Fasting is Always About Food (Fasting Edition #111)

Our fasting quote of encouragement today is from John Piper. He said: "Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us. Fasting reveals the measure of food’s mastery over us – or whatever we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. A real lived-out human act of preference for God over His gifts is the actual lived-out glorification of God’s excellence for which He created the world. Fasting is not the only way, or the main way, that we glorify God in preferring Him above His gifts. But it is one way."

Our fasting devotional today is titled "FASTING IS ALWAYS ABOUT FOOD" from Susan Gregory, author of the bestselling book "The Daniel Fast".

You've probably heard people make a statement like this, "I'm not going to fast food, I'm going to fast television instead."

The truth is that fasting is always about restricting food for a spiritual purpose. The Hebrew word for fast means "to cover the mouth." And the Greek word for fast means "to abstain from food." So fasting is always about restricting food and you cannot realize the supernatural benefits of fasting without restricting food.

Think about going to golf club and walking all 18 holes of the course, but you never hit a ball. Did you golf? No, you had a nice walk, but you were not golfing. Similarly, you can abstain from television, computer games or some other activity, but you were not fasting.

If you want to fulfill the ways of our faith by prayer and fasting, then you will need to restrict food from your body. Abstaining from other habits may be a good thing to do, but fasting is always about food.