I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over. Daniel 3:10
“Fasting is temporary, not permanent. Fasting is only a temporary practice, not a permanent state. Food is a gift from God that’s meant to provide us with strength, nourishment and satisfaction; it is our fuel. Without regular food intake, our bodies will not survive for very long.
If we sleep eight hours a night, we are spending one third of our life asleep. For a person living 75 years, this amounts to 25 years, or 9,125 days, spent sleeping. During sleep, we are in state of fasting, which is why the morning meal is called breakfast—a meal you eat to break your fast.
God designed our bodies to handle periods of fasting, where we pause food consumption and take a break. Longer periods of fasting, from a few hours to a few days, and even a few weeks, are mentioned in the Bible. When we undertake anything beyond our regular sleep/overnight fast, our flesh will get irritated. But when we remember that it is only a temporary practice, we can press through.”
Vladimir Savchuk in A Beginner’s Guide to Fasting: Simple, Practical, Biblical (Pasco, WA: 2024) 2-3.
Daniel mourned the vision he received. So he fasted for a time. His fast, like all other biblical fasting, was temporary.
And notice that for about one-third of our lives, we fast, and then we break the fast with a morning meal. That notion surprised me. I did not know the origin of the morning meal meant to break the fast at breakfast.
What if you try this temporary practice for a meal, or perhaps for a few days, or a meal each week at the same time?
What might God teach you if instead of taking physical food you feasted on spiritual food for a time. Got something big going on in your life, try adding fasting to your life. See what happens.
But note the warning label from Savchuk. Your flesh will feel irritated through your spirit will be renewed.