OCT 22 | Fasting From Good Things: The Spiritual Discipline Nobody Talks About
What if the very things making you feel spiritual are actually drowning out God's voice? What if your Bible reading, church attendance, and constant worship music have become noise instead of nourishment? This isn't about abandoning your faith—it's about discovering a revolutionary approach to spiritual disciplines that Jesus himself practiced but the modern church rarely teaches.
The Productivity Trap of Modern Christianity
We've turned intimacy with God into a spiritual productivity system. Morning quiet time? Check. Bible reading plan on track? Check. Serving at church? Double check. Christian podcast during the commute, worship playlist at the gym, Bible study on Tuesday nights. Our spiritual lives look impressive on paper, but something feels hollow underneath all the activity.
The exhaustion is real. The anxiety persists. And ironically, the more we do "spiritual things," the less we actually hear from God.
This is the unspoken crisis of contemporary Christianity: we've confused religious busyness with genuine relationship. We've mistaken noise for nearness. And we're burning out trying to earn something that was already freely given.
What Fasting Really Means (Hint: It's Not About Food)
When most Christians hear "fasting," they immediately think about skipping meals. And yes, abstaining from food is a legitimate biblical practice. Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness. The early church fasted before making major decisions. Throughout Scripture, God's people used food fasts as spiritual disciplines.
But here's what we've missed in our reductionist approach: fasting isn't fundamentally about food at all. Fasting is about abstaining from good things to make room for God things.
Food is simply the most obvious good thing we can set aside. But what about all the other good things that fill our lives, our schedules, our minds? What about the good things that have become God-replacements without us even noticing?
The Greek word for fasting, nēsteía, carries the connotation of voluntary abstinence. It's not punishment. It's not earning God's favor through deprivation. It's creating intentional space—white space in the margins of our souls—where God can speak, move, and transform us.
Jesus and the Discipline of Withdrawal
If we want to understand what healthy spiritual rhythm looks like, we need to study Jesus. And what we find is surprising.
Luke 5:16 tells us something crucial about Jesus' ministry pattern: "But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray." This wasn't a one-time event. The Greek verb tense indicates this was Jesus' regular habit. Consistently, repeatedly, Jesus withdrew.
The word translated "desolate places" is erēmos in Greek—wilderness, deserted, uninhabited areas. Not just quiet places where you can still hear distant traffic. Not "peaceful" coffee shops with ambient noise. Empty places. Silent places. Places where human voices, human needs, and human expectations couldn't reach him.
Think about this: Jesus was God in flesh. He had unlimited power. He never needed to recharge like we do. Yet he regularly fasted from ministry, from people, from productivity to be alone with the Father.
What does that tell us? If Jesus—perfect in every way—needed regular withdrawal and silence, how much more do we?
The Fast From Noise: Confronting What We've Been Avoiding
We live in an unprecedented era of noise pollution. Not just audible sound, though that's part of it. Digital noise. Notification noise. The constant stream of voices, opinions, content, and information flooding our consciousness every waking moment.
Most of us reach for our phones within minutes of waking up. We listen to podcasts during our commute. We have background TV while cooking dinner. We scroll social media in every spare moment. We've become terrified of silence because silence forces us to face what we've been avoiding.
When you fast from noise—actual silence, not just reduced volume—something profound happens. At first, it's deeply uncomfortable. Your brain, accustomed to constant stimulation, practically screams for input. You notice how restless you are. How anxious. How dependent you've become on external voices to drown out your internal reality.
But if you push through that initial discomfort, you discover what's underneath: That conversation you've been avoiding. That grief you've been outrunning. That sin you've been rationalizing. That decision you've been postponing. That emptiness you've been filling with... everything.
Psalm 46:10 commands us: "Be still and know that I am God." The Hebrew word for "be still" is raphah, which literally means to let go, to release your grip, to stop striving. It's not a gentle suggestion to relax. It's a call to cease our frantic efforts to control, manage, and fix everything.
In silence, we're forced to acknowledge that we're not in control. That our busyness is often a sophisticated form of avoiding trust. That maybe—just maybe—God doesn't need our frantic activity as much as He wants our available attention.
Practical Steps for Fasting From Noise:
Start small: Try fifteen minutes of complete silence. No phone, no music, no distractions. Just sit and breathe.
Remove background noise: Notice how often you automatically turn on music, TV, or podcasts. Try doing daily activities in silence.
Create phone-free zones: Meals, the first hour after waking, the last hour before bed—establish boundaries around constant connectivity.
Practice Sabbath silence: Dedicate one morning or evening per week to complete digital silence.
Notice your resistance: Pay attention to how desperately you want to fill the silence. That resistance is revealing something.
The Fast From Christian Activity: When Ministry Becomes an Idol
This is where things get controversial, but stay with me. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is stop doing spiritual things.
Look at Mark 1:35-38. Jesus has just experienced the most successful ministry night of his entire earthly career. He healed everyone who came to him. Crowds went wild. His disciples were pumped, probably already planning the next big event. This is the moment when any modern church leader would capitalize on the momentum.
And Jesus disappears.
He gets up early, goes to a desolate place, and prays. When the disciples finally track him down, they're bewildered: "Everyone is looking for You! We've got momentum! Let's strike while the iron's hot!"
Jesus' response is stunning: "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out."
He fasted from success. From doing more ministry. From meeting every need. From being needed.
Why? Because Jesus knew something we've forgotten: Your identity isn't found in your activity. Not even your spiritual activity.
Signs You Might Need to Fast From Christian Activity:
You feel guilty taking a Sunday off from church
Your worth feels tied to your ministry role
You're exhausted but can't say no to serving opportunities
You judge your spiritual health by how busy you are
You feel anxious when you're not "doing something" for God
You serve out of obligation rather than overflow
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Sometimes we use Christian service to avoid intimacy with God. We're so busy serving Him that we never actually sit with Him. We're so focused on the work of the kingdom that we neglect the King of the kingdom.
If you can't take a break from ministry without feeling like a failure, your identity has become entangled with your activity. And that's not freedom—that's bondage with a religious veneer.
The Discipline of Celebration: Fasting From Fasting
This might be the wildest concept in this entire discussion: sometimes you need to fast from fasting itself.
Richard Foster, in his seminal work on spiritual disciplines, writes about the Discipline of Celebration—the practice of intentional, unapologetic joy. It's the spiritual discipline of not being so serious about your spiritual disciplines that you forget God actually likes you.
Look at Jesus' ministry. He went to parties. Not awkward church fellowship gatherings with stale cookies and weak coffee. Actual parties with wine, food, music, laughter, and dancing. So many parties that religious people accused him of being "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Matthew 11:19).
His first recorded miracle wasn't healing a leper or raising the dead. It was turning water into wine at a wedding celebration. Approximately 120-180 gallons of high-quality wine, according to John 2. That's not symbolic. That's a party.
The religious leaders fasted twice a week and wore their spiritual seriousness like a badge of honor. Jesus feasted and celebrated and embraced joy so freely that it scandalized them.
What the Discipline of Celebration Looks Like:
Stop treating joy like it's unspiritual. The kingdom of God is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17). Joy isn't a bonus feature of Christianity—it's a core characteristic.
Do something that makes you genuinely happy without spiritualizing it. Take a walk without listening to a sermon podcast. Play with your kids without feeling like you should be having a "teachable moment." Eat a meal slowly and actually taste it instead of rushing through to get back to productivity.
Rest without guilt. Take a nap. Watch a sunset. Laugh until your stomach hurts. God is more present in a belly laugh with a friend than in a guilt-driven, joyless quiet time.
The Puritans, despite their reputation for being dour and serious, actually understood this better than we do. They believed that God gave us good gifts to enjoy, and that refusing to enjoy them was actually an insult to the Giver. They called it "the duty of delight."
When's the last time you considered joy a spiritual duty?
Creating Space Instead of Filling It
Here's what all these fasts have in common: they're about creating space instead of constantly filling it.
Our default mode is accumulation. More Bible knowledge. More ministry involvement. More spiritual experiences. More religious activity. We approach our faith like spiritual hoarders, constantly adding more without ever clearing out what's become clutter.
But spiritual growth doesn't happen through accumulation. It happens through transformation. And transformation requires space.
Think about a garden. You don't make plants grow by constantly adding fertilizer, water, and attention. Too much of even good things kills the plant. Growth happens in the space between—in the soil you can't see, during the hours you're not watching, through processes that can't be forced or controlled.
The same is true for your soul. God doesn't need your constant activity. He's not impressed by your spiritual resume. He's not keeping a scorecard of your religious performance.
He wants you. Available, present, open you. Not the performing version. Not the productive version. Not the impressive version. Just... you.
And getting to that place of simple availability often requires removing the good things that have become barriers.
Identifying Your God-Replacements
This is where the rubber meets the road. What good thing has become a God-replacement in your life?
It's probably not something obviously sinful. It's likely something that looks spiritual, sounds spiritual, feels spiritual. Something that other Christians would affirm and encourage. Something you can justify and defend.
But here's the test: What creates panic when you imagine giving it up?
Can you go a week without listening to worship music? If that thought creates anxiety, worship music might have become an emotional crutch rather than a spiritual practice.
Can you skip church for a Sunday without guilt? If you can't, you might be serving your need for religious validation rather than worshiping God.
Can you leave your Bible unread for a day? If that feels like spiritual failure, you might be trusting in the discipline more than in the God the discipline is meant to connect you to.
Can you say no to a ministry opportunity? If you can't, you're probably finding your identity in being needed rather than in being loved.
The things that create disproportionate anxiety when we consider releasing them are often the things that have become idols. Not because they're bad—but because they've taken a place in our hearts that only God should occupy.
The Practice: Your Seven-Day Fast From Good Things
Here's a practical challenge for the next seven days:
Day 1-2: Fast from noise. Spend at least one hour each day in complete silence. No music, no podcasts, no TV, no phone. Just silence. Notice what comes up. Don't try to fix it or spiritualize it. Just notice.
Day 3-4: Fast from Christian content. No sermons, no worship music, no Christian podcasts, no Bible study materials. If this creates panic, pay attention to that panic. What is it revealing?
Day 5: Fast from productivity. Do nothing that feels productive. Rest without justification. Play without purpose. Let yourself simply be.
Day 6: Fast from an activity. Skip something you normally do—church, a Bible study, a prayer meeting. Not forever. Just once. Notice how you feel about it.
Day 7: Feast. Practice the discipline of celebration. Do something that brings you pure, uncomplicated joy. Savor it fully without feeling the need to extract a spiritual lesson from it.
Throughout this week, journal what comes up. What creates anxiety? What feels like relief? What does God seem to be saying in the spaces you're creating?
The Point: Abiding, Not Achieving
Jesus said, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me" (John 15:4).
Abiding isn't active. It's not productive. It's not impressive. A branch doesn't achieve fruit—it receives fruit as a natural result of staying connected to the vine.
We've confused Christian maturity with Christian activity. We think the goal is to do more, know more, serve more, achieve more. But Jesus says the goal is simply to stay connected. To remain. To abide.
And sometimes, staying connected requires unplugging from everything else.
Fasting from good things isn't about becoming more spiritual. It's about becoming more available. It's about clearing away the clutter—even good, spiritual clutter—so you can hear the voice that's been speaking all along.
The Grace in the Space
Here's what you'll discover in the space created by fasting from good things: God has been there the whole time. He wasn't waiting for you to do more. He wasn't impressed by your busyness. He wasn't keeping score.
He was just waiting. In the silence. In the rest. In the joy. Waiting for you to stop performing long enough to receive.
You don't have to earn it. You just have to stop long enough to notice it.
That conversation you've been avoiding? God's in that. That grief you've been outrunning? God's in that too. That emptiness you've been filling with religious activity? God wants to fill that himself, but he can't while you keep stuffing it with spiritual substitutes.
The good news of the gospel isn't "try harder." It's not "do more." It's not even "be better."
The good news is that you're already loved, already accepted, already enough. And the spiritual disciplines—including the discipline of fasting from spiritual disciplines—are just practice for believing that truth and living from it.
Final Thoughts: Permission to Stop
If you're reading this and feeling exhausted just thinking about your spiritual life, I want to give you permission to stop.
Stop performing. Stop proving. Stop earning. Stop hustling for worthiness you already have.
God isn't impressed by your religious resume. He's captivated by your honest, messy, imperfect availability.
The fast from good things isn't about adding another discipline to your already overwhelming list. It's about permission to release the grip, to let go, to stop striving.
It's about discovering that the God you've been frantically seeking through all your spiritual activity has been quietly present in the space you never allowed yourself to create.
So create some space this week. Fast from something good. And see what—or rather, Who—you find in the emptiness.
He's there. He's been there all along. Waiting.
Not for your performance. Just for you.
An Invitation to go Deeper….
If today’s message spoke to you, join the FaithLabz 30-Day Prayer Challenge and strengthen your connection with God’s unshakable love. You are never alone—let’s grow together!
