This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Dec 30, 2025.
For the last of our series on spiritual disciplines, I intentionally saved this one for the article to show up between Christmas and New Years. For this one, I want to talk about fasting, a spiritual discipline that you probably have not see much of since Thanksgiving. While fasting is a vital spiritual discipline, it is also one of the most misunderstood. I want to give it some context to understand the desired outcome of fasting..
I am sure that with all of the eating that is done this time of year, many of you are strongly considering fasting just because food is sort of losing its appeal. And I do not want to downplay that. There are significant physical advantages to fasting. None of us need the number of calories we consume on a daily basis. Even the idea of eating 3 meals a day is a relatively recent phenomenon to correspond to factory schedules. Early on, we humans were hunter-gatherers and would probably only eat once a day.
The one thing about the body you need to keep in mind is that you use a significant amount of muscles to digest your food. That means that when you eat during the day is very significant. To eat too much before going to bed, you are asking muscles associated with the digestive system to work while the rest of your body shuts down for the night. That is why not going to bed with a full stomach leads to a better night sleep. .
If you are going to practice fasting, make sure you understand why you are doing it. If you are going to fast for physical reasons, there is nothing wrong with that. However, you should not do anything for physical reasons while trying to pass it off as a spiritual act. Having more reasons to do a good thing will not make it easier. If you want to have the physical benefits of fasting, then do it only for that reason. If you want the spiritual benefits of fasting, then let that be enough.
What are the spiritual benefits of fasting? You would be surprised at how many versions of Sin there are that begin with failure to control your physical appetite. You have heard the phrase “a journey of 1,000 miles begins with 1 step.” If you have any Sin in your life you would like to address, controlling gluttony is probably going to be the first step regardless of which Sin you wish to address.
The big issue with fasting is most people think you need to starve yourself before you get any benefits. That is not true. During seasons when I have fasted effectively, I have found fasting to be the most helpful by putting intention where there had been complete chaos. For modern day Americans, we are not worried about where food is coming from. Fasting puts limits on something that is otherwise unlimited. Success with fasting can then spread to other areas of your life with appetites that are harder to control. Think of Sin in the categories of the 7 deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and laziness. Of these 7 deadly sins, gluttony is the only one that only hurts you. All of the rest of the 7 deadly sins hurt not only you but also hurt other people. Gluttony is the only Sin that only hurts you. That is why it is the one that must be addressed first because it is the one sin that can be either indulged or controlled and no one will know.
You can not have any hope of defeating any of the 7 deadly Sins without winning the war against gluttony. Fasting specifically targets the sin of gluttony because it introduces needed boundaries and limits on this specific Sin. It is a great first step in reigning in all of the other deadly sins when we begin from a place of control over gluttony.
Either way you want to look at it, physical or spiritual benefit, there is great potential upside to fasting. In consultation with your doctor, it can be an effective way to introduce some level of control over the temptations we face everyday!