As of Oct. 13, First Alliance Church (FAC) has called its members to engage in 21 days of fasting and prayer, offering a guide to help people choose what to fast from and help them with daily devotionals to follow during their time with God. While this practice is widely talked about in the Bible, it has fallen out of fashion in modern American Christianity. Though we stress the importance of being in the word and praying each day, we often don’t talk about giving things up to make room for that or how that act may change our relationship with God altogether. So, as the many Asbury students attending FAC choose whether or not to engage with the 21-day initiative, one has to wonder: why is fasting so important, and, assuming there is a good reason, why does our culture hardly ever practice it?
The practice of fasting is hardly a new concept, nor even merely a New Testament concept. Starting with Moses fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in Exodus 34 when receiving the Ten Commandments, the Old and New Testaments alike are filled with examples of people of faith practicing the spiritual discipline of fasting. Not only did they do this when seeking guidance from God, such as Saul while in Damascus, they also took part as an act of repentance, as seen with the people of Nineveh. Fasting was also a show of humility, which David talks about in Psalm 69, and a display of mourning, which the Israelites are called to in Joel 2. Throughout history, the church continued to practice fasting, adding ritual fasts, such as the Early Church’s regular Wednesday and Friday fasts commemorating Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion and the most famous still-practiced fasting period, the Lenten fast before Easter.
While some annual fasts have managed to survive into modern culture, the practice has slowly fallen away in our modern Westernized religion. According to a survey done by Pew Research Center in 2024, only 27% of Christians in the U.S. claim to fast for holy periods, with the number plummeting to only 16% when for white evangelicals. The discrepancy is undeniable. Though the church still acknowledges the importance put on fasting throughout the Bible, very few current American Christians seem to value it enough to practice it in their own lives. What might the reason for that be? One big one, I believe, is that our culture has forgotten to value discomfort.
When Jesus called his disciples to pick up their crosses and follow him, he wasn’t exaggerating. For the early Church, professing the faith was not just a facet of their perceived identity, it was a life or death decision. Today, in an age where groceries can be delivered to our homes and Chat GPT can fill in the gaps on college papers, we have a different perspective on what counts as uncomfortable. Effort is uncomfortable. Lack is uncomfortable. But for early Christians, who faced so much worse for what they believed every single day, fasting was not uncomfortable. It was a joyful act of obedience and submission to the one they had dedicated their lives to.
In looking through the fasting guide provided by FAC, the third page on how to fast really stood out to me. Throughout the section, the guide stresses that fasting “isn’t about pressure,” suggesting possible fasts from “social media, entertainment or other distractions” if fasting from food may cause more harm than good. Certainly, the guide has a good point. Fasting is not meant to be a punishment for the body, nor is it meant to be a weight loss program, but I also wonder if sometimes we make it too easy. How often, when we do finally decide to fast, do we look for the easiest bad habit to give up? The one that would hurt the least; the one that would be the least uncomfortable. Maybe, as FAC members and others consider what to give up for God this month, we should be asking different questions.
What does God want to take from me? What does he want to teach me through this time? And, just maybe, how far am I willing to go to glorify the one who gave his life for me?
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