Is It Such A Fast I Have Chosen?

Often the word fasting conjures memories of growling stomachs, odd testimonies we’ve heard on the church’s monthly version of open-mike night, or the petitions we’ve occasionally offered in unison with family or ward members for some mutual desire. Even when we focus on the generally taught and accepted purposes of fasting, we still miss the point of this beautiful church ordinance. Yes. I said ordinance.

As a missionary I heard it taught that prayer was like sending a letter to God while fasting was like sending a telegram (or to modernize, an email). Over the years, I’ve also heard fasting presented as a means of self-mastery, a way to make learn to control appetites and passions by subjecting the body to the will of the spirit. But treating a fast as little more than a hunger strike to get God’s attention or an effort to exert willpower, it still underselling this powerful act. And more importantly, it isn’t what God asks.

Like many modern Christians, ancient Israel had trouble understanding the concept of fasting. Thankfully, the words of the Lord to Isaiah offer a clarity that is just as profound today as it was then.

Let’s take a look at Isaiah 58:

1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

The voice of the Lord commands the prophet to show Israel her transgression. Did you realize that improper fasting was a transgression? Kind of makes you want to know a little bit more about how to fast correctly, doesn’t it?

2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.

There are several interesting points in this verse. First the Lord explains that Israel delights to know the ways of God and to know of Him as if they were a righteous nation. In other words, her rabbis studied the law, her priests performed the ordinances, and from the outside everything looked like they were on the right path. They even kept the ordinance of fasting and took pleasure in approaching God or looking like God’s people. But we know from verse 1, that they have transgressed. Let’s see how:

3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.

The Israelites saw fasting as a means to get God’s attention and they see fasting as a means of afflicting their souls for righteousness sake. Is any of this sounding uncomfortably familiar? Then they want to know why God is “seeing” these acts of tummy-rumbling sacrifice and rewarding them with the fulfillment of their petitions.

4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.

Beginning in verse 3, the Lord explains the flaws in their fasts. First, they pleasure in their fast, or in other words, they fast for their own righteousness sake. Second, they exact all their labors. In this sense, exacting means that they inflict travail on others or exact all that they believe is their just due from others. They are unmerciful lords and unjust stewards. The condemnation continues in verse 4, where the Lord explains that they fast for strife and debate and to smite the fist with wickedness. These are acts to be seen of men, ordinances to be explored and dissected in theological debate. They are not true fasts. Finally, the Lord says that fasting is not for the purpose of making your voice heard on high. We do not fast so God will give us what we want!

5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?

These kinds of fasts are not what the Lord desires. He never intended our fasts to be hunger strikes or acts of public suffering and contrition. His questions here are haunting. How dare we call this a fast.

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

And now that we have been humbled by His condemnation of our flawed ritualization of the ordinance of fasting, He tenderly explains the law. His fast, He says tenderly, is to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo heavy burdens, to free the oppressed, and to break every yoke.

We loose the bands of wickedness when we free those whom we oppress by our need for justice. When we forgive those who’ve offended. We undo heavy burdens when we care for the poor, the needy, the mourning, the afflicted, the imprisoned. We break yokes, when we abandon the unrealistic expectations we bind to each other and allow the atonement free reign in our lives. This is the Lord’s fast. “To preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)

Is your fast an effort to reconcile all men to God through the atonement of Christ? Who have you forgiven before you approach the Lord with an empty stomach? Who have you comforted? Relieved? Freed? Fed?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Is your fast an act of pure religion or is paying a fast offering an afterthought? Does it go without thought at all, a mere administrative act of religiosity carried out with pen and grey enveloped form? Does it hurt? Is it a true sacrificial offering? Is your fast about counting the pennies that you would actually use for two meals or do you count it a divine privilege to consecrate a meaningful donation to feed the hungry and clothe the naked? And do you use this fast to draw close to your family and relatives? Do you offer comfort and aid to those in your own house who are captive temporally and spiritually?

A different fast emerges as we analyze Isaiah’s words. A tender fast. A consecrated fast. A fast that seeks to exalt others at the abasement of the individual. Indeed, this is the fast that the Lord designed. When such a fast is offered, as it was in Gethsemane and on Golgatha, the blessings rain down upon us unrestrained.

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.

The Lord’s fast exalts the individual and brings health. These promises are eternal and relate to the blessings of godhood. As we receive “health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones” (Proverbs 3:8), we become as our Father in Heaven. The lifeless idols of this world have mouths, but speak not: and having eyes, see not: having ears and noses, hear not nor smell. Their hands do not handle, their feet do not walk and their throat allows for no speech. (Proverbs 115:5-7) By contrast, those who live the Lord’s fast of freely forgiving, charitably giving, and consecrating their lives to the salvation of God’s children enjoy eternal life or as Job describes it “bones moistened with marrow”. (Job 21:24)

9 Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;

Only this kind of fast promises the Lord’s quick response. When we do His will and work for His glory, He unfailingly responds. If we refuse to burden our brethren with our own need for justice and stop pointing fingers to satisfy our vain need for compensation when we’ve been injured but instead work to save all men, even those who would crucify us, then “the LORD shall answer”!

10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday:

When we live the Lord’s fast and follow His selfless example, descending to be raised up, freely imparting of our substance, and making all men our joint-heirs, we are filled with eternal and endless light. Truth and knowledge, the light of God, is our holy habitation.

11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

And we will walk with God. He will guide us, satisfy us, nourish us, until like He, we become a well of living water which never fails.

12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

The Lord's final promise is perhaps the most beautiful of all. Our efforts to magnify His work and glory, to save and serve, to feed and comfort, to lift our brethren will rebuild the waste places. This telestial wasteland will again bloom into a garden sweet, a godly paradise is created by those whose lives are offered in a godly fast. Our true fast raises up generations as we create dominion through virtue and love unfeigned, through pure religion and undefiled, and we are called the repairer of the breach.

A breach is a gulf and there is one that is fixed between God and the wicked. Repairing that breach, becoming the one through whom others find salvation, being a savior on Mt. Zion to the living and the dead exalts the one who lives a true fast. As we restore the path for others, those who walk the paths we restore and cross the breach we repair will rise up and call us Blessed. This is the creation of everlasting dominion described in the last few verses of D&C 121. A true fast is the path to godliness!

Just as tithing foreshadows consecration, our current practice of fasting is only a type and shadow of a beautiful principle eternal principle. May skipping two meals and a meager donation to the poor suffice only to remind us of the true fast we strive to live every day of our lives.

Catherine Larsen