Fasting Blesses God

From January 1-21, Riverwood is once again doing "21 Days of Prayer & Fasting." For 2025, we are seeking to cherish God through His Word. But as we focus on Psalm 119 each day and in our Sunday Worship Gatherings, here on the blog we want to focus on the other part of the 21 Days - fasting. To do this, we will look at Isaiah 58, considering The Blessings of Fasting.

In Week 1 of this three-week series, we saw how fasting can benefit you personally. Then in Week 2, we considered how God wanted our fasting to change us so we might be a blessing to those around us. This week, as we conclude The Blessings of Fasting, we want to help you realize that fasting also is a blessing to one other entity...

At Riverwood, we tend to use the word "blessing" a lot. We are using it in the title of this blog series. We use the word in our weekly benediction almost every Sunday: 'Go and be a blessing. Go and follow Jesus.' We throw this "church-y" word around quite frequently.

When Jake, I, or one of our elders uses the word, we often are trying to convey the idea of positively impacting someone's life as though God were touching them through you. That's what it means to "be a blessing."

But if so, then...

How do you "Bless" God?

Today, I want to help you consider how your fasting is a blessing to God. To do this, let's look at the last two verses of Isaiah 58...

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 58:13-14

As God has Isaiah wrap these thoughts up on fasting, He mentions the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a day of worship where the people rested from their work. But in the first part of verse 13, God points out how some of them were working on the Sabbath, yet still trying to manipulate God to give them what they wanted through fasting.

God calls them back to a place of purity and whole devotion to Him - to "turn back their foot" from doing "pleasure" (business/work) on His holy day. Just like fasting was supposed to draw the heart of the people to God, the Sabbath was to do the same.

When we use things like the Sabbath or prayer or fasting to seek the Lord, we are worshipping Him. When we "take delight in the Lord" (verse 14), it brings delight to Him. Or, as John Piper famously said, "God Is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."

So God, through the prophet Isaiah, reminds the ancient Jews (as well as modern Jesus-followers) that spiritual disciplines like fasting or keeping the Sabbath aren't meant to get things from God but rather to draw our hearts toward Him in worship.

So as we move toward the conclusion of our 21 days of fasting in the next few days, may we worship and praise Him. And may we continue to worship Him, even after our fasting has come to an end.