Several people have recently asked me for my thoughts on the spiritual practice of fasting. I’ve been embarrassed to admit that I don’t have many deep ones. It’s not that I’ve never fasted. It’s just that I typically spend a lot of time confused about what I should be experiencing. Is this practice meant to focus the mind and induce spiritual breakthrough? Does it somehow make God more likely to answer my prayers? I can’t point to either of these as notable results of my fasting experience so far. As far as I can tell, at least so far, fasting has just made me hungry.
The other day I read a story of Jesus that brought this question to mind.
At the beginning of John 6, Jesus throws a fish fry for over 5000 people. Everybody who attends is pretty excited about it: “Free dinner?! Are you kidding me?! We should make this guy king!” When Jesus slips off, the crowds climb into boats and chase him across the lake. When they find him again, they propose that Jesus should prove himself with a sign. “Maybe,” they suggest, with exaggerated casualness, “you could do something like Moses, who gave the Israelites manna in the wilderness.”
This is funny for multiple reasons. Jesus literally just served them miracle-bread the night before. In other words, he gave them exactly the sign they’re asking for twelve hours earlier. Nobody’s memory could be that short. But Jesus understands is this isn’t really about proof. It’s about food. The multiplied bread and fish were awesome. But that was yesterday. Now it’s today, and their stomachs are growling again.
We all know people who come for the snacks. But these people Jesus is talking to know what true hunger feels like. Miracle picnics are great and all. But starvation isn’t uncommon in their world, and a single meal won’t change their poverty. The thing about Moses’ manna is that it showed up every day for forty years. Religious experts and elites often approach Jesus with loftier concerns. The regular people are just hungry.
Jesus doesn’t make light of these concerns. He fed the crowds the day before because he cared about their physical hunger. But he also tries to direct their attention beyond their stomachs to a deeper and equally persistent need.
One of the challenges of being human is that our growling stomachs have a habit of drowning out everything else. They consume our attention, until the ache of need for food or sex or security are the only things that we can think about. We’d follow anyone across the world who we believe could reliably get these things for us.
But Jesus points out the irony that the thing we need most to truly live, we often don’t feel any hunger for. There’s a relationship that we were made for. There’s a spiritual food that our souls need to live. We need it not just once, but over and over each day. Stopping eating food for a few days, or even hours, and it’s all you will think about. You’ll viscerally feel in your bones the dependence of your body. So why don’t most of us feel our spiritual dependence this way?
Maybe we do feel it. Maybe we feel it in restlessness, in loneliness, in anxiety, in sudden waves of undefined longing, in fragility, in fear of death or lack of meaning. Something in us is crying, “You need more!” It knows we aren’t full or satisfied.
The trouble is, we misidentify what is missing. Maybe more significance. More sex. More money. More achievement. More exercise. More alcohol. More free time. More romance. We try to solve the ache by filling and filling each container. If that doesn’t work, we find numbing agents to lessen the pain.
Sometimes I feel it with an intensity that takes away my breath: an ache that runs across my entire body. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s for. But my brain starts rolling for solutions or relief. Social media scrolling. Takeout. TV. Shopping. Fantasies about the person who would somehow cure it all. It’s hard—so hard—to sit in the hunger without grabbing at everything in reach to try to fill the gap.
Now that I think of it, this is part of what fasting does. It’s a practice of sitting in your hunger without immediately rushing to whatever we think will solve it.
In Jesus’ day, most people fasted twice a week. Modern people hate this practice far more than ancient people seemed to. Probably because we’re less familiar with the ache of hunger. The discomfort shocks us. We find it almost unbearable at first. But this might just mean we have more to gain from practicing. Maybe this is a spiritual skill everyone needs—the ability to feel hunger without numbing it or cramming Twinkies in the holes. We need to learn how to get friendly with our hunger. How to properly name it and recognize its true source.
Jesus says to crowd, “Stop chasing another meal, and chase me instead. I’m the only one who possesses what can fill that empty place. I’m the only one who can give what really sates—not just a few hours of relief but the reliable provision that you crave. I’m the only one who can give you fullness forever.”
It’s no coincidence that the place of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem, means “the house of bread.”
I’ve been hungry all my life. I suspect God’s greatest act of grace to me is that substitute has ever worked well enough for me to think that the problem is solved. Nothing else satisfies. Because nothing can. We were made for a certain kind of bread, a certain kind of connection. All the diverse human hungers and aches ultimately point to Him. He’s the one we’re looking for, longing for, aching for, even before we know it.
Best I can tell, spiritual maturity isn’t about having all your hungers solved. It’s about learning to correctly identify their source. It’s about gaining the wisdom and strength to bear them, to bear with them, with less numbing and cheap substitutions. It’s about letting your hunger serve as a signpost and drive you harder and harder after Jesus. Who doesn’t just give bread. Who IS the only Bread on which we were made to run.
