Fasting Gives Additional Weight To Prayer

By Gordon Cove

    When we begin to fast and pray, it means that we have settled down to the real business of praying with a persistence. It is certain that God’s people would see more answers to their prayers, if they would miss more meals and spend the time in prayer.

    In early Church history, fasting was considered one of the pillars of the Christian religion. When the Church had power, fasting was an essential part of the faith. But today, fasting is a lost art, little practiced and taught. Fasting is not mere abstinence from food or from any other pleasure, in itself. It is abstinence with a purpose.

    Fasting means that you have come to the place of spiritual desperation. It means that you are now determined at all costs to put God first. There are times when we should turn our backs on everything in the world, even our daily food, in seeking the face of God. Fasting means that we are determined to seek the face of God and get our prayers answered. It means that we put God first, before everything, including food.

    Ordinarily, fasting means to abstain from food, but the same spirit of desperation will also lead us to abstain from other things as well. Fasting is a voluntary disuse of anything innocent in itself, with a view to spiritual culture. It does not necessarily apply to food only. It applies to everything that the natural man may desire. So fasting is putting God first when one prays, wanting God more than one wants food, more than sleep, more than the one wants fellowship with others, more than one wants to attend to business. How could a Christian ever know that God was first in his life if he did not at times turn from every other duty and pleasure to give himself wholly to the seeking of the Face of God.

    The great lack of our life is that we do not pray and fast more. Prayer moves the Hand that moves the universe, and fasting adds weight to prayer. It secures for the believer the resources of Divinity.