Fasting!
The Bible has a lot to say about it. It certainly isn’t emphasized or taught on as it should be. Do I look forward to doing it? To be honest, no I don’t. It is denying this flesh, which is always uncomfortable, but there certainly are benefits and blessings attached to it. Our church recently went on a 3 day fast(all those that were physically able), and I can see how God is blessing the sacrifice. There is a greater liberty in our services, and it seems people are responding more to the preaching and coming to the altar and being touched by God. It is wonderful to see! I’m no expert on the subject of fasting, but I just want to share a few quotes I came across that have some good information about it.
Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.
Dallas Willard
Is fasting ever a bribe to get God to pay more attention to the petitions ? No, a thousand times no. It is simply a way to make clear that we sufficiently reverence the amazing opportunity to ask help from the everlasting God, the Creator of the universe, to choose to put everything else aside and concentrate on worshiping, asking forgiveness, and making our requests known-considering His help more important than anything we could do ourselves in our own strength and with our own ideas.
Edith Schaeffer
Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.
Andrew Murray
Fasting is important, more important perhaps, than many of us have supposed,… when exercised with a pure heart and a right motive, fasting may provide us with a key to unlock doors where other keys have failed; a window opening up new horizons in the unseen world; a spiritual weapon of God’s provision, mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds. (God’s Chosen Fast)
Arthur Wallis
In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are – dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.
James Hudson Taylor
Our greatest victories are won on our knees and with empty stomachs.
Julio C. Ruibal
When the devil, the foe and the tyrant, sees a man bearing this weapon [fasting], he is straight-away frightened and he recollects and considers that defeat which he suffered in the wilderness at the hands of the Saviour; at once his strength is shattered and the very sight of this weapon, given us by our Commander-in-chief, burns him.
Isaac of Syria
Do you have a hunger for God? If we don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. If we are full of what the world offers, then perhaps a fast might express, or even increase, our soul’s appetite for God. Between the dangers of self-denial and self-indulgence is the path of pleasant pain called fasting.
John Piper
