People who have willingly chosen to become Jesus disciples are required to partake in the fellowship of Christs sufferings. While we are not meant to nail ourselves on the cross and re-live the suffering by Jesus at Calvary, yet we are asked by God to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. Fasting, from many years even before Christ, was a symbol of a person humbling him or her self to show God that he or she is sincere in seeking Gods blessings. Fasting is serious business, but it can be approached with the wrong motives.
The Holy Bible tells us what false fasting is all about. The Israelites made fasting a ritual and often announced that they were fasting before God. Even though they had done much penance, God was not impressed, as if he didn't
even notice it! God replied through the prophet Isaiah in chapter fifty eight, that He hasn't
noticed them because they were living for themselves even while they were fasting. They kept right on oppressing their workers, even while they were fasting. God asks, what good is fasting when you keep fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get us anywhere with God. They humbled themselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing their heads like a blade of grass in the wind. They dressed in sackcloth and covered themselves with ashes, but all this is unacceptable to God.
God tells them what true fasting is, that is fasting in order to share with the poor and hungry; to stop oppressing workers and start treating them fairly, giving them what they earn; to cover with sackcloth and ashes so that the needy may be given clothes and not to hide from relatives who need help; to stop fighting with one another and free those who are wrongly imprisoned.
The reasons for ...