Fasting and Prayer for Beginners

Fasting is the spiritual practice most Christians have heard of and fewest have tried. Part of that is uncertainty about what it is for, and part is a reasonable suspicion that it might be a way of trying to make God do something. It is worth understanding on its own terms, and worth starting far smaller than most people assume.

What Jesus Assumed

The passage above is worth reading carefully, because of one word.

When you fast. Not if. Jesus is not introducing the practice or arguing for it; he is correcting how his listeners were already doing it.

His correction is entirely about the audience. Do not perform it. Wash your face, look normal, let it be between you and God.

That is the same structure he uses for giving and for prayer in the same chapter. All three are assumed, and all three are ruined by being visible.

It is also worth noticing what he does not say. He gives no duration, no required frequency, no menu. The practice is left open.

What It Is Actually For

The clearest way to think about it: fasting removes something in order to make room.

Practically, three things happen.

It frees time. A skipped meal is thirty to sixty minutes, including preparation, that can be spent praying. That alone is much of the value, and it is the part people overlook while focusing on the hunger.

It creates a recurring prompt. Hunger arrives repeatedly through the day, and each time it does it functions as a reminder of why you are hungry. Few practices give you that many prompts.

It shows you what you rely on. Removing something ordinary reveals how much weight you were putting on it. People are frequently surprised by their own irritability, which is information.

What it is not: leverage. Isaiah 58 is God's response to people fasting while exploiting workers and ignoring the poor, and it is severe. The fast God chooses, the chapter says, is to loose the chains of injustice and share your food with the hungry. Fasting does not obligate God to anything.

In Scripture

The practice appears in a fairly consistent set of situations.

Grief. David fasts while his child is ill. It is a response to sorrow rather than a technique.

Repentance. Nineveh fasts after Jonah's warning. Israel fasts at moments of national repentance.

Danger. Esther calls a three-day fast before approaching the king, which was a genuinely life-threatening act.

Decisions. The church in Acts 13 fasts and prays before sending out Barnabas and Saul.

Preparation. Jesus fasts forty days before his ministry begins.

Almost all of these are situational rather than routine. Something is happening, and fasting is part of how people respond to it.

How to Start

Skip one meal. Pray during the time you would have been eating.

That is a real fast, and it is genuinely where to begin. The common failure is starting with three days, finding it miserable, and concluding the practice is not for you, which is not a fair test of anything.

A sensible progression:

• One meal. Lunch is easiest for most people.
• Sunrise to sunset. Two meals, one day.
• A full day. Dinner to dinner, which is often easier than it sounds since you sleep through part of it.

Drink water throughout. Dehydration causes most of what people attribute to fasting, particularly headaches.

Expect a caffeine headache if you normally drink coffee, and consider tapering beforehand rather than treating it as a spiritual trial.

Decide the Purpose First

A fast without a stated purpose usually becomes just being hungry.

Before you start, name what it is about. A decision. A person. A situation. Repentance about something specific. Then, when the hunger arrives, you have somewhere to direct it.

Plan what you will pray, at least loosely, or the time you freed up will fill itself with something else. Our piece on praying through Scripture is useful here, because it gives the time a structure that does not depend on your inspiration.

When You Should Not Fast From Food

This section matters more than the rest, and it is often left out entirely.

Do not fast from food if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Do not fast if you have diabetes or another condition affected by food intake. Do not fast if you have any history of disordered eating; the practice can become a cover for something harmful, and this is a serious risk rather than a theoretical one. Do not fast if you take medication that requires food. Children should not fast.

If you have any health condition at all, talk to a doctor first. Nothing here is medical advice.

And none of that excludes you from the practice, because food is not the only thing you can fast from. Screens, social media, television, shopping, or a specific habit all work on the same principle: remove something, use the space to pray. For a great many people this is more searching than skipping a meal, since the thing being removed is the thing genuinely being relied on.

Keep It Quiet

Back to what Jesus actually said, because it is the instruction most easily ignored.

Tell someone if there is a safety reason, or if you are fasting together with your spouse or church. Otherwise, do not mention it.

The reason is not modesty for its own sake. Announcing it converts the fast into something you receive credit for, and Jesus is direct that in that case the credit is all you get.

This is harder than it sounds, particularly if you are irritable and want people to know why.

What to Expect

Honestly: the first attempt is often unremarkable.

You will be hungry, distracted, and slightly grumpy, and you may not feel anything spiritual at all. That is normal and not a failure.

What people more commonly report over time is not a dramatic experience but a small clarity, and a surprising awareness of how much of the day is organized around comfort.

Break the fast gently. A large meal after even a day without food is unpleasant. Something small first.

And do not make it a performance metric. A person who fasts once, honestly and quietly, about something that actually matters has done the thing properly.

Family Discussion Questions

• What would be genuinely hard for us to go without for a day?
• Is there something we are facing that deserves this kind of attention?
• What does Isaiah 58 suggest about the connection between fasting and how we treat people?

The Bottom Line

Jesus said when you fast, not if, and his only correction was to stop performing it.

Fasting frees time, creates repeated prompts to pray, and reveals what you rely on. It is not leverage; Isaiah 58 is blunt about that.

Start by skipping one meal and praying during it. Name the purpose beforehand, drink water, and expect the first attempt to feel unremarkable.

Do not fast from food if you are pregnant, diabetic, have a history of disordered eating, or take medication requiring food, and check with a doctor if there is any health question. Fasting from something other than food is a real option.

Frequently Asked Questions