Spiritual Disciplines: The Discipline of Fasting
Key Points
- 01Jesus says 'when you fast,' not 'if' — fasting is expected of every believer, not optional
- 02Secret fasting is rewarded by God; public fasting is only rewarded by people — you choose which reward you want
- 03Fasting must flow from a genuinely transformed life; without spiritual rebirth, it is nothing more than a diet
- 04Biblical fasting is less about what you give up and more about who you're making room for
- 05Fasting does not manipulate God — it aligns you with God; a fast without prayer and purpose is just deprivation
- 06Old Testament heroes — Esther, Nehemiah, David, Nineveh — all experienced God's powerful response when they fasted with humility and purpose
Watch the Full Sermon
Sermon Summary
Pastor Dave Waters opens by connecting the communion table to the sermon's central theme: spiritual transformation. He invites the congregation to distinguish between physical hunger and spiritual hunger, arguing that fasting is not a diet or self-improvement strategy but a spiritual discipline that touches every dimension of human experience — mind, body, soul, and spirit. Just as a Snickers bar can shift one's entire emotional state, fasting has a profound impact on all these aspects simultaneously. But Waters is quick to clarify that context matters: unhealthy people cannot fast, and even healthy people must approach fasting with the right framework. He frames the entire sermon around a baby elephant at the zoo — a creature that eats to live, not lives to eat — as a picture of the disposition fasting invites us toward.
Drawing from Matthew 6:16-18, Waters emphasizes that Jesus uses the word 'when' regarding fasting, not 'if' — signaling it is an expected practice for every believer. He stresses that secrecy is essential: the reward of fasting comes from God alone, and the moment someone else notices and admires our fasting, that recognition becomes the only reward we get. Waters then walks the congregation through a survey of powerful Old Testament examples: the city of Nineveh spared after Jonah preached and they fasted in repentance; Queen Esther who fasted before risking her life before the king to save her people; David who fasted in grief and repentance after his sin with Bathsheba; Nehemiah who fasted when he heard Jerusalem's walls lay in ruins, and whose changed countenance moved the Persian king to fund the entire rebuilding project; and Jesus himself who fasted 40 days in the wilderness and emerged to rebuke every temptation of Satan with Scripture, winning victory over the flesh as a fully human man.
The theological heart of the sermon arrives through Matthew 9:14-17 — Jesus' teaching about new cloth on old garments and new wine in old wineskins. Waters argues forcefully that fasting only has real spiritual value for a person who has already been genuinely transformed by the Holy Spirit. Imposing the discipline on an untransformed life is like sewing new fabric onto rotting denim — it only tears the old garment further. He illustrates this with a vivid personal story from his childhood in Madrid, Spain, where as an 11-year-old he tried to patch his prized Levi's with new material and destroyed them in the process. The warp and woof of a person's life — the deep structural fabric of who they are — must first be transformed by the Spirit before the new disciplines of fasting, prayer, and meditation can take root and bear fruit. He points to Acts 13, where the church at Antioch fasted and the Holy Spirit spoke, commissioning Barnabas and Saul for the missionary journey that would change the world.
Waters closes with Luke 18:9-14 — the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The Pharisee fasted twice a week, gave tithes, and avoided all obvious sin, yet went home unjustified. The humble tax collector, who only cried out for mercy, went home righteous before God. The lesson is pointed: fasting does not manipulate God; it aligns you with God. A fast without purpose is just a diet. Fasting must be paired with prayer and directed toward deepening one's connection with God, not earning spiritual credentials. Waters offers a memorable summary definition: 'Biblical fasting is less about what you give up and more about who you're making room for.' The call is to fast in secret, with humility, from a transformed heart — and trust that the Father who sees in secret will reward.
Scripture References
Going Deeper
In first-century Judaism, fasting was a highly visible and socially loaded practice. The Pharisees fasted on Mondays and Thursdays — the two public market days in Jerusalem when large crowds gathered — making their piety maximally observable. Jesus did not abolish fasting; he redirected its motivation entirely. The Sermon on the Mount places fasting alongside giving and prayer as the three core disciplines of the devout life (Matthew 6:1-18), and in each case Jesus' corrective is identical: do it for God's eyes, not for human approval. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) was the only fast prescribed by the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 16:29-31), but by Jesus' time voluntary fasts had multiplied significantly, often becoming tools of public religious performance.
The early church took fasting seriously as a communal and missional discipline. The Didache — a late-first-century Christian manual of practice — instructs believers to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, deliberately distinguishing themselves from the Jewish practice of Monday/Thursday fasting. The pattern in Acts 13 established a template the early church followed for major decisions: fasting accompanied the appointment of elders (Acts 14:23), the sending of missionaries, and times of crisis. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, considered fasting so essential to spiritual formation that he refused to ordain ministers who did not fast twice a week. This corporate and leadership dimension of fasting — communities seeking God together before major decisions — is an often-overlooked biblical pattern.
The 'new wine in old wineskins' image in Matthew 9:17 is rooted in agricultural reality: new wine, still fermenting, produces gases that expand. An old, dried-out wineskin would crack and burst under the pressure, destroying both the skin and the wine. Jesus uses this image to communicate that his kingdom is not a reform of the existing religious system but something entirely new requiring an entirely new container — a transformed human heart. For fasting, this means the discipline cannot simply be grafted onto an unchanged life. The monastics Waters references made this error: believing physical austerity alone could produce spiritual results. The New Testament consistently teaches that transformation flows from the inside out, from Spirit to body, never in reverse.
For those wanting to begin practicing fasting, spiritual directors throughout church history recommend starting small and purposefully: skip one meal and spend that time in intentional prayer instead of eating. The Daniel Fast — vegetables and water, drawn from Daniel 1:8-16 — provides an accessible option for those for whom complete food fasts are medically inadvisable. Regardless of method, the key is pairing the fast with a specific spiritual purpose: interceding for someone, seeking direction on a major decision, or simply creating space to hear from God without the usual noise of appetite and routine. As Waters emphasizes, fasting without prayer and without a transformed heart is not a spiritual discipline — it is just skipping meals.
