Food, Faith, and Fasting: A Story of Repentance, Dependence, and Worship

Part Seven: The role of fasting in our relationship with food and our faith.

The birthplace of Christian fasting is homesickness for God. — John Piper

I sat in the darkened college cafeteria wishing I had eaten in my dorm room. How did I possibly forget it was the most insufferable time to be in the cafeteria? The forty days of Lent. 

“Ugh!” a girl groaned, dropping her full weight into her chair. “I want coffee so bad.”

“Why don’t you get some then?” her friend asked.

“I’m fasting from coffee for Lent,” she replied.

She was the first of many to gripe that morning. One was fasting from sugar and his coffee was too bitter; another was fasting from his phone and was unbelievably bored. I stuffed my peanut butter toast in my face as fast as I could so I could put my head down and speed-walk back to my room. 

What kind of relationship to fasting do you have? Perhaps you’ve done it for fitness reasons or medical obligations. Maybe you make it a regular part of your spiritual life by fasting once a week from a meal so you can pray. Or you might be one of those people who fasts regularly unintentionally because you get so immersed in a project that eating escapes your mind altogether. Or perhaps you’re like me and don’t have much experience in the spiritual discipline. 

Whatever your relationship with fasting, let’s walk through redemptive history and examine this practice.

An Overview of Fasting through Redemptive History

The first time we see fasting in Scripture is when Moses fasted for those fickle Israelites wandering the desert. After complaining to God about the food he sent, they complained about God’s presence itself. God appeared in volcanic proportion on top of Mount Sinai—thick smoke, thunderous trumpets, and blinding lightning. The people watched as Moses walked up and disappeared behind the smoke, not returning for days. 

At first, they feared the God of the mountain. They told Moses to not even allow God to speak to them, but to speak to Moses and then to them. However, that fear wore off. They seemed to have grown accustomed to the smoking, blazing mountain where God boomed. They wondered where Moses was all this time and if he’d ever return, and what came of the God who delivered them from Egypt. “Aaron, make us gods!” they demanded. “Who knows what’s become of Moses—we need gods to worship!”

So he did. He took all their gold God had put into their hands from Egypt and fashioned a calf for them to worship—and worship it they did, with dancing and feasting. 

When Moses found out, he smashed the tablets God had written the Ten Commandments on, representing how Israel had smashed their covenant with God. 

God, with even more righteous wrath than Moses, told Moses he would destroy all of Israel. Yet this is when we see the first fast: Moses laid prostrate before the Lord and fasted for forty days from both food and water for the people of Israel, and God relented and showed mercy yet again. 

Throughout the Old Testament, the people of God continued to fast when in need of wisdom or protection. When going to war against their fellow brothers the Benjaminites for a heinous crime they committed, the rest of Israel kept losing men in battle, so they sought God with tears and fasting (Judges 20:26). When Ezra led hundreds of Israelites back to Jerusalem after they had been taken captive in Babylon, they feared the surrounding nations might attack and overcome them, since they had no military protection from Babylon. So they fasted and prayed for God to protect them (Ezra 8:21, 23). 

When Haman made a decree for all the Jews to be killed, the Jews mourned and fasted. Once Queen Esther found out, she ordered for fasting to be done on her behalf as she prepared to go before the king (an act that could result in her death) and plead for her people’s lives (Esther 4:3, 16). When King Jehoshaphat heard that a horde of armies was coming against Judah, he was afraid, so he set his face to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah (2 Chron. 20:3). In the New Testament, Paul and his companions committed elders to the churches they founded with prayer and fasting (Acts 14:23).

The people of God also fasted when they recognized their sins, in order to humble themselves before God and display their grief to him. After losing the ark of the covenant to the Philistines, God finally returned it to Israel. When he did, all of Israel lamented after God. Samuel called the people to put away their false gods and worship only the Lord. Then they gathered together, poured water out before the Lord, confessed their sins, and fasted on that day while Samuel prayed. God forgave them and saved them from the Philistines when they were attacked again (1 Sam. 7:6). 

After Jerusalem was restored under Nehemiah’s leadership, the Jews confessed their sins and the sins of their fathers in sackcloths with dirt on their heads (Neh. 9:1–2). Even the entire, wicked nation of Nineveh, when they heard God’s judgment against them through the prophet Jonah, put on sackcloth and fasted (Jonah 3:5).

Don’t forget King Ahab, one of the most evil kings, repented with fasting. King Ahab wanted a vineyard belonging to Naboth, but the man denied him. While Ahab moped, his wife Jezebel called the people of Naboth’s region to fast, set Naboth as the head of the people, and put two worthless men on either side of him. Then she had those worthless men accuse him of cursing God and the king so he would be stoned. Once this happened, God sent Elijah to proclaim God’s judgment over Ahab. But Ahab tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, fasted, and looked dejected. Because of this, God decided to not bring about disaster in Ahab’s days but in his sons’ days (1 Kings 21:9–27). 

In light of all the discipline and curses of the covenant coming upon them, God even calls the people to repent and fast through the prophet Joel, and he promises that if the people return with lament, true repentance, and fasting, God will forgive them and show mercy to them (Joel 1:14; 2:12, 15). 

They also fasted when in need of God’s mercy. After David took Bathsheba as his own and had her husband killed in battle, he had a baby with her. But upon birth, the baby was not well and near death. David fasted and laid all night on the ground, praying that God would save the child (2 Sam. 12:16–23). In the Psalms, as David cries out and mourns over those who have turned against him, he says that although they are treating him with evil, he had treated them with love by afflicting himself with fasting when they were sick (Ps. 35:13). Daniel, having read the prophecies from the prophet Jeremiah, saw how many years of suffering were left for Jerusalem, and turned to God with prayer, sackcloth, ashes, and fasting hoping he would relent sooner (Dan. 9:3).

The people fasted in times of grief as well. After King Saul and his three sons were killed in battle, some men of Israel buried their bones (having burnt their bodies) and fasted. When David and his soldiers found out, they tore their clothes, mourned, wept, and fasted until evening for Saul, Jonathan, the people of the Lord, and the house of Israel (1 Sam. 31:13; 2 Sam. 1:12; 1 Chron. 10). Once Nehemiah heard that those who had returned from Babylon to Jerusalem weren’t doing well and that the walls of Jerusalem had been broken down, he wept and mourned for days over this news, with prayer and fasting (Neh. 1:4). 

It’s important to note, however, that God ignored the people’s fasting at times. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the people had started fasting to remember those grievous days. Yet once Jerusalem was restored, they wondered if they should continue these fasts. So the people sought the Lord to know if they should fast in the fourth and fifth month as they always did—but God, through Zechariah, questioned the purpose behind their fasting and declared that he wanted to see them perform justice and mercy. They unfortunately further hardened their hearts against him (Zech. 7:5; 8:19). 

God likewise ignored the people’s fasting during the times of Isaiah and Jeremiah. During Isaiah’s ministry, the Israelites were fasting, but not for the right reasons or in the right ways, yet they didn’t understand why God wasn’t paying attention to them. God told them that he cared more about them providing for the needy than their fasting—that that is a true fast (Is. 58:3–12). Similarly, in Jeremiah’s ministry, God said he would not pay attention to their fasting but would allow them to be consumed by the sword and pestilence because of their continued unfaithfulness to him with other gods (Jer. 14:12). 

In the New Testament, Jesus told a parable about a Pharisee who comes to the temple and proclaims, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” He also told of a tax collector who comes and simply says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Jesus said the tax collector is the one who left justified (Luke 18:12). In other words, fasting does no good for us when done without a heart that loves and obeys God. 

The Greatest Fast in Scripture

Despite being God-incarnate, Jesus himself fasted. After his baptism by John the Baptist, before the start of his earthly ministry, the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, and Jesus chose to fast in preparation. 

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. (Matt. 4:1–11)

Does any of this sound familiar to another story in Scripture we’ve discussed? For the Jews, much of the language here would have drawn their gaze backward, pointing them back to the earliest days of their history: the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings. 

Just as Israel, led by God in the pillar of smoke and fire, wandered for forty years in the wilderness, Jesus was led in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit for forty days. The Israelites’ trust was tested as they were forced to rely on God to provide, so Jesus fasted and had to trust God’s ability to sustain him in the face of temptation. Satan tempted Jesus with food, with testing God’s promises, and worshiping God alone—just as Israel was tempted. 

Yet where Israel failed over and over again, Jesus obeyed perfectly. 

Israel complained against God for not providing as they wanted; Jesus relied on God’s Word. Israel questioned God’s promises; Jesus believed in them. Israel worshiped the gods of the nations; Jesus worshiped God alone. John Piper says, “This is a remarkable tribute to fasting. Don’t pass over this quickly. Think on it. Jesus began his ministry with fasting. And he triumphed over his enemy through fasting.”¹ Piper continues,

It seems to me that this story should shake us. Here is Jesus, standing on the threshold of the most important ministry in the history of the world. On his obedience and righteousness hangs the salvation of the world. None will escape damnation without this ministry of obedient suffering and death and resurrection. And God wills that, at the very outset, this ministry be threatened with destruction—namely, the temptations of Satan to abandon the path of lowliness and suffering and obedience. And of all the hundreds of things Jesus might have done to fight off this tremendous threat to salvation, he is led, in the Spirit, to fast.²

Jesus obeyed the law while fasting where Israel failed despite God’s abundant providence, and Jesus inaugurated his earthly ministry of undoing the curse by fasting. He set his face and heart toward God through denying himself food for forty days and aligned himself with the people of God by subjecting himself to the same conditions as them. But where the Israelites’ hunger revealed their distrust and unfaithfulness to God, Jesus’ fasting revealed his devoted, unfailing love for God alone. 

A Heartset for Fasting

Fasting and hunger does this for all of us—it reveals our true selves and loves as we deny ourselves such a basic need. Food is a gift—a good gift from God meant to be enjoyed and stewarded to his glory. Over and over again we’ve rehearsed this truth from Scripture as we’ve studied food, the believers’ relationship with it through redemptive history, and what science tells us about our body and its need for proper nourishment. 

Yet as we saw in the last chapter, sometimes the gift can be misused. Our misuse of the gift never changes the value of the gift or its goodness, but it does change the way we must interact with it. Food can have a vice-grip on our hearts, and our stomachs are good at controlling us. Despite its goodness and God’s perfect intentions for our relationship with food, it can become an idol—something we love more than the Giver himself. Again, Piper tells us,

What are we slaves to? What are we most hungry for—food or God? Fasting is God’s testing ground—and healing ground. Will we murmur as the Israelites murmured in the absence of bread? For Jesus the question was: Would he leave the path of sacrificial obedience and turn stones into bread? Or would he “live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”? Fasting is a way of revealing to ourselves and confessing to our God what is in our hearts. Where do we find our deepest satisfaction—in God or in his gifts?³

We can fast for all the same reasons as the people of God did throughout Scripture—when in need of wisdom for a life-changing decision, when in need of God’s providential mercy towards us or another, or when fighting or grieving a steadfast sin. But whatever our reason, fasting should always drive us nearer to our Savior. 

The paradoxical reality of this, however, is that our hearts must first be aligned to him in order for such a drive to happen in our hearts. As we saw in our survey of Scripture, people fasted for the wrong reasons and with darkened hearts, which led not to deeper love for God but greater distance from him. Donald Whitney says that “without a purpose, fasting can be a miserable, self-centered experience about willpower and endurance.”⁴ 

When we fast, it can’t be with the desire to earn God’s love or earn the approval of others or to check it off our spiritual checklist; fasting must be for the purpose of taking hold of our Savior ever tighter. “Fasting is an exceptional measure,” David Mathis writes, “designed to channel and express our desire for God and our holy discontent in a fallen world. It is for those not satisfied with the status quo. For those who want more of God’s grace. For those who feel truly desperate for God.”⁵ He continues,

We fast in this life because we believe in the life to come. We don’t have to get it all here and now, because we have a promise that we will have it all in the age to come. We fast from what we can see and taste, because we have tasted and seen the goodness of the invisible God—and are desperately hungry for more of him. Fasting is for this world, for stretching our hearts to get fresh air beyond the pain and trouble around us. And it is for the sin and weakness inside us, about which we express our discontent, and long for more of Christ.⁶

Whatever the purpose of our fast, we must come with the longing to know and draw nearer to our Heavenly Father and Savior. Just as Jesus used fasting to sharpen his love for his Father as his faithfulness was tempted, so we likewise bend in fasting for the same reason. 

Consider when John’s disciples asked Jesus why his disciples didn’t fast like them and the Pharisees. Jesus explained, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved” (Matt. 9:15–17). 

All of redemptive history had awaited this moment when Jesus, the Messiah, came. All their hundreds of years of longing, waiting, and looking were now fulfilled. Every sacrifice, every ritual, every sacred thing, every feast, and every fast pointed to this moment in history. Why fast now? The one they sought was here, the Word made flesh; they could not get any closer to him. This is what he meant about the wine: “New wine continues to ferment and builds up pressure that would burst a used wineskin. The old patterns of fasting are inappropriate for the fullness of the kingdom that has now arrived.”⁷ They should be fit to burst with Jesus there among them!

When is fasting appropriate again? “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:20). When the Bridegroom (Jesus) returned to Heaven, their longing returned as well—though different than the last. In the last days, we long for the redemption to come; we long for the final redemption of our souls and bodies, when all creation no longer groans with our spirits. Each fast should be a part of this eager reaching heavenward. 

This means that when we fast, we come as needy people. “Fasting, like the gospel, isn’t for the self-sufficient and those who feel they have it all together. It’s for the poor in spirit. It’s for those who mourn. For the meek. For those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In other words, fasting is for Christians. It is a desperate measure, for desperate times, among those who know themselves desperate for God.”⁸ We don’t beg God for wisdom through deprivation if we believe we have enough wisdom on our own. We don’t fall on our faces before God and deny ourselves meals over sin in our lives if we think we can conquer it in our own strength. Fasting is a desperate measure of desperate people, and we must come with that heartset to this spiritual discipline. 

Fasting can’t be done with a mindset to earn either—it will earn us nothing. Jesus said, “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:16–18). 

Donald Whitney reminds us that the command here isn’t to not talk about your fast; you may need to tell those around you that you’re fasting so that you don’t inconvenience them or appear rude at mealtimes. Rather, the problem is when “you want him or her to know or ask so you can appear more spiritual. The former case simply provides information that someone needs or requests; the latter reveals hypocrisy.”⁹

Fasting does not earn us anything in heaven. Fasting is done by believers from a position of being already fully loved by God and accepted by him because of the work of Christ. Fasting is a chance for us to grow in our love for him. “We ache and yearn—and fast—to know more and more of all that God is for us in Jesus. But only because he has already laid hold of us and is drawing us ever forward and upward into ‘all the fullness of God.’”¹⁰

Fasting With a History of an Eating Disorder

There are various medical reasons why a person may not be able to fast, but the one I want to focus on is those with eating disorders—because this is not just a part of my story, but the story of many other women. For those of us with a history of an eating disorder, being selective about our eating or completely stopping eating altogether is an urge we must fight sometimes on a daily basis. We don’t choose to fast but choose to not allow ourselves to fast. We must resist the compulsion to severely limit our diets or give up eating altogether. 

Here is Alana Walker’s story, as she shared it for Core Christianity, about her experience of trying to fast with an underlying eating disorder:

Unfortunately, fasting presents serious challenges for believers with eating disorders because the very thing that controls them most is food. During my eating disorder, food dominated my every thought. I thought perpetually about what I had just eaten, what I was going to eat later, and what I could, should, or “shouldn’t” eat. It was also tempting to use fasting as an excuse to deprive myself of food for the sake of losing weight—which is not the purpose of a spiritual fast . . . Instead of focusing on God, I fixated on the very thing I was supposed to abstain from.¹¹

Jacinta Read also shares her story for Christianity Today:

As a relatively new Christian in my early 20s, I took to fasting with zeal. It was mid-summer; I was training for a marathon and also undergoing a 40-day “Jesus” fast. I ran miles in the heat, then came home to shower and study the Bible, collapsing in an exhausted heap. I drank clear liquids but I did not eat. I don’t remember what I prayed for; I was simply interested in proving that God’s sustaining power was better fuel than food . . . I was starving and dehydrated, and I quickly lost my grip on reality. My descent into irritability and paranoia lasted a few short weeks; it ended when I landed in the local ER after a serious self-inflicted injury. The recovery process since has been an uphill slog. It’s taken years—and it’s taken supernatural levels of loving support from others.¹²

Much of what I’ve read on the topic of fasting has emphasized the need to fast as believers. Theologians remind us that Jesus didn’t say, “If you fast,” but “When you fast.” While they make exceptions for believers with medical conditions that don’t allow for fasting, none of them mention eating disorders. I want women like you to know that struggling with a history of disordered eating isn’t a bad excuse to not fast—choosing to not fast is an act of faithfulness to God with your body and mental health. 

Remember, fasting isn’t about proving your faithfulness, worth, or abilities to God. Alana came to this beautiful conclusion through her own struggles: “The purpose of fasting is not to demonstrate perfect self-control or prove our righteousness to the Lord, but rather to deepen our intimacy with God. If your relationship with food interferes with your ability to do that, allow God to heal that broken relationship first.”¹³

There is a time when a poor relationship with food does mean we need to fast to realign our hearts. But there are other times, such as with a history with an eating disorder, that fasting would be to our detriment. Wisdom and medical professionals know this; lean on them. Don’t allow guilt or shame to let you think otherwise.

1. John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer (Illinois, Wheaton, United States of America: Crossway, 2013), 54.

2. Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer, 54.

3. Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer, 57.

4. Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Second (NavPress, 2014), 235.

5. David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines (Illinois, Wheaton, United States of America: Crossway, 2016), 118.

6. Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines, 123.

7. Ligonier Study Bible.

8. Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines, 121–122.

9. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 234.

10. Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer, 48.

11. Allana Walker, “Should I Eat That? On Fasting and Eating Disorders,” Core Christianity, May 17, 2024, accessed December 5, 2024, https://corechristianity.com/resources/articles/should-i-eat-that-on-fasting-and-eating-disorders.

12. Jacinta Read, “Fasting Is A Good Thing. But For Some of Us, It’s Complicated,” Christianity Today, September 27, 2024, accessed December 5, 2024, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/09/fasting-complicated-eating-disorders-spiritual-practice/.

13. Walker, “Should I Eat That? On Fasting and Eating Disorders.”