What does the Bible teach about fasting? What does this spiritual discipline look like practically? In this video clip from Secret Church 19, Pastor David Platt invites viewers to continue watching as he constructs a biblical model of fasting. Many Christians do not have a ready theology of fasting on hand. They may fast too much, too little, or not even know the “why” behind it. With adequate attention to the Word of God, we can begin to understand the true beauty and importance of fasting.
- Intimidation Factor
- Going to God
- First Experiences
The Importance of fasting
There are some topics that intimidate followers of Christ maybe more than others, and I think one of those is fasting. I think if you were to ask many followers of Christ what fasting looks like in their life, they’d kind of raise their eyebrows and be like, “It doesn’t really look like anything in my life.” And many, many followers of Christ have not thought about fasting, not sure how to fast, or even why to fast, or what it means to fast.
So as we dive into that particular topic at Secret Church 19, I’m hoping that God will open many of our eyes, like thousands of our eyes, to see the beauty of fasting and the importance of it. I think we’ll see in God’s Word why this is actually a very significant spiritual discipline that we should have in each of our lives. And I hope that God will just, by His grace, through His Word, bring down some of that intimidation factor, and instead bring up a zeal for God to be expressed through fasting.
Understanding Fasting
We’ll dive into what does the Bible teach about fasting, and then we’re going to dive into specifics like, what does this look like physically? What do you do when you fast? What about this or what about that? We’ll kind of think through all kinds of different questions and offer some practical ways to take some, maybe for many, first steps, initial steps, or for some others, some deeper steps into fasting. All the while acknowledging, I mean, all of us have room to grow in this area.
I think about my first experience with fasting. A youth minister, when I was a teenager, invited me and a few friends to, we were going to have a day of fasting. And so we got our water bottles, and we went out to this park, and we split up, and we spent time in prayer and studying God’s Word. Then we came together, and we read God’s Word together, and we prayed, and it was awesome.
We did that all morning into the beginning of the afternoon, but we started getting really hungry. And we had set aside the whole day to fast, but by about 2:00 we had left the park. We were in the drive-through at Burger King ordering like a Whopper and it’s like, “I think I missed something here.” But the Whopper sure tasted good, but I think we missed part of the point of fasting.
So all that to say, there are introductory steps we can take. Hopefully, we’ll dive into some of those kinds of things in ways that I trust, I know, I guarantee, based on God’s Word, will lead to all kinds of fruit in our lives when we start to learn about and implement fasting.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
