Of all the practices of the Christian life, fasting may be the most neglected. Many believers pray, give, and read their Bibles who have never once fasted, and would not quite know why they should. Yet fasting runs all through Scripture — practiced by Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel, Anna, Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself — and Jesus plainly assumed his followers would do it. So what is biblical fasting, and why should a Christian take it up? Here is what the Bible actually teaches.
What fasting is
Fasting, in its simplest biblical form, is voluntarily going without food for a time in order to seek God. It is not a hunger strike to get God’s attention, nor a diet for the body, nor a way to earn spiritual merit. It is an act of the heart expressed through the body: a deliberate laying aside of one of life’s most basic comforts so that we may give ourselves more fully to prayer and to God. In fasting we say with our bodies what we mean with our souls — that we hunger for God more than for bread, that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). It is a way of humbling ourselves before the Lord; the psalmist says, “I humbled my soul with fasting” (Psalm 69:10).
Jesus assumed his followers would fast
Some Christians suppose fasting belongs only to the Old Testament, but Jesus taught his disciples to fast and expected that they would. Notice his words: not “if you fast” but “when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites… that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:16–18). He placed fasting right alongside giving and praying as an assumed part of the disciple’s life. When asked why his disciples did not fast as others did, he answered that they would: “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:20). We live in exactly those days — the days between Christ’s ascension and his return — and so fasting belongs to us. The early church fasted as a matter of course; it was while the leaders at Antioch were “worshiping the Lord and fasting” that the Spirit called out Paul and Barnabas, and they fasted again before sending them (Acts 13:2–3).
Why Christians fast
Scripture shows God’s people fasting for several reasons, all of which come down to seeking God with unusual earnestness. They fasted to seek God’s guidance at great crossroads, as the church at Antioch did before sending out its missionaries. They fasted to humble themselves and repent, as Nineveh did at Jonah’s preaching and as Israel did again and again: “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping” (Joel 2:12). They fasted to plead with God in crisis, as Esther and the Jews did before she risked her life (Esther 4:16), and as Jehoshaphat did when enemies threatened (2 Chronicles 20:3). They fasted to strengthen prayer, joining it to intercession so that their whole being was bent toward God. In every case, fasting is prayer intensified — the body joining the soul in earnest pursuit of the Lord. It expresses a holy desperation that will not be satisfied with anything less than God himself.
What fasting does in us
Why would going without food help us spiritually at all? The answer lies in what fasting does to the heart. First, fasting humbles us. Hunger is a great leveler; it reminds us, sharply and physically, how frail and dependent we really are, how quickly our strength fails without the daily provision we usually take for granted. That felt weakness is good for the soul, for God “gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6), and there are few faster roads to humility than an empty stomach offered up to God. Second, fasting sharpens prayer. When we set aside food to seek God, every pang of hunger becomes a summons to pray, and the very time we would have spent eating is freed for communion with him. The soul, no longer dulled and satisfied, grows alert and earnest. Third, fasting weans us from our appetites. We live surrounded by comforts, and our desires quietly grow into masters. To deny the body even a good and lawful thing like food, for the sake of something better, is to reassert that we are not slaves to our appetites — that we can say “no” to the flesh in order to say a deeper “yes” to God. It trains the whole soul in the self-control that the Christian life requires. “I discipline my body and keep it under control,” Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 9:27); fasting is one school of that discipline.
Above all, fasting expresses and deepens our hunger for God himself. It is a way of praying with the body, “Lord, I want you more than I want this.” And what we express, we also deepen: the very act of choosing God over bread stirs and strengthens the longing it expresses. This is why fasting has so often accompanied the seasons when God’s people most desperately sought him. It is holy hunger, deliberately kindled — the body made to preach to the soul that “man shall not live by bread alone.”
Fasting God can bless — and fasting he rejects
The Bible is also candid that fasting can go wrong. God once rebuked his people sharply: they fasted and complained that he took no notice, but their fasting was empty because their lives were unjust and their hearts unchanged. Through Isaiah he told them what fasting he actually desires — not a mere abstaining from food, but a heart turned toward mercy and righteousness:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness… to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?Isaiah 58:6–7
The lesson is plain: fasting is not a lever to move God, and it is worthless if it is only outward. God looks at the heart. True fasting flows from a heart genuinely humbling itself before him and genuinely open to his will — the kind of wholehearted surrender that Andrew Murray, in Absolute Surrender, pressed on every believer. Fasting is one way of saying to God, with the body as well as the soul, “Not my will, but yours; not my comfort, but you.” Divorced from that surrender, it is only hunger; joined to it, it becomes a powerful help to the praying heart.
How to begin
If you have never fasted, begin simply and humbly. Choose a set time — perhaps one meal, or the daylight hours of a single day — and give the time you would have spent eating to prayer and to God’s word instead. Fasting is not mainly about the empty stomach but about the filled heart: when hunger comes, let it turn you to prayer, reminding you why you are fasting. Keep it, as Jesus said, quiet and hidden, not something you advertise (Matthew 6:18). Pair it with a clear purpose — a decision you are seeking God about, a sin you are repenting of, a burden you are carrying, a person you are interceding for. And keep your eyes on God rather than on your own performance; the aim is not to endure the hunger but to seek the Lord. Those with health conditions should of course be wise about how they fast, and there are other things one can fast from besides food. But the heart of it is always the same: laying something good aside for a time in order to lay hold of God.
Fasting, rightly understood, is not a grim religious duty but a gift — a God-given way to sharpen our prayers, humble our hearts, and remind us that our deepest hunger is not for bread but for him. In a world of endless comfort and distraction, it is a way of saying no to ourselves so that we can say a deeper yes to God. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). Fasting is simply that hunger, made deliberate — and the God who sees in secret has promised to reward those who seek him. Do not let its neglect in our comfortable age keep you from a gift the whole history of God’s people has treasured. Begin small, begin humbly, and begin for the right reason — not to impress God or others, but to seek the Lord with your whole self. You will likely find, as countless believers have before you, that the empty stomach becomes a strangely full hour, and that God himself draws near, in a way you will not soon forget, to those who deny themselves in order to draw near to him.