I often refer to fasting as an important spiritual growth tool in our lives. Some time ago, I wrote a number of posts on the subject of fasting and I am gathering all of those together here as a resource for understanding fasting in general. These posts also address a number of specific aspects of …
An Overview of Fasting
On Wednesday at Eastbrook we begin our forty day journey with the book of Job entitled "Finding God in the Darkness." This past weekend in my message "Still God" I mentioned how fasting can be a helpful spiritual practice to help us regain a hunger for God. I want to refer to a series of posts on …
Fasting: Words from Church History
Here are some words from the past two-thousand years about the topic of fasting. I found these words alternately challenging and inspiring. The Didache, a first century document relating core teaching of the early church, “prescribed two fast days a week: Wednesday and Friday” for early Christians; this was seen as a regular part of …
Fasting: Is It Just from Food?
In the midst of all the posts on fasting, a few people have asked me if fasting is really all about abstinence from food, or is it broader than that. I think this is an important question for us to consider within this whole topic. In an earlier post, I defined fasting as "voluntary abstinence …
Fasting: A View from the New Testament
Here is an unedited list of references to fasting from the New Testament with brief comments about what we can learn about fasting from these references. This list is a companion to my earlier list from the Old Testament found here. Matthew 4:1-3 – “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to …
Matthew Erickson 