Is Fasting Biblical? (Part 1)

On March 30, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of fasting. This was the proclamation he issued:

“… It is the duty of nations as well as of men…to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord…We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Boy, I wish we had a President make that type of spiritual call in America today.

How many people do you know who fast regularly? Fasting may be one of the most misunderstood disciplines of the Christian life. The reason is it is feared is this: people don’t enjoy the level of commitment – that is abstaining from physical pleasures. We live in a gluttonness, denial-less, self-indulgent society that doesn’t enjoy denying the flesh. And yet did you know that fasting is mentioned more times in the Bible than baptism – 77x for fasting and 75x for baptism? So what is fasting? Tomorrow, we will define what it.