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The first time I tried praying with fasting, I was 22 and love-struck. I was dating a man who was, I thought, in the process of becoming a Christian. But when he proposed, I turned him down. I tried to explain that marrying him wouldn’t be loving. It would be subjecting him to a frustrating future of being tied to someone whose values and goals he could neither share nor understand.

Still, I could not bring myself to break off the relationship. What if I crush the fragile blossoming of his interest in Jesus? I thought. Besides, I really want to marry him – if only he will become a Christian. Putting it that way, though, sounded like spiritual blackmail.

“What should I do?” I prayed over and over.

Then the idea of fasting popped into my head.

Going without eating for a day will be a good way to let God know just how earnestly I want Him to tell me what to do, I decided.

That was my first misconception about fasting – that going without food would capture God’s attention and convince him of my sincerity. I was unaware that my reasoning insulted God’s loving character. All I knew was that Jesus and other people in the Bible fasted.

So, I spent a day without eating, and God graciously gave me the help that I needed – not the breakthrough I expected, but the one I needed. What I expected was a clear yes or no answer to my pressing question: should I break up with Dennis?

Instead, by the end of the day I had a new attitude and a new prayer.

“Lord, you know I love Dennis and want to marry him, but the real issue is not marriage. It is Dennis’ salvation. So it’s okay if we never marry. All I ask is that you help him to understand that he needs Jesus.”

In the months that followed, God began penetrating Dennis’ defenses, and in time he decided to follow Jesus. And we have now been married for 53 years. I hesitate to tell the story, though, because many young Christians hearing it might conclude that fasting is a kind of magic, that it is a way to get God to give you something you want very much.

Nothing is farther from the truth.

The pagan view of fasting is that it’s magic:

Do “this” and you’ll get “that.” Follow this procedure, say these words, and you’ll get the results you want.

A pagan believes he must give an impressive performance to get God or the gods to pay attention to him. In the Bible, however, God says over and over that he is readily available to his people and always listens attentively to them.

As Christians, our problem is never whether or not we can get God’s attention when we pray. Rather, it is understanding what to do with God’s attention when we already have it.

Like pagans, we tend to think of prayer as giving God directions

We tell him what to do, how to do it, what to give and how to give it.

Instead, God has designed prayer as a form of partnership in which we discover what God wants and then work together with him to bring about his will through our requests and obedient actions.

“No matter what we pray for,” wrote the late O. Hallesby in his classic book Prayer, “our prayers should really resolve themselves into a quiet waiting for the Lord in order to hear what it is that the Spirit desires to have us pray for at that particular time.” Hallesby went on to say that when Christians notice that their prayers are hindered, fasting can often help them to align their spirits with God’s Spirit, bringing them to a better understanding of how to pray.

When I set aside eating for a day to focus my spiritual attention on the unseen God, I changed. Fasting was in order at that time, not for God’s sake but for mine. God drew my spirit in line with his Spirit, and then I could truly release Dennis into God’s hands.

When and why did early Christians fast?

Hallesby pointed out four circumstances when Jesus or the early Christians fasted.

First, they used fasting to prepare and strengthen themselves for facing temptations. Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness when he was about to be tempted by Satan at the beginning of his ministry (Luke 4:1-13).

Second, Jesus and his followers fasted before making important decisions. Jesus spent a night in prayer (fasting from sleep) before choosing the twelve apostles (Luke 6:12-14), and the early church was fasting as a body when the Holy Spirit told them to set aside Barnabas and Saul as missionaries to the Gentiles (Acts 13:2-3).

Third, fasting helped the early Christians to put themselves completely at the disposal of the Holy Spirit. Jesus often spent long hours alone in prayer fasting from association with people in order to commune with his heavenly Father and hear him speak.

Fourth, fasting brought forth the power needed for certain great and mighty acts. When Jesus returned from the mountain where he was transfigured before Peter, James and John (Mark 9), he found his frustrated disciples lamenting their failure to cast a dumb spirit out of a demon-possessed boy.

The boy’s father brought the child to Jesus, who then cast out the spirit. Later, when the disciples asked Jesus privately why they had failed to cast it out, Jesus told them, “This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting.”

Fasting can maintain the spiritual powerline 

Some mighty spiritual acts, such as the deliverance of this boy, seem to require more spiritual power and preparation than others, Hallesby said.

He compared prayer to a conduit or electrical cable through which power from heaven is brought down to earth. The greater the volume of electricity to be transmitted, the larger must be the electrical cable through which it flows from the power station. In the same way, the greater the volume of spiritual power being transmitted, the stronger must be the prayer cable uniting the Christian’s spirit with the Holy Spirit.

This illustration also helps explain why the first breakthrough that often occurs during fasting is confession of sin and repentance.

Sin creates resistance in the prayer cable and will eventually produce a short circuit.

Part of fasting in prayer is to sit quietly before God and allow him to diagnose the difficulty in our power line. Then we must cooperate with him in repairing whatever needs to be made right. Only then can his power flow freely from heaven to earth through our prayers.

An example of this process occurred when our first child hit the teen years.

My life seemed like a sputtering electric motorcar

I was stalling out, unable to progress in our family relationships, my daily work or my walk with God. So I agreed with the Lord to set aside all “choice food” for three weeks, much like Daniel did in Daniel 10:2, in order to allow God to locate my crossed wires and loose connections.

I’d barely begun my fast when I became awash in feelings of anger toward several relatives. The Holy Spirit kept bringing them to my attention as I prayed, but each time he reminded me of them I got mad.

I was hanging onto old hurts and grudges. Before I could progress to other issues in my life, I needed to go through a tough forgiving process. It took weeks, but it was the only way God could show me how I needed to pray for my situation.

This experience also helped me realize I needed to fast more often.

Fasting is not reserved only for emergencies when all of life grinds to a halt. Instead, fasting is an important discipline that keeps our spirits aligned with God’s Spirit. It’s an important step to take whenever our progress is blocked – by a difficult decision, by circumstances or by something mysterious we cannot pinpoint.

I also used to think fasting required large blocks of uninterrupted solitude – something I found in short supply. I had to learn to fast while homeschooling three children and juggling writing deadlines with church, family and community responsibilities. Most days, even my interruptions got interrupted, and whether I ate or not, I still had to prepare meals for the family.

I learned to pray as I prepared.

My hunger pangs reminded me to fasten my gaze on God in the midst of my daily work. Today we are empty nesters at retirement age, so my routine has changed. But in those early days of learning to fast, I tried to get up before the family awoke for an hour of quiet prayer time and often retreated to the bedroom to pray during the day when I could grab a few minutes.

I jotted down any thoughts I had in a notebook I kept handy. All I could do about the inevitable interruptions was to entrust them to God, believing that he would protect enough time for me to be with him.

Hallesby’s broad definition of fasting as abstinence not only from food but also from sleep or from association with people has enabled me to practice this spiritual discipline flexibly. For years I avoided fasting even thought I glimpsed its benefits because I had hypoglycemia and could not skip meals without becoming faint. Today my blood sugar levels are high, and I have to eat regularly and carefully to avoid diabetes.

I learned to tailor my method of fasting.

In my 40’s I learned to go without desserts and snacks over several weeks, sometimes fasting one meal only and sometimes spending some of my normal sleep time in waiting, listening prayer. Other times I went without food for a day or longer. Today I fast in modified ways according to my health requirements. Like: no chocolate (my one treat)

All that matters is that I be freed to think, to pray and to listen to God. Fasting loosens our ties to this earth and frees us to recognize, to agree with and to express the mind of Christ in our lives.

© Becky Cerling Powers 1991, updated 2023

Reprint with attribution only www.beckypowers.com

Becky Cerling Powers is the author of Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage as well as Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com

“Figuring Out Fasting” is part of a collection of stories describing and explaining the use of the spiritual weapons that the apostle Paul listed in Ephesians 6:10-20. This story describes the use of all occasion prayer. To read the introductory story, enter its title “Family Conflict, Family Struggles” into the Search Bar. To find other stories in the series enter “reflections on spiritual warfare” into the Search Bar.