Hunger for Home

By Christopher Benavides

This is part four of a nine-part series on spiritual disciplines meant to edify the church on disciplining ourselves to fulfill Jesus’ commandment to love one another. Now more than ever, we need to be reminded, challenged, exhorted, and conscious of what we’re doing with our time and how we’re disciplining ourselves according to God and his word.

Fasting

With current dieting trends bringing fasting more into pop culture, such as intermittent fasting, we need to distinguish this between a Christian fast and a fast for physical health. Donald S. Whitney defines fasting in his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life as “a believer’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.” Fasting for spiritual purposes is the differentiating factor against the norm, using hunger as a reminder and an invitation to seek God instead of simply skipping breakfast.

While many today speak of fasting from everything from social media to soda, Christian fasting as seen in the Bible is unique because unlike fasting from other things, there is no way to substitute food with anything else other than the word of God. It’s easy for us to fast from Instagram only to spend more time on Netflix. Give up caffeine, but gorge on sugary snacks. When you have not eaten and feel the pains begin, you can’t just distract yourself with something else.

Christian fasting is not talked about often in the American church. One of the reasons that attribute to this is the American consumerist culture. If we feel hungry, we can get a chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-a delivered to our homes with a few taps on our phones. Food is a comfort that we can binge whenever we go through emotional turmoil or just a comfort to enjoy. The problem is that when we run to any comfort before the creator of comfort, we are running to an idol over God. So when we exercise that spiritual discipline of fasting, we are reminding ourselves “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4).

Fasting to be like Jesus

When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, he began by fasting. Matthew tells us that he fasted for forty days and nights, abstaining from food for all that time. Jesus’ fast was a preparation for being tempted. He knew that to overcome temptation alone he had to draw near to the Father by using his hunger as a weapon against Satan. By going to the Father with his hunger and praying for strength and to not fall into temptation, Jesus was able to withstand it.

“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.”’” Jesus was living on the Word of God that he had memorized since he was a child and used it against the enemy to withstand temptation. Jesus was hungry after his fast and still rebuked with Scripture because he knew that the promise of satisfaction from the Father was going to satisfy him more than the promise of satisfaction from the enemy; more than the satisfaction of a loaf of bread on an empty stomach.

Likewise, Jesus expects his followers to fast. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says “And when you fast… But when you fast…” (Matt 6:16-17). Fasting is just as expected by Jesus as when speaks on prayer and giving, which are natural rhythms of a Christian. Therefore, followers of Christ are expected to have a discipline of fasting as part of their worship unto the Lord. Additionally, we don’t try to make ourselves look more holy by fasting. We are instructed to fast in secret, to make it secret and intimate between us and the Father.

Fasting is not meant to make us feel more religious, but more reliant on God. When we are in the habit of fasting, we are making a habit of dying to our flesh in order to feast on the spirit. We do this by choosing to fill the void that hunger leaves with God’s presence through his word and worship. Self-denial by itself does not transform us. As Paul warns in Colossians 2:23, “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” If we are not feasting on God by pursuing him through prayer and the Word, we miss out on the benefits of Christian fasting.

Fasting is Hungering for Home

When we fast, we get more of the Father. Whenever we feel the first hunger pang striking when it’s closer to lunch we remind ourselves why we’re fasting (purpose), then praying (action) to the Father for the purpose of our fast. And you continue to pray, listen to music, and read and meditate on his Word whenever your stomach is grumbling because you are disciplining and reminding your body that you are feasting on the Word of God and seeking his face.

Our fasting points us towards heaven because, in its most basic form, hunger is homesickness. Hunger is painful; it feels like we are dying. When we feel the pangs of hunger in our stomachs, it’s our being longing to be filled. When our body hurts, we ache for relief. This hunger and this pain point us back to a state of heavenly being in which God will satisfy all of our needs. While on earth, we are meant to fill our stomachs with nutrient-rich foods to power our bodies. But as we all know, our bodies tend to crave whatever we feed ourselves. We can fill our bodies with junk that does not fuel us that will ultimately lead to the deterioration of our health, and the same goes for our spirit and mind.

Christian fasting ultimately reveals to us what we crave and if those cravings control us. This is not a futile attempt to “master” our bodies, but instead to show ourselves that our bodies have a new Master. The discipline of fasting brings to the surface the weakness and mortality of our bodies to remind our spirit that God alone can truly sustain and transform our lives, not by our efforts. 

In his letter, Paul criticized the Corinthian church for not sharing properly during communion. Some were stuffing themselves and getting drunk, while others went hungry and were without food (1 Cor 11:17-22). Our eating habits reveal our relational priorities. Christian fasting not only creates for us a healthier relationship with food, it also reminds us that our eating habits are about more than just our personal satisfaction. Simply not eating does not by itself please God. 

God desires that our fasting lead us into right relationships with him and with others. As Christian philosophy professor Kyle David Bennett in his book, Practices of Love wrote, “God clearly cares about our neighbor and how our eating habits and practices impact her livelihood... God tells us that the proper ways to eat involve helping, not hurting, our neighbor. The theme of ‘sharing your bread with the hungry’ through the practice of fasting was common in the early church and in early monastic communities too. Gregory the Great, for example, says that ‘a man fasts not to God but to himself, if he does not give to the poor what he denies his belly for a time, but reserves it to be given to his belly later.’ For Gregory, fasting is not about taking a short break from food in order to hear from God, only to go back to eating a few days later. It’s about sharing food.”

Fasting is not easy; it’s not supposed to be. It's abstaining from our body’s primary source for energy. Abstaining from food is to truly deny yourself and seek true fulfillment in God. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Jesus is defining how he alone can fill us of our spiritual needs. When we fast we are reminding ourselves and our body that “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut 8:3). We remember that our true hunger is for our home in heaven.

More Resources on Fasting:

Beginners guide to fasting: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/fasting-for-beginners

The purpose of fasting: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-the-purpose-of-fasting

The Hunger for God by John Piper