What to Fast?

Simply put, fasting is going without something.

I divide these things into essential, substantial, and trivial. All three of these categories have benefit to our spiritual vitality. I will take them in turn in hopes it will help direct you to fasting something.

Before that, one sentence of purpose. In fasting, you go without something to make room for something else.

Essential

This category of things we can go without would be anything that we need to survive.

The obvious example is food. This is why this is typically what people mean when they say they are fasting…that they aren’t eating food. I would suggest that we can also fast from other things.

We can go without shelter for a season. You could decide that you want to empathize with the homeless in our city, get a tent, and sleep outside. There are many variations on this, but you get the idea.

You could also go without certain articles of clothing in a very practical way to empathize with those who ask for your shirt, to give them your coat as well. On a chilly morning, instead of immediately putting your coat on, perhaps you could grab that coat and donate it to Miracle Hill.

In fact, perhaps you could spend time in prayerful silence and go through your closets and drawers and take huge bundle of clothes to Pendleton Place or United Ministries down the street from the church building. To feel the weight of this, instead of just grabbing the stuff you don’t wear anymore, why not grab the shirt that you wore the day before, wash it, and donate it?

Substantial

These are items in our life that are not essential, but going without them would cause us a bit of anxiety.

By getting rid of them for a time (or permanently), the beautiful liberation can happen in your life—to see that you can actually go without the thing you assumed you couldn’t.

This could be, for example, foregoing driving your car and taking public transportation.

Of course, this is something you have to plan.

That’s the point.

Don’t just get up and start walking everywhere. Or maybe you do if the Lord is leading you in such an intense way! Instead of your morning coffee (yes, I’m going here!), have water.

Instead of grabbing your cell phone and taking it with you, you leave it on the charger. Let people now how to get a hold of you, or don’t, but you will feel the nakedness of not having this tool for sure.

You could also fast from some relationships for a season so you can focus on the here and now. When you’re feeling lonely, instead of picking up the cell phone to text or call, sit in the loneliness and ask God, “Where are you in my life? Why do I feel this loneliness? How might I commune with you in your sufferings, Lord?”

Trivial

As our culture has become more affluent, the things in this category have begun to bleed into the substantial. But these are things that are conveniences and distractions.

We know it would be good to excise them from our lives…even science shows us at times the benefit of ridding it from our lives…but we persist. Television shows. Social media. Wine. Meat. Chocolate. Fantasy Football. March Madness. Movies. Music or a podcast in the car.

With all of these things, the argument could be made, “But Matt, these are good things.”

Yes. That’s my point.

Sometimes the good things in our lives need to be sacrificed to make room in our hearts for God.

We have a tendency to fill our hours and days with many good things. But by the path of negation, we actually make space to be attune to the Spirit. He whispers. He gently sways in the ebb and flow of life.

Little by little we begin to depend on things to bring us comfort and fool ourselves into thinking that they are essential. Even as I was writing, I was thinking to myself… “Matt, you love that. That’s pretty close to essential, even though you’ve categorized it as trivial. Stop making it hard on yourself.”

That. is. the. point.

Cutting off an arm and plucking out an eye were not intended to be easy.