QUESTION: Pastor I have a friend who has made it a tendency to fast twice a week she has been pushing me to do the same. Kindly shed some light on the power of fasting. Ev. Arara
RESPONSE: Fasting has an impact on our PHYSIOLOGY and our PSYCHOLOGY.
PHYSIOLOGY
Fasting is recommended by some health workers for one’s health. It helps and improves on body cleansing. It releases the intestines from the routine work of dealing with food. It helps cut weight and provides vacation to the entire body system that deals with foods and beverages we consume.
Fasting helps with sugar control by reducing insulin resistance. It has an effect on heart health and on one’s brain and a few other scientific benefits as the physicians might advise.
However, there are dangers to continuous (intermittent) fasts to a human body. Those who do dry fasting might suffer from dehydration, malnutrition, anxiety (stress) and headaches as a signal of their health breaking down.
There are many ways of taking care of your body and trust me, fasting is one of the super ones. For those of you who are married, please quit (fast) lunch meals. Your breakfast must look like your lunch. Eat too much and too nutritious (not bread, mandazi/donuts, chapati etc) in the morning, drink fluids throughout the day and eat from 4 to 6 strictly in the evening. Stop eating heavy as you watch your late shows on TV and internet. Fast from 4 or 6 in the evening to morning. If we can practice fasting lunch in our homes then this will be good for our health.
PSYCHOLOGY
Religious belief is a psychology. How we are tuned up psychologically by our religious beliefs and teachers determines the feeling during and after fasting.
Some don’t feel devotional enough nor close to their god without a ritual practiced. To such, fasting becomes a means to an end of a devotional life with their god. When they don’t fast, they feel off and distanced not just from their god but also prohibited from the gifts the gods could offer.
To others, like the Muslims, it is a doctrine whose time is determined by the solar system and once the moon shows up, then meals switch timing and fasting kicks in.
To some religious (charismatic Pentecostalism inclusive) there are special dates and days of fasting and in some incidences, it is not TIME but an EVENT can determine going without food. Praying for a demonic, praying and fasting for an economy, praying and fasting for a relationship, etc. All these and more can be events that psychologically spark a dismissal of food for a given time.
Since food is essential to human life existence, fasting is a communication from believers to their gods that what has attacked them threatens their being and therefore they need deliverance ASAP.
This suicidal and Jihadistic form of Worship and supplication was largely propagated by the Ancient Near Eastern Religions whose influence is dominant in the biblical cult known as JUDAISM.
It is important that you develop a proper psychology as a Christian. It doesn’t have to be a positive one as the New Age cult teaches but it has to be a right one. Fasting is not a trick we play on the Almighty all knowing, all-able and all-loving God. He doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves physically before he answers us. This is not the God the Bible teaches (Luke 11:11, Mathew 18:3, Mathew 7:7-8) lest we are drawing from the god the cult of Jusdaism presents to us in the text (Psalm 35:13, Jonah 3:5, 1Kings 18:28)
BIBLICAL ADVICE
What we have in the Bible (OT&NT) about the issue of fasting is not a dismissal of fasting as a human necessary practice but rather a restructure of the psychology built around it. Biblical Theology’s interest as far as fasting is concerned is not so much on whether to fast or not but rather on the WHY (reasons) to fast.
We are biblically advised in the book of Isaiah that since fasting is a denial of what matters for our existence like food, so are we to exercise fasting by denying ourselves those other materialistic things upon which we claim and assume our life depends for the betterment of others. We are called to fast our injustices and exercise justice, fast our pride and exercise humility – that is the fasting we are called for in the book of Isaiah 58.
We are biblically advised that we cannot fast to seek God, God is not lost, we are. But we can fast to seek and find our lostness like the prodigal son and return. We shouldn’t fast to seek God, he is with us, and we are in him, we can only leave his presence but he cannot. Sometimes, therefore, fasting is a sign of that those fasting have left the presence of God (Mark 2:19)
We are biblically advised that fasting is not a weapon of mass destruction that we launch against resistant demons or problems. THIS KIND CANNOT LEAVE APART FROM FASTING AND PRAYING (Matthew 17:21) but rather that despite Matthew 17:21 like other verses appearing in some Greek manuscripts and missing in other credible Greek manuscripts, we are asked to always review that whenever we are fasting it is always THAT KIND talked of particularly in Matthew 17:21.
I could go on and but here is the thing. You have a body to which you are a steward. You have to be faithful to your body by eating right, sleeping enough, exercising, resting, and cleaning it both outside and inside. Fasting, therefore, is a good body cleanser and I don’t see any problem one fasting twice a week as a body rest/cleanser based on their consumption. The problem is when the reason is not physiological but psychological and those fasting want to cast their religious ritualism as a favor winning card before God (Luke 18:12).
Get your reasons for fasting right and fast. If you want to spend time alone with your God without food, then be sober enough not to consider your fasting as a hunger strike against your assumed God’s delay, indifference or refusal to answer to your demands. If your fasting is a power that bends God’s resistant hand, then this fasting is blasphemy to God. For the true God is a provider for those who fast and those who don’t. The true God has suffering faithfuls as well as successful sinners. It is in the same world of divine providence that we have prosperous saints and suffering wicked as well. Before you go on any form of religious strike or sacred exhibition get who God is right and get right divine providence.
God bless you, i invoke TRUTH, WISDOM & FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest M.I.T White
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
QUESTIONING TO BELIEVE, BELIEVING TO LIVE
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 