HOW DO WE ENSURE WE FAST IN A BIBLICAL MANNER?

 

i.                    We are to fast for the right, and not the wrong, reasons. If we want to loose weight and we stop eating for a while or change our eating habits, then that is only dieting. On the contrary, in our fasting we must focus or centre our attention on God, and not even on the problem that drove us to Him. I Pet. 5:7; 2 Chron. 20:5-20.

ii.                  Our fasting must be unto the Lord. It is His acceptance, and not men’s praise or approval, that we seek. So our fasting, like our praying in secret (Matt. 6:6), is between God and ourselves. Therefore there is no room for my “announcing” to all and sundry that I am engaged in a day or period of fasting. Matt. 6:16-18. That however does not invalidate corporate fasting (see the examples in books of Joel and Esther and 2 Chron. 20), but we need not go to CNN to announce it. For corporate fasting, people of like mind, i.e. all those affected, are the ones that need to know.

iii.                While fasting involves abstaining from perfectly legitimate activities like eating and drinking, and even sex within marriage, I Cor. 7:5, it is absolutely necessary that we feast on the word of God during our fast. See our Lord’s response in Matt. 4:4 to Satan’s attacks. We may even have to shut off the TV so we can spend our “TV Time” on the word of God.

iv.                 Fasting, once it is finished, must lead us to service for the Lord. If at the end of our fast we remain where we were at the beginning of it, the Lord will not think much of us. See Isa. 58:1-7.

 

 

WHY COMBINE PRAYER AND FASTING?

 

You can of course fast alone or pray alone, but it is like eating fried potato chips alone when you can spread ketch-up on it and the combination becomes something different. No wonder in most passages in the Bible where fasting is talked of, prayer is not far removed from it. The One we pray and fast to tells us that some matters cannot be resolved unless the two of them, prayer and fasting, are combined. See Matt. 17:21.

 

SUMMARY

“But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” Matt.17:21(NIV)