Most people meet fasting as a rule before they meet it as a relationship. They hear what they cannot eat, and they never hear why. So let us start where Scripture starts: fasting is not a diet, and it is not a hunger strike aimed at God. It is a deliberate setting aside of something ordinary in order to give that time, attention, and appetite to the Lord.
Notice the definition again: abstaining from food, pleasures, or normal daily activities. Food is the most common fast in Scripture, but it is not the only one. What makes it a fast is not the item you set down. It is that you set it down on purpose, for a set time, and you fill that space with God.
Three things every fast has
- An abstinence — the specific thing you are laying down.
- A window — a start and an end you decided in advance, not whenever you get hungry.
- A purpose — what you are seeking God for while you fast.
That third one is what separates fasting from skipping lunch. If you remove the food but never turn toward God with the time you freed up, you have dieted. The abstinence opens the door. Prayer walks through it.
Personal fasts and called fasts
The fast you set with God is your personal fast. Your pastor can also call a church-wide fast, and church organizations call corporate fasts. Both are real. In this movement, your fast is yours — we teach it, we never assign it.
One more word before we go on. Fasting is not how you get God to love you. He already does. Fasting is how you quiet everything that has been drowning Him out.