Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough: A Guide to Nine Biblical Fasts (3 page)

Primarily, however, this book is intended to describe the
purposes
and show you the
results
of fasting. It is written to show how fasting can enable you to become an overcomer, to increase your faith and to accomplish great things in the lives of others.

Although I do not think fasting is mandatory for believers today, I do believe the discipline is available to strengthen you spiritually and to help you overcome barriers that might keep you from living the victorious Christian life.

At such a time as this, a major book on the spiritual discipline of fasting is needed. Why?

• Because more than ever before, believers are in bondage to demonic powers and need strength to stand against sin (see The Disciple’s Fast).

• Because believers throughout the world need solutions to many complex problems and threatening situations they are facing (see The Ezra Fast).

• Because the Church is in desperate need of revival, and every tribe and tongue and nation is in desperate need of evangelization (see The Samuel Fast).

• Because the world in general and the Church in particular are crying out for people of character and integrity—people who have found in Christ the emotional healing and strength to overcome sinful and destructive habits (see The Elijah Fast).

• Because the abundance of food has insulated North American believers from the realities of starvation and malnutrition in the two-thirds world (see The Widow’s Fast).

• Because the media has so captured the national attention that even believers are operating according to principles completely alien to God’s will for their lives (see The Saint Paul Fast).

• Because even with the abundance of food and medical technology in North America, people are not necessarily healthier (see The Daniel Fast).

• Because a great many believers have become so entangled in economic and social pursuits that they need to be set free to establish their testimonies and to influence others for Christ (see The John the Baptist Fast).

• Because of the growing influence of demonic forces and the waning influence of biblical Christianity in North America, and the fact that believers need protection from the evil one (see The Esther Fast).

In addition to this last point, the time is long past when Christians could bask in the warmth of an evangelical Protestant consensus in North America. Our culture has become post-Christian and militantly pluralistic. Our culture is little by little losing the influence of the Bridegroom. We need to fast to reestablish contact with Him.

If you are serious enough about the personal and social tasks before you as a Christian to take up the discipline of fasting, you can expect resistance, interference and opposition. Plan for it, insofar as you are able. Do not be caught unawares. Remember that you are attempting to advance in your spiritual journey and to gain ground for the Kingdom. That necessitates taking ground away from the enemy—and no great movement of the Holy Spirit goes unchallenged by the enemy.

I encourage you to find a prayer partner who will stand with you when you fast—to offer intercession for you as you endeavor to seek the Lord through this spiritual discipline.

It is important to remember that fasting is a physical discipline. Consult your physician before beginning to fast. Not everyone should fast. Not everyone should fast for more than one day at a time. Not everyone should attempt all nine fasts suggested in this book. The fast is simply a tool that may be used to glorify God and realize answers to prayer. You can get the same results without fasting if your heart is perfectly prepared. If not, and you are physically healthy, a fast may be God’s answer.

I have great visions for this book. Like a parent giving birth to a new baby, every author sees his new volume as something so special that it will change the world. I want every Christian in the world to learn to fast—to fast properly—to fast for results.

If every Christian fasted, the results could shake our society like a windstorm bending a sapling. Christians would demonstrate that they live differently, that their faith is imperative, that the Almighty works in their daily lives.

If all our churches fasted, they would move forward in evangelism and reach out in feeding and helping others. God would then pour His presence upon His people.

F
ROM THE BEGINNING, PEOPLE HAVE PURSUED
G
OD
. T
HEY WRONGLY
built the Ziggurat (tower) of Babel to reach Him (see Gen. 11:1-9). They rebelliously carved images to please God. They arrogantly conceived and lived by legalistic laws to impress God. They constructed monasteries and isolated themselves to please God. As we shall see, they even fasted wrongly in an attempt to divert His attention from other things they should have been doing, but were neglecting.

It’s important to note that religious practices such as fasting are less important than doing God’s will. As Micah 6:8 points out, what the Lord truly requires of us is devotion to Himself: “To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Fasting is not an end in itself; it is a means by which we can worship the Lord and submit ourselves in humility to Him. We don’t make God love us any more than He already does if we fast, or if we fast longer. As Galatians states, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (5:1). The goal of any discipline is freedom. If the result is not greater freedom, something is wrong.

Even if we wanted to, we could not manipulate God. We fast and pray for results, but the results are in God’s hands. One of the greatest spiritual benefits of fasting is becoming more attentive to God—becoming more
aware of our own inadequacies and His adequacy, our own contingencies and His self-sufficiency—and listening to what He wants us to be and do.

Christian fasting, therefore, is totally antithetical to, say, Hindu fasting. Both seek results; however, Hindu fasting focuses on the self and tries to get something for a perceived sacrifice. Christian fasting focuses on God. The results are spiritual results that glorify God—both in the person who fasts and others for whom we fast and pray.

In this book I have focused on the well-known and often quoted passage of Scripture in Isaiah 58:6-8, which gives a veritable laundry list of warnings as well as positive results that can occur when we submit ourselves to the discipline of fasting.

It is as important to learn from this passage the kinds of fasts that do
not
please God as it is to understand those fasts He desires. God’s people in Isaiah’s day had been fasting, but without results. The reason, God says, is that
they ignored the way fasting should change their lives
, treating it as an empty ritual:

On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high (Isa. 58:3,4,
NIV
).

Like so many Christians today, God’s people considered worship to be merely a private, inward act. All of the focus on fasting was on the personal dimension. Listen to God’s rebuke of this concept:

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? (v. 5,
NIV
).

The purpose of all worship, including fasting, is to change the worshiper in ways that have social and interpersonal impact. We worship not just to gratify ourselves, but also to become empowered to change
the world! God goes on to specify the kind of fast He chooses:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward (vv. 6-8,
KJV
).

We must not interpret the earlier verses in this passage as a call to a “social gospel” in the sense that would deny the importance of personal, heartfelt worship. God was not asking His people to stop fasting so they might instead bring in the Kingdom through social change. Far from it—He wanted the people to continue fasting, but to expand fasting through their actions into their everyday lives. Through the prophet Joel, God called His people to “Turn to Me with all your heart,
with fasting
” (Joel 2:12, emphasis mine). We may assume that Isaiah is communicating God’s desire that fasting be continued, and that its effects be evidenced beyond the mere private and personal.

I find in Isaiah 58, therefore, a model for the fruits God expects to see from genuine faith and devotion. Rightly used, fasting can help us present Him with those fruits. Thus, the passage prompted me to find in other places in Scripture nine kinds of fasting I think Christians should rediscover today—not just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of others as well. Let’s look at the passage again, listing the aspects that will be the basis for the rest of this book.

In Isaiah 58, God says He has chosen fasts that (1) loosen the bonds of wickedness, (2) undo heavy burdens, (3) let the oppressed go free, (4) break every yoke, (5) give bread to the hungry and provide the poor with housing, (6) allow the people’s light to break forth like the morning, (7) cause their health to spring forth speedily, (8) cause their righteousness to go before them and (9) cause the glory of the Lord to be their reward (or “rear guard”).

Rightly practiced, we see in Isaiah’s day a privileged son of Judah
bowing before God and pleading with his people to turn from their sin, abandon their idolatry and worship the Lord through fasting and service to the poor and afflicted.

There are indications that Israelites even pressed fellow Jews into slavery, perhaps in response to their failure to pay debts (see Neh. 5:8). Even though debt-servitude was allowed in some cases, those pressed into this kind of service were not to be treated as mere slaves (see Lev. 25:39-42). This law was apparently being widely violated in Isaiah’s day.

We must admit that we will not find all of these social conditions present in our own situations. But if we read the passage with biblical imaginations, we can see a modern and often personal application of each aspect of the kind of fast that pleases God.

For example, even if literal slavery is not a widespread problem in our own society, what of the servitude of the soul? Just as an Israelite might fast in protest of the literal enslavement of others, so we might fast in resistance against selling ourselves to Satan. In each of these social sins a personal parallel can be seen. So in the description of the nine fasts, I invite you as a serious disciple of Christ to find a contemporary application of the original intention of this great passage on fasting.

To better illustrate and reveal the significance of these nine reasons for fasting, I have chosen nine biblical characters whose lives personified the literal or figurative theme of each of the nine aspects highlighted in Isaiah 58:6-8. Each fast has a different name, accomplishes a different purpose and follows a different prescription.

I do not want to suggest that the nine fasts we are about to explore are the only kinds of fasts available to the believer, or that they are totally separate from each other. Nor do I want to suggest that there is only one type of fast for a particular problem. These suggested fasts are models to use and adjust to your own particular needs and desires as you seek to grow closer to God. What follows is a brief overview of the nine fasts that will comprise the rest of this book: