04 Mar The Spiritual Discipline of Fasting: Training Your Body for the Resurrection Life

By Katherine Ruch
Based on her Revive 2024 Talk on regular fasting

How many of us want to know how to pray, to have the stamina to keep praying, to have power when we pray, to loose the bonds of sin, to serve cheerfully, to love a difficult person, to have heavenly wisdom, to minister deliverance and healing? This is what we desire, is it not? But how do we get to that place of power and freedom?

Jesus says with sorrow when he looks on his sleeping disciples of whom he had asked prayer support in his deepest hour of need, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”  Paul talks about this struggle between the spirit’s desires and the weakness of the flesh in matching the desires: “What I want to do, I don’t do.”  

How do we get that resurrection life of Jesus coursing through us? We have to make our bodies our helpers, not our detractors. In one translation, Paul says, “I make my body my slave” or “mortify the flesh.”

Some might see this as a gnostic dismissal of the body, elevating the spirit above the body. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. The flesh is necessary. We live the Christian life in and through our bodies. 

That is why we must integrate our flesh with our spirits and not allow our flesh to dominate us. We need to train our bodies, emotions, drives, urges, needs, and desires to be subservient to the mission of living the life we so desire, to have access to the Lord’s life and power.

So, we look to fasting as one way, one discipline, for doing exactly this. Our culture loves to eat.  We talk about eating, explore new restaurants, and immerse ourselves in foodie culture. And that’s great.  Feasting is good. But it has to be balanced with fasting. Fasting communicates to our bodies, to the Lord, and to the devil, that having regular food is less important to us than the freedom we desire in our spirit and in the Church. Fasting says, “I want you, Jesus, more than I want anything else.” 

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it….I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24,27).

Later, in Philippians 3, Paul writes about knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection and his desire to attain resurrection in his own body–by any means possible. Recall how in the previous passage, Paul fears he will be disqualified from this prize–and so he seeks to discipline his body for the reward of the resurrection life. 

At its core, then, the purpose of fasting is to engage the resurrected life of Jesus.

Four Essential Purposes of Fasting

1. We Fast Because We’re Famished

When we fast, we’re saying, “I’m in need. I am spiritually weak. I am hungering for the Lord’s presence. I need the food from above.” In fasting, we recognize that we are powerless without the intervention of the Lord. 

Sadly, when we need a supernatural breakthrough or are anguished and need wisdom, fasting is often the last thing we think of. But in these times we need much more than physical sustenance to do the work of God. We need heavenly food.

 Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said, “Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength.”  And in fasting, we learn what poor, fragile creatures we are. Fasting acknowledges that only God can do the hard work that we have no strength to do by ourselves. 

1. We Fast Because We Need to Feast

When we fast, we’re not just attuning to our own needs, but we’re attuning to the Lord’s abundance. We’re reminded that the feast is Jesus himself. That’s the prize. 

Jesus often gathered his people around food. It’s where he evangelized, where he served his disciples, how he taught them. It’s what he calls us to every week in the Eucharist. In Revelation, he stands at the door and knocks, waiting for us to invite him in to share a meal. Our future life with him is described as a feast. 

But we are often too full for his feast–too full of our own food. Feasting is something we’re quite good at in the U.S. Fasting, though, is needed to prepare us for feasting that is more meaningful. Jesus once told the disciples when they were concerned he had not eaten, “I have food you know nothing about.” He was referring to his connection with the Father. But to be able to access that heavenly feast, we have to train our bodies to detach from our earthly feast. Only then can we find and eat the food we “know nothing about.”

1. We Fast To Get on the Holy Spirit’s Frequency 

Fasting shuts out noise in our lives so that we can hear the Lord. Growing up, when my family first moved to Brazil, to communicate with anyone in the States, we had to set up a ham radio session. The operator would start turning dials, and you’d listen for voices through buzzing and interference. Then suddenly, the voice you were awaiting would break through. Fasting is like setting up a ham radio call.

Fasting sets our own personal dials to the frequency of the Holy Spirit, of listening to the Lord. What does he want to tell me about my situation? How do I need to pray? What am I not seeing? In fasting, we’re also connecting to the frequency of the Holy story–this rhythm of feasting and fasting is the sacramental rhythm of our core story of death and resurrection life.

1. We Fast Because We Need Freedom

We fast because we are aware of our earthly limitations–the things in our lives that aren’t happening, the things we can’t do. But fasting, ironically, creates a greater limitation so that we can enter into a kingdom world that is expansive. The impossible comes under the God of the possible. The tangled becomes untangled.

So often we enter into days of fasting already totally depleted in our own capacity, simply not knowing how to pray. But as we fast, our prayers take shape. The Lord brings a word of direction or a scriptural passage, or someone reaches out with a prophetic word. 

Other times during a fast, we may not feel anything or see anything shift until after the fast is over.  Often a fast simply does the slow work of changing us, so that we are less swayed by the world and more free in the kingdom.

How Should We Fast?

Start with the right motivation. Are we fasting for show or out of genuine spiritual hunger? Isaiah 58 distinguishes between true and false fasting. A true fast is for the sake of building up the kingdom of God and attaining union with Jesus in our prayers.

Consider both individual and corporate fasting.  If you want to walk in the riches of the kingdom, in your family, and in your church, learn how to fast together. You will see the Lord at work. Whether it’s a church seeking revival, a family needing breakthrough, or a ministry team seeking direction, we can join each other in addressing these concerns through corporate prayer and fasting.

Try fasting weekly.  Take one day a week to train your body and make a regular habit of coming to the Lord in poverty of spirit. Enter into longer fasts for particularly hard situations. If medical conditions prevent you from fasting from food, talk to your doctor or consider fasting from other habits that have become too precious.

Situations That Call for Fasting

The occasions for fasting are numerous:

• When facing overwhelming temptation
• When needing divine intervention for loved ones
• During health challenges
• When a marriage or relationship is struggling
• When financial stress is overwhelming
• During searches for new leaders
• During anguish and need for consolation
• When seeking direction in major decisions
• When desiring supernatural wisdom
• When you have sinned and desire mercy
• When someone you love is in spiritual bondage
• In times of national crisis
• When you’re emotionally stuck
• When you just want more of the Holy Spirit

 My prayer life has been transformed through fasting. It brings me to the poverty of spirit that is necessary to access the kingdom of God. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5). I have seen tremendous changes in me and in the matters I bring to the Lord during the time of fasting.  

Fasting is one of the ways we train our bodies so that our spirits are willing and our flesh can meet the challenge. We’ll find we have a greater capacity to pray, and we’ll turn to the Lord more readily rather than exhausting ourselves with our own initiatives and strategies. We’ll be freed from anxiety that oppresses us. We’ll be able to serve even when we think we have nothing left to give. In fasting, our bodies are being trained to access the prize, which is the resurrection life of Jesus lived out every day.