Our Failure to Fast is a Failure of Faith

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Recapturing This Wonderful Spiritual Grace in a Life Ruled By a Trust in Idols

Good Morning,

The next portion of the Westminster Directory of Public Worship that we’ll be looking at is a practice that is almost completely forgotten today. I don’t think we have the requisite spiritual state to even contemplate it, let alone bring it back in full force. My purpose in saying that is not to run us down in 2025, but merely to note the reality that we would need to do a lot of reviving of just the biblical idea of fasting let alone thinking about events as a people or a nation in the hand of the providence of God. Sometimes we do not realize how disconnected we are from the attitudes and conceptions of the world in comparison to our forefathers and foremothers in the faith. We should think on that to our shame. Yet, it does no good for us to wallow in it.

Our goal should be as we are confronted with the doctrine of fasting and the public nature of what the DPW enjoins for us that we move back to appreciating the spiritual discipline and what it can and should do for us in our personal and corporate walks with Christ. Many of the biblical ways of spiritual growth are passé in our day because we have a materialistic mind, and cannot see the benefits of such a work, yet all throughout the scriptures from Adam to John the Revelator what do we hear of people doing. People as disparate as the king of Nineveh to Moses? They engage in fasting, for sin, for repentance, in seeking God’s guidance, etc . . . When is the last time you fasted for these or any other reasons? When is the last time your denomination or your local church ask you to do these things? Sadly, I think we all know the answer.

Let’s go ahead and read what the directory has to say as we are introduced to this biblical teaching:

When some great and notable judgments are either inflicted upon a people, or apparently imminent, or by some extraordinary provocations notoriously deserved; as also when some special blessing is to be sought and obtained, publick solemn fasting (which is to continue the whole day) is a duty that God expects from that nation or people.

A religious fast requires total abstinence, not only from all food, (unless bodily weakness do manifestly disable from holding out till the fast be ended, in which case somewhat may be taken, yet very sparingly, to support nature, when ready to faint,) but also from all worldly labour, discourses, and thoughts, and from all bodily delights, and such like, (although at other times lawful,) rich apparel, ornaments, and such like, during the fast; and much more from whatever is in the nature or use scandalous and offensive, as gaudish attire, lascivious habits and gestures, and other vanities of either sex; which we recommend to all ministers, in their places, diligently and zealously to reprove, as at other times, so especially at a fast, without respect of persons, as there shall be occasion.

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