Fasting: Only 1 Appetite Needs Fed
by Jared Johnson
One thing, however, is necessary, and just one thing. Mary chose the good portion. It won’t be taken from her.
~Jesus
(Luke 10.42, interlinear paraphrase)
This year – especially this week! – we keep All Eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12.1-3). He alone is “...the champion who initiates and perfects our faith...” (Heb 12.2, NLT), not a politician, party, or set of policies. This month, we examine the spiritual discipline of fasting. With elections concluding in just over 100 hours, would you join me in fasting and praying for our neighbors and leaders – both present and future – sometime within those 100 hours?
I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we may live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity.
1 Timothy 2.1-2, NLT
Let’s start with a chart.
That’s a chart of food calories available per-person, per-day in different areas. In these United States, we had more food available 157 years ago, in 1867 (in Reconstruction – 2 years after our Civil War!), than the entire world averages today! We are amply well-fed. It really is remarkable that we in America, even low-income households, have a richer variety of foods available to us, just by walking into any random grocery store and on nearly any given day of a year, than literal royalty did only a couple-few generations ago. Fasting, forgoing food, is counter-cultural like almost nothing else is in our 21st-century, Western/American world. I’m no expert on fasting, but it’s a practice in which I’ve been regularly engaging for several years.
Here are my “fasting five.”
“Fasting” plain, straight-out means “no food” in the Bible.
I always roll my eyes a little when some Christian talker yammers about “fasting” from something other than food. Rationalizing-away food fasting to say “fast from something else” is simply our food-inundated culture protesting too much.
“And when you fast from your phone, go away by yourself, close your bedroom door behind you, and ignore your pinging phone that you left on the kitchen counter.” That’s not what The Man said.
Denying our appetites, of any stripe, is good, right, healthy and God-honoring. That said, our appetite for food is a physical necessity. Our craving for any number of other things is purely psychological (or for addictions, psycho-chemical, but still not necessary to sustain life).
Denying ourselves food just hits different.
Jesus assumes we’ll fast.
Matthew 6.16, in Greek, starts with “Now, whenever you fast...” (which is how NASB reads). It’s true there’s no “thou shall fast” in the Bible, but there is an inevitability baked into Jesus’s “whenever you fast, do thusly.” Going without food flies in the face of our near-4,000-calories-per-day culture of abject indulgence. Lots of us deal with food like Tolkien’s fictional Hobbits, who ate 7 times daily: “We’ve had one breakfast, yes, but what about second breakfast? ... Elevensies? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner?! Supper?! What about those?!”
God Almighty expects His people to say “no” to other appetites – sexually (not outside heterosexual marriage), emotionally (angry outbursts or simmering bitterness), financially (contentment), and more, so we shouldn’t be surprised He assumes we’ll also go without food from time to time.
Duration is a big deal.
Going without one meal isn’t too hard. Fasting 40 days like our Master did is a whole different thing. A shorter fast will “register” physically less than a longer fast, but if you fast, you’ll feel it; your body gropes for calories but can’t find any and that’ll hit you, with bodily sensations, at different times. When our bodies remind us that we’re fasting, we can remind our Good and Perfect Father why we’re fasting and “[go] boldly to the throne of our gracious God” with our requests (Heb 4.16, NLT).
I’d guess that everyone reading this could, unprompted, recall that Jesus fasted 40 days between His immersion and beginning His public ministry (Matt 4.1-11 / Luke 4.1-13). But He wasn’t the only one, and just a couple years ago that fact hit me suddenly while listening to Deuteronomy.
Even at Mount Sinai you made [Yahweh] so angry he was ready to destroy you. This happened when I was on the mountain receiving the tablets of stone inscribed with the words of the covenant that [Yahweh] had made with you. I was there for forty days and forty nights, and all that time I ate no food and drank no water. ... I took the stone tablets and threw them on the ground, smashing them before your eyes. Then, as before, I threw myself down before [Yahweh] for forty days and nights. I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had committed by doing what [Yahweh] hated, provoking him to anger.
Deuteronomy 9.8-9, 17-18 (NLT, emphasis added)
Not only did Jesus fast 40 days, Moses did too, and twice, more or less back-to-back! Longer-term fasts need a medical professional’s input if not direct oversight, but they are possible. Going “from 0 to 60” on fasting can be outright harmful, with long-term, unpleasant, lingering effects in your body.
Besides Moses and Jesus fasting 40 days (with near-certain Providential intervention to sustain their bodies), many other biblical characters fasted for shorter time periods. Acts 9.9 and Esther 4.16 both tell us about 3-day total fasts. No sustenance of any kind, liquid or solid, was taken in by Paul (Acts) nor by Esther, Mordecai, and their Jewish neighbors who lived in Susa (Esther). While Jonah’s text doesn’t specify, he may've fasted during his 3 days “interred” in the sea creature. Daniel didn’t total-fast, but he restricted his diet (its quality/quantity) while he was “in mourning for three whole weeks” (Dan 10.2). After King Saul and Princes Jon, Malkishua and Abinadab died fighting Philistines, men of Jabesh-Gilead forcibly retrieved their bodies to give them all proper burials, and then they fasted 7 days for their deceased royal family (1 Sam 31.13 / 1 Chron 10.12).
Is my appetite my god? Is your appetite your god?
...there are a great number of people who walk as enemies of the cross of the Chosen One. And now with tears I warn you again. A bad end awaits these people. They have made their weak human appetites the spirit they follow.
Philippians 3.18-19 (First Nations Version, © IVP)
... Their god is their appetite. ...
Philippians 3.19 (NLT)
Here’s where fasting really came home to roost for me.
You and I both know this comment from Paul isn’t strictly about gluttony. We all have many appetites – such as for glowy screens, certain emotions, or specific chemicals. And therein lies our key confronting question. Is an appetite for any of those things my actual, driving and ruling god while I claim with my mouth that “only God is God” (as in Deuteronomy 6.4)? We can all name names of people for whom some external phenomenon is a driving force in their life. We can see it immediately – when it’s someone else.
We might be ruled by what’s gastric or chemical – food in general, alcohol, sugar, nicotine, chocolate, caffeine, etc. It might be emotional – an addiction to anger and bitterness. It might be social – someone who just needs to be “life of the party,” or one who cultivates a lifelong snarky “outsider” critic persona, or the “nice one” who’s always the calm fixer around whom drama and chaos constantly swirl. It might be electronic – we just gotta check Facebook, Twitter, email, SnapChat, Instagram, whatever, just one more time.
You say “I’m allowed to do anything” – but not everything is good for you. And even though “I’m allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything.
1 Corinthians 6.12 (NLT, emphasis added)
I pound my body and enslave it, so that, announcing to others, I myself might not be judged unsuitable.
1 Corinthians 9.27 (The Second Testament, © IVP, emphasis added)
An evil man is held captive by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self-control; he will be lost because of his incredible folly.
Proverbs 5.22-23, (NLT ©1996, emphasis added)
Please, Father, grant me the mercy that my appetites don’t enslave me.
Only 1 appetite needs fed.
Exactly 1 appetite should be sated: my appetite to know and be known by God. Biblically, I’m sure many people realized that truth, but in Luke 10.42, Jesus overtly pointed it out in Mary’s life and He complimented her publicly for it. “One thing alone is needed; Mary found it; I won’t take it from her.”
In many Scriptures, God confronted people for pursuing appetites other than Him. He denounced appetites for idolatry (Isaiah 57), appetites for food pleasures (Amos 6.4-7), and appetites for sensual indulgence (Romans 1.24-28).
All those drives were not just confronted by God Almighty; He also condemned our pursuit of them in each of those passages. (And yes, of course, there are many other Scriptures in which God re-directs our drives and appetites besides what are listed above.)
Friends, only 1 appetite needs fed. Mary found that appetite and fed it. Her pursuit was complimented by Jesus, and I choose to believe it was protected Providentially at other times.
Ultimate Break-Fast
For all the times Jesus had to correct His closest followers, He, in contrast, complimented Mary’s seeking of Him. He had to correct His 12 about arguing over who was greatest, their failure to pray to cast out a kid’s demon (Mark 9.14-29), allowing kids to talk to Him when the 12 wouldn’t (Matt 19.13-15), and any number of other moments.
But here, Jesus elevated Mary’s pursuit of Him, no correction nor re-direction.
While you and I fast from food here-and-now, there’s a sense in which we’re “fasting,” disconnected, from God’s presence here-and-now. After Genesis 3, God withdrew His intimate presence. We can’t get back to Genesis 1-2, no matter how much we feed our appetite for Him in this life. Moments of “theophany” like God’s appearance in Genesis 19 are rare because we, living in this broken world, are separated from God, as all people are between Genesis 3.23 and Revelation 21.3.
But ...
But, come Revelation 21.3, “...God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.”
On that day, our 1 appetite will be fully, completely, deeply satisfied.
May it be. Come soon, King Jesus.
