How to Fast for Lent

According to a recent Barna survey, 41% of Christians follow the liturgical year “very closely throughout the year,” with more people following it more loosely. This seems to represent a growing number of people over the past few years, according to informal conversations we have with those we coach and train.

Lent starts on Ash Wednesday (February 26 this year), and lasts until Easter Sunday (April 12th this year).

One of the traditional practices of Lent is fasting. We are told in Matthew 4:1-11 that Jesus spent forty days fasting in the wilderness and afterwards “he was starving.”

Many of us have fasted before – perhaps in advance of some surgical medical procedure, perhaps the religious tradition we grew up in practiced a Lenten fast (no meat on Fridays, e.g.), or maybe you’ve even fasted for some wild and crazy crash diet!

Fasting can be a powerful practice for a Christian, but it’s also significantly misunderstood, culturally challenging, and therefore decidedly under-practiced.

Lent would be a great time to experiment with fasting, but it’s important to understand what you’re getting yourself into! So we’ve written up a few pointers on how to fast for Lent (or any other time).

What fasting is and isn’t

Christian fasting isn’t the same thing as dieting, or going on a hunger strike, or punishing our bodies, or fasting for a medical procedure.

Christian fasting is not:

A way to suffer for God
A spiritual practice that demonstrates how pious or devout you are
Righteousness (i.e. it doesn’t equal holiness or sanctification)
A way of trying really hard spiritually that God will respond to
The same thing as repenting of sin (we don’t “fast” from sin, we confess it, receive forgiveness, and turn from it)
An addiction treatment program (if you feel powerless to break a dependence, reach out for help!)

Instead, Christian fasting is intentionally withholding something we’d normally partake in (normally food) for the purpose of creating space in our lives to feast on the presence of Jesus “directly.”

Christian fasting is:

Wisdom – it’s love and knowledge meeting together in a practice that avails us to God’s resources to meet our needs.
Training – it’s the indirect effort that gives us access to something we can’t try or make happen on our own.
Surrender – it’s a voluntary “making ourselves weak” so that we can know the strength and power of God (2 Cor 12:9-10).

Simply put: fasting is a way to place ourselves in the way of grace by withdrawing our reliance on earthly things so that we can feast on God’s presence and power.