Fasting, if we conceive of it truly, must not... be confined to the question of food and drink; fasting should really be made to include abstinence from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some special spiritual purpose. There are many bodily functions which are right and normal and perfectly legitimate, but which for special peculiar reasons in certain circumstances should be controlled. That is fasting.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Martyn Lloyd-Jones Website
A spiritually awake person would see everything as gift, even suffering. We deserve nothing and yet we so often act as though we deserve everything. Nothing should be taken for granted. We should say thank you every day to God and to each other for all that is provided for us. This is one reason why fasting is such an important spiritual discipline. Not just fasting from food, but also fasting from cars, shopping centres, the news - whatever we have an inordinate attachment to. Fasting can help re-kindle our gratitude for all that we have been given.
Glen Argan
Editor WCR
Suggestions for Fasting and Feasting: Fast from discontent; feast on thankfulness. Fast from worry; feast on trust. Fast from anger; feast on patience. Fast from self-concern; feast on compassion for others. Fast from unrelenting pressures; feast on unceasing prayers . Fast from bitterness; feast on forgiveness. Fast from discouragement, feast on hope. Fast from media hype, feast on the honesty of the Bible. Fast from idle gossip; feast on purposeful silence. Fast from problems that overwhelm; feast on prayer that undergirds.
Anonymous
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Fasting As Unto the Lord By Marilyn Salmonson You desire a closer walk with God. It's important to understand the role that fasting can play in your Christian life. It empowers your spirit man, enhances your prayer life, and helps you focus on your Christian walk. This comprehensive book by Marilyn Salmonson offers a wealth of information, incorporating scriptural guidelines for fasting with contemporary scientific knowledge on how to physically maximize your fast. Don't settle for an uninspired, lukewarm Christian walk. Let this book take your relationship with God to the next level. |
Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.
John Wesley
Wesley Centre
![827439: Recapturing the Wesleys" Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley](http://ag.christianbook.com/g/product/8/827439.gif "827439: Recapturing the Wesleys" Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley") |
Recapturing the Wesleys' Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley By Paul Wesley Chilcote From horseback, pulpit, and choir loft, the Wesleys helped transform the Christian church of their day---and since. Now explore the message that sparked the Methodist revolution. Skillfully gleaning from John's voluminous writings and Charles's timeless hymns, Chilcote introduces their innovative synthesis of faith and works; Word and Spirit; individual and community; head and heart. 132 pages, softcover from InterVarsity. |
Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.
Andrew Murray
Biography and Works
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The Transforming Power of Fasting & Prayer: Personal Accounts of Spiritual Renewal By Bill Bright God is moving within His church in a deep and powerful way through fasting and prayer to bring His people and our nation closer to His heart and will. In The Transforming Power of Fasting and Prayer: Personal Accounts of Spiritual Renewal, Bill Bright includes stirring accounts of Christians who have been a part of the fasting and prayer movement - both individual and corporate - that is erupting across our country. Through their stories, you will learn how God is transforming America through fasting and prayer. You will also learn how God is working through fasting and prayer to:
God blesses His people as they fast, pray and seek His face. This book will show how you, too, can be a vital part of the coming revival through your own personal movement of fasting and prayer. |
Every one must study his own nature. Some of you can sustain life with less food than others can, and therefore I desire that he who needs more nourishment shall not be obliged to equal others, but that every one shall give his body what it needs for being an efficient servant of the soul. For as we are obliged to be on our guard against superfluous food which injures body and soul alike, thus we must be on the watch against immoderate fasting, and this the more, because the Lord wants conversion and not victims.
Francis of Assisi
Short Biography
Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.
Dallas Willard
Is fasting ever a bribe to get God to pay more attention to the petitions ? No, a thousand times no. It is simply a way to make clear that we sufficiently reverence the amazing opportunity to ask help from the everlasting God, the Creator of the universe, to choose to put everything else aside and concentrate on worshiping, asking forgiveness, and making our requests known-considering His help more important than anything we could do ourselves in our own strength and with our own ideas.
Edith Schaeffer
L'Abri
We tend to think of fasting as going without food. But we can fast from anything. If we love music and decide to miss a concert in order to spend time with God, that is fasting. It is helpful to think of the parallel of human friendship. When friends need to be together, they will cancel all other activities in order to make that possible. There's nothing m*gical about fasting. It's just one way of telling God that your priority at that moment is to be alone with him, sorting out whatever is necessary, and you have cancelled the meal, party, concert, or whatever else you had planned to do in order to fulfil that priority.
James I (J. I.) Packer
Brief Online Interview
Fasting is important, more important perhaps, than many of us have supposed,... when exercised with a pure heart and a right motive, fasting may provide us with a key to unlock doors where other keys have failed; a window opening up new horizons in the unseen world; a spiritual weapon of God's provision, mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds. (God's Chosen Fast)
Arthur Wallis
Fasting can be a painful admission that I am not free, that my life is enslaved, obsessed or addicted to external things such as food, drink, codependent relationships, sex, television, privacy and the like.
Albert Haase
In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are - dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.
James Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor Biography
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Confessions of a Fasting Wife Catherine Brown has been used by the Lord along with a group of other believers, to see God's touch reach many in the U.K. This book is more than a spiritual guide to fasting — it is a practical primer on the do's and don'ts of fasting. Within these pages, Catherine Brown shares her experience in fasting in a 21st century world. Her humor, insight, and missteps during her sojourn will make you laugh — and empathize — with her plight as she discovers the emotional ups-and-downs of fasting. spirituality and practically meet head-on in Confessions of a Fasting Housewife. Get ready to learn everything your pastor never told you about fasting! |
Our greatest victories are won on our knees and with empty stomachs.
Julio C. Ruibal
Website
Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstensions],...because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them: they practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves, they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self.
William Law
Biography And Works
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Fasting: Opening the Door to a Deeper, More Intimate, More Powerful Relationship with God By Jentezen Franklin Are you seeking healing? Does a loved one need salvation? Is your faith community searching for direction? Tap into the power of fasting and present your requests to the Lord! Offering simple suggestions, Franklin shows how abstaining from food will leave your spirit uncluttered so you are free to seek God's will in prayer and humility. 256 pages, hardcover from Charisma. |
The purpose of fasting is to loosen to some degree the ties which bind us to the world of material things and our surroundings as a whole, in order that we may concentrate all our spiritual powers upon the unseen and eternal things.
Ole Kristian O. Hallesby
Brief Biography
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