When we go through a spiritual fast, we not only get closer to God, but also become stronger mentally and physically. But trying hard fasting without God may not achieve the goal; It will only result in failure.
What if fasting aimed at a good cause backfires? It can also happen. The Holy Bible makes it clear that a person can achieve the full purpose of fasting only by following the divine laws.
Fasting has been practiced by people of all religions since ancient times. The purpose behind this was to grow spiritually. As time has changed, fasting has also been modified in the modern era! An increasing number of people are practicing fasting in a gradual manner with the goal of maintaining physical beauty, restoring beauty, and warding off disease. Those who fast to improve their beauty are mostly young women trying to become a slim beauty. The health of most of them will deteriorate later.
People who ends up sick due to lack of any restrictions on diet are often prescribed to fast. But fasting without proper care and knowledge can only harm the body. “Anorexia nervosa” is a disease that affects such people. People with this disease would have no interest in food. They feel aversion to food. It is a disease that puts their lives at risk by not eating. By practicing fasting for beauty, it leads to a state where not only the beauty but the body itself is destroyed.
The Holy Bible makes it clear that fasting leads to a return to God for those who are suffering from God’s punishments due to their uncontrolled life.
Consecrate a fast,
Joel 1:14
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
Into the house of the Lord your God,
And cry out to the Lord.
Why did God ask the people of Israel to announce a fast through the prophet Joel?
“Swarm after swarm, of locusts, settled on the crops; what one swarm left, the next swarm devoured” (Joel 1:4).
In ancient times, people depended on an economy based on agricultural crops. Even in our country these days, farmers commit suicide when their crops fail and they run into debt. This is happening in the situation where banks, irrigation facilities, chemical fertilizers etc. are available. It would be good to remember how fearfully people used to farm in ancient times when there was no such facility. Natural disasters, destruction of agricultural crops, etc. are depicted in the Bible as God’s wrath. Natural calamities such as droughts, floods, etc. used to destroy the farmlands and then the people moved towards famine, poverty and eventual deaths. It was during such a time of divine wrath that the prophet Joel asked the people to enter into the presence of God through fasting. It was as if an army had come on the attack, as grasshoppers, locusts, caterpillars and green worms attacked the agricultural crops and wreaked havoc in the country. The fields were destroyed and the trees in the fields were gone. “Be ashamed, you farmers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field has perished.” (Joel 1:11,12).
Not only in our country, but in many parts of the world, when people forget God, natural disasters, famine, murders, suicides etc. are on the rise. This has to be considered as God’s warning. When God asked the people to come to Him for a dwelling through prophet Joel, they obeyed. Look at God’s answer to this:
The Lord will answer and say to His people, “Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations. But I will remove far from you the northern army, And will drive him away into a barren and desolate land, With his face toward the eastern sea and his back toward the western sea; His stench will come up, and his foul odour will rise, Because he has done monstrous things.”
Joel 2:19-25
Fear not, O land; Be glad and rejoice, For the Lord has done marvellous things!
Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field; For the open pastures are springing up, And the tree bears its fruit;
The fig tree and the vine yield their strength. Be glad then, you children of Zion, And rejoice in the Lord your God;
For He has given you the former rain faithfully, And He will cause the rain to come down for you— The former rain, And the latter rain in the first month. The threshing floors shall be full of wheat, And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil. So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you.
In this way, people and countries prepare for fasting to remove God’s wrath; Fasting is also a remedy that God prepares to come to Him when we are moving towards destruction with a sinful life forgetting God. Nations also declare fasting. The America of old was not the America of today. Fasting and prayer were an early source of power in America. Americans today are the descendants of the British who left England when a false, spiritually destroying form of worship was forced upon them. In 1620, when the church was devalued the Puritans left England in 102 boats to Holland. But even there they were not satisfied. When they saw that the sinful life there would lead their children astray, they prayed before God with tears in their eyes. They came from Holland to America after the divine message they received while fasting and praying. On the dollar, the currency of the United States, there is a note that says ‘In God we trust’.
Although they got spiritual freedom in America, they had to face adversity even then. All that time they fasted and prayed. They declared a fast day on June 1, 1774 when the British blockaded the port of Boston. Early presidents of the United States have issued proclamations at the government level asking people to fast. John Adams, the second president of the United States, declared a national fast day on May 9, 1798, in order to avoid facing France on the battlefield. When war broke out with Britain, the fourth president, James Madison, also declared January 12, 1815 as a fast day. Abraham Lincoln, who was the President, declared fasting days 3 times at different times with the aim of national unity and peaceful atmosphere during the Civil War in the country. Their spiritual life experiences demonstrate that powerful prayer based on fasting was behind America’s rise to become the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world.