Is Fasting a Spiritual Gift?

If you check all through the Bible, you will realise that fasting is not a spiritual gift. I mean, we’ve been given gifts and fruits of the spirit but this particular one is not among them. However it is essential to one’s spiritual growth and attaining stature in the place of the Spirit. Thing is, it doesn’t do anything to or for God but it does something to and for you. 
 
Is Fasting a Spiritual Gift?

It is the next thing probably harder than prayer. Yes, prayer is hard but that’s not the present matter of discourse. No matter how difficult something is, depending on its level of importance, you’d have to find a way around it. So yes, no matter how difficult prayer seems, you have to pray. You see this particular discourse, I for one see it as a punishment. 
Why would I be denied access to something that would aid my existence? Why would I be asked to stay clear of something that serves as a fuel for me to move? It’s really unfair. I thought they said God is a merciful God? Why do I have to go through that suffering for God to answer my prayers? Why?! I bet you’ve asked one of two of these questions at one point of your spiritual journey.

What you should know is you’re not fasting for God. Fasting doesn’t help God. It helps you. It helps to sharpen your spiritual insight and even shoot your spiritual life up, because you’ve shut up your physical antenna and turned up the spiritual switch. It’s not that you were less spiritual when you weren’t fasting, you just happened to be more receptive to the Spirit of God when you are fasting because your spiritual senses will be actively activated than when you were filling your belly with balanced diet. 

Except there’s a general fasting in the church, most believers can’t put their stomach on hold just to seek the face of God because it is cumbersome to have to perceive a food and not be able to have it. Asides the church’s general fasting, enigmatic situations pushes people to the fasting room to seek God’s face and immediately they lay hands on what they want, they’re off again till the next time they need God. 

When an opaque issue faces you squarely, you run to the place of fasting and prayer. Uneasy as it is, you’ll have to do both. There’s however a way to not fast, and there’s a way to fast. Going through without food for about twelve hours without praying for a long time is only taking a break from food. That’s not a way to fast. As busy as you may be, praying should be an essential part of your fasting. You could pray as you work, most especially in cases where you can’t set apart a particular time to pray and if you put your heart to it, God will speak to you and you’ll hear. 

Jesus, the Son of God, fasted. Most of these great men of God we adore today went through series upon series of fasting and prayers. Definitely, it’s not something you or I can avoid.

The way to fast is to stay put in the place of the spirit whether or not your physical activities permit you. The way to fast is to spend time in the study of God’s word. The way to fast is to not focus on the sumptuous meal you didn’t get to devour but to focus on the issue that drove you to that room of waiting on God without feeding your stomach. The goal of fasting is to turn up your spiritual frequency so they can properly receive whatever wave the Spirit of God is bringing to you. The goal of fasting is to weary the flesh and kill it, so it won’t hinder your walk with God. 

You don’t have to wait for things to go south before you send your belly on a journey without meat or vegetables. You can decide to seek God’s face just for the purpose of getting closer to His heart and knowing His will and intentions for you or for the purpose you’re called for. You’ve not died since you started fasting. You won’t die if you fast once or twice a week. No one actually finds fasting easy because it’s not a spiritual gift.

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