Pastor Helps Demystify the Meaning of Fasting: 'Spiritual Leaders Have Neglected It'

Between the Old and New Testaments, the discipline of fasting is mentioned nearly 70 times, but data suggests it’s not something many Christians prioritize in their lives.

In 2014, the Barna Group released a study of Lent, the season preceding Easter and a time when people often abstain from something for religious reasons, and the Christian data-collecting agency found only 17% of adults practiced Lenten fasting in the last three years.

Listen to the latest episode of “Quick Start”

A Pew Research Center analysis from last year revealed just 27% of Christians overall participate in religious fasting, with Catholics leading the way at 40% and Protestants coming in far behind at 18%.

That lack of focus on fasting, Pastor Ronnie Floyd explained on a recent episode of CBN’s “Faith vs. Culture,” is due to a dearth of teaching on the subject.

“I really think spiritual leaders have neglected it for a lot of reasons,” he said. “And how do you neglect something, for example, that is mentioned in 57 verses of the Bible? It has 69 references of the word in those 57 verses as ‘fast’ and ‘fasting.'”

Noting each of those passages centers on abstaining specifically from food, Floyd asked, “How in the world could we not talk about that, especially when we know Jesus said, ‘When you give, when you pray, when you fast.’ He did not say, ‘If you give, and if you pray, and if you fast.'”

The Arkansas-based minister and former Southern Baptist Convention executive is the author of the newly released, “The Supernatural Power of Prayer and Fasting: 12 Ways God Will Change Your Life.”

In all his years of studying fasting, Floyd said there remains “a mystery” to fasting.

“It’s about me bringing myself — surrendering myself to God — without any ties whatsoever at all,” he said. “And whatever [God] does in it, then I conform to that will. … People are very transactional with God, and obviously, Scripture talks about, ‘If you’ll do this, God will do this,’ and I believe that. The only thing we can do is we go in with God’s promises about things we’re praying about when we begin to fast.”

“It’s on God to choose to do what He does and wants to do, and then it’s up to us to conform our lives and submit to to the will of God,” he added.

To learn more about fasting — how to try it for the first time and what it means to fast from a biblical perspective — watch our full conversation with Floyd: