What is fasting according to the Bible?

Because according to the internet, everything is a fast now.

You can fast Instagram, Netflix, Amazon, Starbucks, and that counts, right?

I mean, we've even got churches doing corporate Daniel fasts where people are swapping

recipes for chia pudding and flaxseed burgers and calling that consecration.

And listen, I'm actually for all of those things.

Okay, getting off your phone, canceling your Netflix subscription, changing your diet to

eat way more clean than I'm sure many of us were for the past two months.

These are all modalities of crucifying the flesh.

They are good disciplines to implement in your life.

However, if we're going to be theologically honest here,

we have to be so for real that none of those things are actually a

fast because fasting according to the Bible is abstaining from food. Point blank period.

Deleting your apps for 30 days is not a fast, okay? Not watching TV

for a month is not a fast. Drinking a smoothie over a steak is not a fast. Now, they might be acts

of obedience. They might be really powerful in your sanctification process because they are in their own

right forms of denying yourself.

But they are not the same as biblical fasting.

And when we blur the lines here and call everything else a fast, we actually rob ourselves of the very

thing God designed fasting to do in us. Because when we turn a holy hidden discipline

into almost like an aesthetic or a personal preference where we get to redefine

the terms, we really miss the point. It becomes like a group challenge or an accountability

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