records of all the Hershey Bars they gave up for special seasons of self-denial, as they strove to prove that they were better than their pleasure-loving brothers and sisters. The sweet treat they get for their self-denial is to go brag about it to the other saints. But if they’re looking for the praise of men they already have their reward (Matt.6:16). Necessary fasting, like giving money, or confessing your sins privately to God, is to be done discreetly, without boasting about it. God knows when you feel like your back is up against the wall and you forget all other issues to be alone with Him. And after a long, hard battle with satan is won, it is very offensive to God when people tell the prayer warrior, "If only you had been fasting regularly all along, you wouldn't have had to be so desperate about it right now." But has it ever occurred to such a judgmental hypocrite that the vast majority of the time, that dear one might have a merry song in his or her heart because they can sense the love of their Bridegroom caressing their souls? How, then, could it be appropriate for that one to mourn in fasting? Unless it were an emergency situation where God instructed the couple to do it, would a just-married couple fast on their honeymoon, or would they feast joyfully together?

What and if such a person is so spiritually discerning that he or she can already see by faith the Bridegroom coming just over the horizon of time? If you can see your loved one coming toward you, how can you be sad enough to go round with a mournful face and afflict your happy soul?

The most dangerous thing about fasting error is to lay the law down upon yourself or others. That is a religious version of New Year’s Resolutions. Goals are fine so long as you feel led by God to make a goal of this or that. But where goal-setting verges into legalism it's quite a different matter. To say "I shall never again eat on Wednesday" is to open the door for satan to lay a snare of condemnation for you. What if the Lord leads you to witness to someone over lunch on a particular Wednesday? Are you going to tremble in fear of God’s retribution if you violate what has become a law and eat on Wednesday? Even if you were to say "Every December 31 I shall fast without fail" the principle of legalism still holds true. Discipline in key areas is often needful, but beware of making a legalistic religion out of self-imposed suffering.

Don't try to add your own contribution to Christ’s finished work on the Cross. We are saved by grace through faith in His Blood, period. If you fast, give alms, sing in the choir, or knit socks to try to earn or keep God’s approval, it is dangerous territory you're on. You have fallen from grace and have strayed back into the bondage of imperfect law-keeping and reliance upon self, not the Savior. So the very "self" you are so anxious to "crucify" is what you depend upon to provide faithful performance to gain power with God, and that is a hazardous trap of certain self-condemnation.

Beware of the spirit of anorexia masquerading as something holy. It is a wasting obsession, which saps a saint's joy and vitality. So many of God’s saints feel so superior as they fast frequently and watch their own flesh fall away and the scale numbers drop. Even their once-joyful countenance becomes a sour, shurnken mask of painful piety. When such folks carry out their daily devotions they look like they’re getting a whipping instead of actually enjoying the Presence of their Heavenly Father. It is because they have lost the joy of their own salvation and the sweet savor of the Bride's perfume of ecstasy has turned to the sour stench of death and decay.

Fasting is a work, just like alms-giving, praying for others, meal preparation, singing in the choir, and countless other helpful ministries. But if you depend on works to keep you in God’s favor, it is an insult to His Son's finished work on your behalf at Calvary. It is saying that what Jesus did in His own dreadful suffering is insufficient and God requires much more in order to accept you. In adding works to grace as the object of your faith, you are saying that Christ lied when He said: "It is finished".

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