Read Isaiah 58 on this.  Very interesting....

You’re right.  Isaiah 58 gives a good warning about the true heart of fasting - even under the old covenant.  And so when Jesus tells his disciples how to fast, and when Paul and the early church fasted they must have had Isaiah 58 echoing through their minds.  John Piper’s, Hunger For God, has an excellent chapter on Isaiah 58.  I highly recommend it.

Hi Andrew,
even if the word is “fasting” in the Greek, does it describe just being without food, but not the intent? EG: “Starved” as opposed to “Fasted”? s

Srely Paul’s context is about deprivations forced on him in all his various sufferings? It drifts in and out of the “normal” spiritual disciplines and daily walk with Christ through to suffering imposed on him by others. How do we know which “fasting” is being mentioned here??

I have no lengthy reflection on any previous comments, only my experience during my Sydney University Evangelical Union (SUEU) days.

Just prior to the fortnight-long outreach events the SUEU organised each year - “Nailing God” mission in 2002 & “Absolute God” mission in 2002, believers of the SUEU were encouraged to consider spending time in fasting prayer.

Note: I said “encouraged”. Not “pressured”, not “coerced”, not “guilt-tripped”.
Not every Christian of the SUEU chose to fast - and in fact, I don’t think most of us knew who did decide to fast or who didn’t (which is fine considering Jesus’ comment about one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing..)

The why of fasting prior to kicking-off our uni. mission events - as I think I recall key organising student Matt Toulmin saying - was that in experiencing pangs of physical hunger we would remember our greater hunger for God’s Word to be accepted & believed in by unbelievers who were exposed to its preaching during the upcoming mission events.

Every time a physical hunger pang was experienced, it prompted prayer to God that, as much as we hunger for physical food, even more we hunger for people to be saved by believing in the One whose flesh is real food & whose blood is real drink - the bread of life Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this way, the fasting heightened our prayers for the lost. I could see the rationale of this, & so I participated gladly - & prayerfully - in fasting during lead-ups to evangelistic events such as the big-’uns we had at uni.

Not that our fasting saves/converts people - but if fasting prompts prayers we otherwise might not pray...well, ain’t it James who says in ch. 5 of his letter that the prayers of the righteous are powerful & effective?

Hope it adds to the discussion. Any other EUers out there who remember these things apart from me?

TZ.

I fast every night, and break my fast every morning, usually with orange juice, weetbix and coffee.

Interestingly, the 2 Acts occurences (after Pentecost) of Christian fasts are when they are selecting missionaries and leaders.

I am personally convinced of the “presence of the bridegroom with us” not because we are still waiting for Jesus to return, but because he promised not to leave us alone as orphans, but he would send another counsellor just like him to be with us until we go to be with Him. The presence of the Spirit with us means God is with us, & though we may choose to fast, it is an option.

However, Moore College taught me that food is good for us (especially Jock’s potatoes, but not necessarily his egg plant lasagna). At an intercollege get together in the mid 1980’s it was reported back to us of the chief vices of students in each college:
one denomination’s students smoked, another drank, another swore, but Moore college students ate.

Interestingly again, breaking bread together was one of the four (or 5 if you including sharing) things that the early Christians were devoted to in Acts 2:42f. Eating together is a vital part of how we should structure our churches… we should be learning that from the growing ethno-specific churches in Sydney.

To build a church now, we should include a commercial kitchen & a good eating room or 3.

What he said!
What he said!
What he said!

(I like about 3 servings).

Thanks for bumping this Robert.

Recently I gave a sermon on fasting since we looked at Matthew 6:16-18.  The point of the passage isn’t really about fasting but more about not doing your acts of righteousness in front of men so as to impress them - however what our congregation (and I) wanted to know was whether there was any point to fasting or not.

The Christian culture in Sydney at least for younger people has almost no habit of fasting.  So I thought I’d give it a go for a few days in the week before the sermon.

What I found experientially was:

So I decided I’d give it a go, to see if it had any spiritual benefit.  Now I know there’s a certain irony in telling you this given we’ve just read Matthew 6, but I wanted to share with some of what I noticed for me and some of what I learnt.

I guess the thing I noticed most was that I got hungry.  And I wasn’t just hungry, I was so hungry that a lot of the time I would think about being hungry.  So even though I was meant to be fasting, giving up food to concentrate on God, I was actually distracted from thinking about God because I was thinking about how hungry I was.  It didn’t help that I was driving around a lot, so I kept driving past all these food places that would remind me of how hungry I was.

Another thing I noticed was that occasionally I would be a Pharisee.  In other words I kept wondering what the rules were when it came to fasting.  When exactly am I allowed to eat?  What exactly am I allowed to put in my mouth in the meantime?  So I’d meet up with someone and have a coffee and think wait – am I allowed to have this?  Or at home I’d make myself a tea, and rather than think about God I’d get distracted because my conscience would try to work out whether having a tea was okay or not.

So far it doesn’t sound good.  But over the couple of days I tried it, I think I was more aware throughout the day of what God was doing.  And I think I prayed more – not just that I prayed more often, not just that I prayed about more things than the things I usually prayed about, but that my heart was more into praying.

And I think I learned a little more about me as a person.  That I like food a little too much, that I take having food for granted, and that not having food isn’t so hard.

So on the whole, I might not have gotten as much out of fasting as I should have, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not for me or that I shouldn’t do it, I think it’s more a sign that I should do it more often and try to get better at it.  And not tell anyone about it.

But what about you guys?  Maybe you can give fasting a go.  But you don’t necessarily need to give up having food, you might try giving up something else, to see if you can do it, and to see if it helps you realize how you can actually live without it, and to help you realize how much more you need God.

That said I haven’t fasted since…

Robert Denham - 05 July 2008 01:52 AM

I fast every night, and break my fast every morning, usually with orange juice, weetbix and coffee.

I am personally convinced of the “presence of the bridegroom with us” not because we are still waiting for Jesus to return, but because he promised not to leave us alone as orphans, but he would send another counsellor just like him to be with us until we go to be with Him. The presence of the Spirit with us means God is with us, & though we may choose to fast, it is an option.

Hi Robert,

I’m interested in when you think Jesus was talking about the bridegoom being taken away so the disciples will fast?

The lord Jesus is with us by his spirit and yet he is not bodily with us.  He is taken away.  Surely there is more to come.  Matthew 25 says the bridegroom is returning at an hour that no-one expects.  Revelation 19 says that we await the wedding day when the bridegroom appears. 

Won’t we celebrate his presence in the new heavens in a way we do not celebrate now.  Surely, therefore we can also fast to long for his appearance as well.  We wait for the bridgegroom. 

We can fast to remind ourselves that Jesus is not with us; and we can eat ( the Lord’s supper) to remind ourselves that he is with us.

The quick answer was for the 3 days that he was in the tomb is when they were mourning & fasting.

Our understanding of the Lord’s Supper was a feast to remember his death as well as his coming again, yet some of the very earliest feasts for the Christians (recorded in various non-Biblical documents) were celebrating the resurrection appearance meals. Eastern Orthodox rituals celebrate the defeat of death more than the western churches’ views on the Holy Communion.

At the risk of being repetitive, I repost my comments of 10 April (it was 3 months ago after all!) regarding Matthew 9:14-15:

Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

I think this particular verse (to which others have already referred) is interesting, because it links fasting with mourning.  Those who suggest that the Groom is now with us are right - the mourning of the disciples to which Jesus alluded is surely the period of his arrest, trial, crucifixion and burial.  That mourning has now ended with his resurrection.  (It could be argued, however, that there is a sense in which we still await the presence [parousia] of Jesus with us.)

All of that begs the question, however, as to whether all fasting is associated with mourning, and therefore, whether Jesus was saying that any kind of fastiing is inappropriate now that he is with us, or whether some purposes for fasting still would have validity in the overlap of the ages.