Notes on Fasting

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Matthew 5:16-18

Then the disciples of John came to him (Jesus), saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Matthew 9:14-15

“The expression used in Leviticus for fasting is literally “deny yourselves” (NIV) or “humble your souls” (NASB).
(Michael Wilkins, Matthew, NIV Application Commentary Series, p. 281)

“The transformation that God has begun in the inner life is reflected in our acts of righteousness. Jesus emphasizes three practices that illustrate this principle. The transformation that occurs in the heart of a disciple causes him to love with God’s love, which will be expressed in giving to the needy (6:2-4). The intimacy of the relationship with God that has occurred in the inner person of the disciple will be expressed in an intimate form of personalized prayer between her and the Father (6:5-15). The inner life of the disciple who has experienced true humility and mourning over one’s own sin and the sorry sinful state of the world apart from God will urge her or him to undertake the discipline of fasting in order to examine one’s personal life and to focus on prayer for the world’s repentance (6:16-18).”
(Wilkins, p. 285)

“How easy it is to take something like fasting and try to use it to get God to do what we want. At times there is such stress upon the blessings and benefits of fasting that we would be tempted to believe that with a little fast we could have the world, including God, eating out of our hand.

Fasting must forever center on God. It must be God-initiated and God-ordained.”
(Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline, p. 48)

“If our fasting is not unto God, we have failed. Physical benefits, success in prayer, enduing with power, spiritual insights – these must never replace God as the center of our fasting.”
(Foster, p. 48)

More than any other single Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. This is a wonderful benefit to the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled my soul with fasting” (Ps. 69:10). Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear – if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.”
(Foster, p. 48)

“Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in him a source of sustenance beyond food. Through it, we learn by experience that God’s Word to us is a life substance, that it is not food (“bread”) alone that gives life, but also the words that proceed from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). We learn that we too have meat to eat that the world does not know about (John 4:32, 34).”
(Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 166)

“ . . . fasting is one of the more important ways of practicing that self-denial required of everyone who would follow Christ (Matt. 16:24). In fasting, we learn how to suffer happily as we feast on God. And it is a good lesson, because in our lives we will suffer, no matter what else happens to us.”
(Willard, p. 167)

“. . . let a man rejoice inwardly in the very fact that by this his fasting he is turning away from the pleasures of the world to make himself subject to Christ . . .”
(Augustine of Hippo in Spiritual Classics by Richard Foster, p. 69)