The Benefits and Risks of Fasting as a Church

Around this time last year, I preached a sermon simply called Fasting in a sermon series called Make Disciples. In that sermon, I gave the following definition of Biblical Fasting: Abstaining from food and sometimes water for spiritual purposes: expressing sorrow, seeking intervention from God, and subjugating your flesh to the Spirit. 

Starting on February 18, we will enter into a time of fasting as a church. In my last post, Anyone Up for a Nice Long Fast?, I described the two fasts we will be choosing from: The Daniel Fast or a Sun-up to Sun-down fast. Again, you're free to modify either of those to make them less or more extreme. Go check out that post for the logistics. In this post, we need to focus on the benefits and risks of fasting as a church.

The Benefits

One benefit of fasting as a church is the added unity we get in the things we're praying for. We need to pray as a church for God to protect us from attacks of the enemy. Satan is real, and he doesn't like what we are up to as a church, but instead of letting the fear of his retaliation stop us, we just need to double down on the only thing that can actually keep us safe--the protection of God. 

We're also praying as a church for God to provide some kind of solution to our two-service situation. Namely, we really want to have a big enough space to be able to all meet for church at the same time in just one service. As always, we are praying that God will add to our numbers with new believers coming to faith.

Another great benefit is simply knowing that others are with you in the difficulty of the fast. 

The Risks

As great as the benefits are for fasting in community, the risks are very real. Fasting is not intended to be done as a show or to impress anyone, so we often do our fasting in isolation. After all Jesus did tell us to fast in secret. Therefore, we run a serious risk by inviting the church into a season of fasting. We run the risk of fasting for the wrong reasons. Some people mistakenly think that Jesus's rules about fasting are that it has to be top secret or its sinful. That's not exactly the case, however. In Acts 13:2, we see an example of the early church practice of fasting in community when Paul and Barnabas along with a list of other people were worshipping and fasting together. 

Jesus's commands about fasting in Matthew 6 are about how NOT to fast. We are not to fast for the purpose of being seen by others. Since that is the restriction on fasting, that's where we run a risk in a corporate fast. It is a risk worth running, but it is a risk. When a church announces a fast, it can be very tempting to want to do the fast so that the leaders of the church will be pleased with you, and it is equally tempting to be afraid NOT to do the fast because you're afraid to disappoint the leaders. 

Both of those temptations are the same temptation: fasting for some person rather than for God. It's also common for the person who really doesn't want to fast or who has a legitimate medical reason not to fast to feel condemned when a season of fasting rolls around. 

I am not really sure how to avoid these situations except to say, there's no reason to feel ashamed or condemned. If we're fasting correctly anyway, we won't be moping around looking miserable, so a fasting person and a non-fasting person shouldn't look any different! Not to mention, we will be breaking our fast each Sunday to celebrate the Lord's day together, so only the most extreme fasters will be fasting on Sunday anyway. 

God loves you whether you're fasting or not, so please don't feel condemned, and I promise, the leaders won't be asking who is fasting.

Hopefully, whether you fast or not, we will be drawn together in the bond of love and unity.