A Time to Fast

 

One of the hot new trends in the diet and exercise world is known as IF – intermittent fasting. Tyler Graham explains in Men’s Journal, The Magazine:

IF is not what most people typically think of as fasting – going without food or sustenance for days. Instead, IFers believe you can reap all the benefits (and more) of chronic calorie restriction after as few as 12 hours without food. Which means that simply skipping breakfast and waiting until lunch to eat any food (most say it’s OK to put a splash of cream in your coffee) counts as IF.  It seems counterintuitive, but skipping meals helps you feel more energized, recover better from exercise, blast fat, and retain lean muscle mass, and even protects your body from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and cognitive decline – which is why NASA is interested in looking at fasting to improve the cognitive functioning of pilots and unmanned-aerial-vehicle operators.

But many doctor’s warn against using a fast for weight-loss. A WebMD article argues:

“Fasting is not a weight loss tool. Fasting slows your metabolic rate down so your diet from before the fast is even more fattening after you fast,’ says Joel Fuhrman MD, author of Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Plan for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss and Fasting and Eating for Health. Fasting for weight loss carries other health risks as well.  While fasting for a day or two is rarely a problem if you are healthy, “it can be quite dangerous if you are not already eating a healthy diet, or if you’ve got liver or kidney problems, any kind of compromised immune system functioning, or are on medication – even Tylenol,” says Fuhrman, a family physician in Flemington, N.J.

But the time to fast I’m speaking of isn’t about health or weight loss. The spiritual tradition of fasting is that there is a time to abstain from food in order to focus on God in prayer. 

This teaching cuts across religious lines. Self-purification through fasting is the fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam. Some Buddhists teach that fasting is central to the path of Enlightenment – though Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha-to-Be, found that fasting as a “pursuit” was delusional.

In the Jewish scripture, there are many instances of fasting – Moses fasted 40 days while receiving the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:28), Elijah fasted while fleeing for his life from Queen Jezebel (I Kings 19), and Daniel observed a “partial fast” (Daniel 10:3) – but God commanded the Israelites to observe only one specific day of fasting each year: The Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29-30).

Following the example of Moses, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he fasted for 40 days (Luke 4:2) where he successfully overcame all the temptations Satan threw at Him.

The New Testament never commands a fast nor forbids it, though Paul does warn people about using a fast or other religious observance to “earn” their spiritual status when he says, “do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival” (Colossians 3:16, NIV).

So is fasting good for the soul today? Absolutely, when done with humility, with the focus on God, not one’s sacrifice of food for a day or two.

By the way, is fasting always about food? It’s my observation that when people practice the kind of “partial fast” that Daniel did and apply it to social media, entertainment, the Internet, smartphones or other modern “sustenance” they might have a clearer path to focusing on God and dealing with a spiritual issue in their lives. Some of us would prefer to give up apple pie for a year than the thought of being disconnected from email for a day or two!

When is it time to fast? On a spiritual level, when you are faced with a temptation, a grief, a challenge or anything else that so commands your attention that you can’t seem to see God, the fast is a way to follow Paul’s counsel to “set your minds on things above, not earthly things” (Colossians 3:2, NIV).

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