There are some topics that intimidate followers of Christ more than others. One of these topics is fasting. If you were to ask many Christians what fasting looks like in their life, they would kind of raise their eyebrows and give you a blank stare. Many followers of Jesus have either not thought about fasting, are not sure how to fast, or are not quite sure what it means.
Fasting
Fasting. What comes to mind when you hear this word? It may be a concept that has always confused you. How can abstaining from something that you need have spiritual implications? Whatever your experience or inexperience with this word may have been, we hope you see that it truly is a spiritual discipline. No one would raise their hand and say that they have mastered the spiritual discipline of fasting.
All of us have room to grow in this area. I think about my first experience with fasting. When I was a teenager, a youth minister invited me and some friends to go have a day of fasting. We packed up our water bottles and went out to a park to spend the whole day fasting and praying. We split up into groups and prayed. Then we came together and read God’s Word and prayed. It was an awesome experience. We did this all morning and into the start of the afternoon. We had set aside the whole day to fast, but we started getting really hungry. By 2:00 we had left the park and were in the drive-thru at Burger King ordering whoppers. The food was great, but we missed the point of fasting.
Topic of Secret Church
We are going to dive into this topic at Secret Church 19 and I am hoping that God will open our eyes to see the beauty of fasting and its importance. We will see in Scripture why this is a very significant spiritual discipline. It should be prominent in each of our lives. I hope at Secret Church that God, by His grace, through His Word, will diminish our intimidation when it comes to fasting. And replace it with zeal for God expressed through fasting. We will explore what the Bible teaches about fasting. We will think through what this will look like practically in our lives. As we learn about fasting at Secret Church 19 and start to implement fasting in our own lives, I guarantee, based on what we see in God’s Word, it will lead to all kinds of fruit in our lives.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
