A Hunger for God (Redesign) E-Book

John Piper

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 317

Beschreibung

Our appetites control much of what we do each day—whether it is the cravings of our stomachs, the desire for possessions or power, or the longings of our spirits for God. But for the Christian, the hunger for anything apart from God is ultimately detrimental to spiritual health and enduring joy. In this classic meditation on fasting, John Piper helps Christians apply the Bible's teaching on this long-standing spiritual discipline, highlighting the profound contentment that comes from delighting in God above all else. Piper helps readers put to death self-indulgence by directing them to the all-satisfying, sin-conquering glory of Christ. This volume is now redesigned with a new cover and a foreword by New York Times best-selling authors David Platt and Francis Chan.

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“A Hunger for God applied fasting to my everyday life. It’s not just for mystics and the monastics, but for every Christian. Fasting is not about us, nor is it about our devotion to God, as so many prescribe. We are a culture of abundance that indulges and abuses—fasting is a means of God’s grace to embrace someone greater than our appetites. This book radically changed, simplified, and drew me nearer to Christ.”

Keyan Soltani

“A Hunger for God came to me in a time in my life when pain and heartache brought about a thirst that only our Savior can fill! I am always hungry and thirsty for more of him. In these pages I felt God’s extravagant love at each turn. What a treasure!”

Amy Kneen

“Few books have had such an impact on my life as A Hunger for God. While trying to understand how God could use fasting in my life, I was overwhelmed by my need for Christ, homesickness for heaven, and longing to take the light of Christ to the world. John Piper shows clearly with Scripture God’s purpose and view of our fasting for the joy of our soul and the glory of his name. This book has helped me cherish the Giver rather than the gift.”

Octavio Sánchez

“In the most desperate time of my Christian life, this book taught me to see God as all fulfilling. As I turned to God, I found joy in the midst of suffering. No longer did I see this season in my life as destruction but as a time of providential guidance toward seeing God as the longed-for object and fulfillment of my soul. A Hunger for God helped turn my desperation into affection.”

Rudy Rackley

“I came to the United States hungry for money, success, and the American dream. I did not know that God was going to chase me away from worshiping these and draw me to worship him. The Spirit used A Hunger for God mightily in my life. I came to grasp with what it means to renounce all things for the sake of Christ, to tear down strongholds in obedience to him, and to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Bread was made so that I can worship God through my enjoyment of him in eating it—not by glorifying it or by glorifying myself for providing it. I’m encouraged that this book is being rereleased, and may God use it to show himself greater than all gifts to a whole new generation of men and women throughout the world.”

Victor Chininin Buele

A SELECTION OF CROSSWAY TITLES BY JOHN PIPER

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, 2011

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, 2010

A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God, 2010

Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ, 2008

When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—and Joy, 2007

What Jesus Demands from the World, 2006

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, 2006

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 2004

When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, 2004

Don’t Waste Your Life, 2003

A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer

Copyright © 1997, 2013 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway                  1300 Crescent Street                  Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Erik Maldre

First printing 1997

First printing redesign 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AT are the author’s translation.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright ©1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946–

A hunger for God : desiring God through fasting and prayer / John Piper ; foreword by David Platt and Francis Chan.p. cm

Originally published: Wheaton, Ill. : Crossway Books, c1997. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3726-4

1. Fasting—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Prayer—Christianity.3. Desire for God. I. Title.

BV5055.P57 2013

248.4'7—dc232012043970

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

VP      23   22   21   20   19   18   17   16   15  14   13 15   14   13   12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

To the elders of Bethlehem Baptist Church, with whom I hungered for the fullness of God, and feasted at the table of grace.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Francis Chan and David PlattPrefaceIntroduction: A Homesickness for God1 IS FASTING CHRISTIAN?New Fasting for the New Wine2 MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONEThe Desert Feast of Fasting3 FASTING FOR THE REWARD OF THE FATHERJesus’ Radical God-Orientation in Fasting4 FASTING FOR THE KING’S COMING How Much Do We Miss Him?5 FASTING AND THE COURSE OF HISTORYA Call for Discernment and Desire6 FINDING GOD IN THE GARDEN OF PAINA Different Fast for the Sake of the Poor 7 FASTING FOR THE LITTLE ONES Abortion and the Sovereignty of God Over False Worldviews Conclusion: Why Does God Reward Fasting?Appendix: Quotes and ExperiencesBibliographyNotesDesiring God: A Note on Resources

FOREWORD

As we look out at the church today, there is so much that encourages us and fills us with gratitude. There is renewed zeal among God’s people for the spread of God’s glory across the earth. Like never before we hear brothers and sisters in different circles and different streams of contemporary Christianity talking about the gospel and mission, about transforming cities and reaching unreached people groups. These conversations are essential, and we hope they will continue with even greater intensity and intentionality in the days ahead.

But sometimes what we are not hearing can be as illuminating as what we do hear. It reminds us of an exchange in an old Sherlock Holmes mystery, where Holmes refers to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” during a robbery. A fellow detective, confused at Holmes’s comment, responds that “the dog did nothing in the night-time”—to which Holmes responds: “That was the curious incident.” Despite the proliferation of Christian publishing and Christian conferences, J. I. Packer’s observation of our own curious incident still rings true:

When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.

Modern Christian books and magazines contain much about Christian doctrine, Christian standards, problems of Christian conduct, techniques of Christian service—but little about the inner realities of fellowship with God.

Our sermons contain much sound doctrine—but little relating to the converse between the soul and the Saviour.

We do not spend much time, alone or together, in dwelling on the wonder of the fact that God and sinners have communion at all; no, we just take that for granted, and give our minds to other matters.

Thus we make it plain that communion with God is a small thing to us.1

Think about it. Where are the passionate conversations today about communing with God through fasting and prayer? We seem to find it easier to talk much of plans and principles for proclaiming the gospel and planting churches, and to talk little of the power of God that is necessary for this gospel to be proclaimed and the church to be planted.

If we really want to be a part of seeing disciples made and churches multiplied throughout North America and to the ends of the earth, we would be wise to begin on our knees.

It is for this reason that we gladly commend this new edition of John Piper’s Hunger for God. If you have read or heard anything from Piper, you know that he is rightly and biblically passionate about the spread of God’s glory. But at the same time, he is acutely and biblically aware of our need for God’s grace. He knows that apart from dependence on and desperation for God, we will not only miss the ultimate point of our mission, but we will also neglect the ultimate need of our souls.

We were made to feast on God. In the words of the psalmist, we were created to cry:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. (Psalm 63:1–5)

We have read the sad statistics about the number of young people who turn away from the church once they are out of their parents’ home. We have heard people explain that they have “tried God” when they were young but that it didn’t work for them. But we have to wonder: did they “earnestly” seek him with their whole hearts? Did they cry out to him in fasting and prayer? Sometimes we “earnestly seek” after things from God rather than God himself. It is hard for us to imagine anyone leaving the presence of the living God—the maker and sustainer of heaven and earth—and looking for something better!

There is spiritual delight to be found in God that far supersedes the physical diet of this world, and fasting is the means by which we say to God, “More than our stomachs want food, our souls want you.” Once we “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8), the things of the world no longer appeal to us in the same way.

As Piper says in the opening pages of this book, “Beware of books on fasting.” This is not a book of legalism. It’s not a book of technique. It does not contain a twelve-step plan. At the end of the day, it’s a book more about our hearts than about our stomachs. Abstaining from food (or other things) for a period of time is not an end in itself but a means to cause us to learn about and increase our love for Christ. As Piper explains in this book, the Bible gives us many reasons to fast:

We fast because we’re hungry for God’s Word and God’s Spirit in our lives.We fast because we long for God’s glory to resound in the church and God’s praise to resound among the nations.We fast because we yearn for God’s Son to return and God’s kingdom to come.Ultimately we fast simply because we want God more than we want anything this world has to offer us.

Few things are as frustrating as trying to convince our loved ones of the greatness and grandeur of God. We are jealous for our neighbors and our faith family and the nations to find satisfaction in God alone. As we recently reread the book you hold in your hands, we have tried to imagine what it would be like if our churches were filled with believers fasting regularly and biblically. What might God be pleased to do if his church rises up to say, “This much, O God, we want you!”? We encourage you to read this book, asking great things from God, “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think!” (Ephesians 3:20).

Francis Chan and David Platt

The Multiply Movement

PREFACE

Beware of books on fasting. The Bible is very careful to warn us about people who “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1–3). The apostle Paul asks with dismay, “Why . . . do you submit to regulations—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’?” (Colossians 2:20–21). He is jealous for the full enjoyment of Christian liberty. Like a great declaration of freedom over every book on fasting flies the banner, “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do” (1 Corinthians 8:8). There once were two men. One said, “I fast twice a week”; the other said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Only one went down to his house justified (Luke 18:12–14).

The discipline of self-denial is fraught with dangers—perhaps only surpassed by the dangers of indulgence. These also we are warned about: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). What masters us has become our god; and Paul warns us about those whose “god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19). Appetite dictates the direction of their lives. The stomach is sovereign. This has a religious expression and an irreligious one. Religiously, “ungodly people . . . pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (Jude 4) and tout the slogan, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (1 Corinthians 6:13). Irreligiously, with no pretext of pardoning grace, persons simply yield to “the desires for other things [that] enter in and choke the word” (Mark 4:19).

“Desires for other things”—there’s the enemy. And the only weapon that will triumph is a deeper hunger for God. The weakness of our hunger for God is not because he is unsavory, but because we keep ourselves stuffed with “other things.” Perhaps, then, the denial of our stomach’s appetite for food might express, or even increase, our soul’s appetite for God.

What is at stake here is not just the good of our souls, but also the glory of God. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. The fight of faith is a fight to feast on all that God is for us in Christ. What we hunger for most, we worship.

His goodness shines with brightest raysWhen we delight in all his ways.

His glory overflows its rimWhen we are satisfied in him.

His radiance will fill the earthWhen people revel in his worth.

The beauty of God’s holy fireBurns brightest in the heart’s desire.

Between the dangers of self-denial and self-indulgence there is a path of pleasant pain. It is not the pathological pleasure of a masochist, but the passion of a lover’s quest: “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). That is the path we will try to follow in this book.

That I could even attempt the journey is owing to God’s grace, which I live on every day. It has come to me in Jesus who loved me and gave himself for me. It has come to me in my wife, Noël, who supports me in the work of preaching and writing and tending the flock. I love you, Noël, and thank you for your partnership in the great work. God has been good to us. Grace has come to me again in the faithful labors of Carol Steinbach, whose careful reading has left its mark, and whose industry created the indexes. And grace has come to me through my fellow elders at Bethlehem Baptist Church. They forged a mission statement for our church that I embrace as the mission of my life. And they gave me the charge and the time to write this book and make it a part of that mission: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.” That is my prayer for this book. When God is the supreme hunger of our hearts, he will be supreme in everything.

John Piper

May 1, 1997

Whom have I in heaven but you?And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

PSALM 73:25–26

Almost everywhere at all times fasting has held a place of great importance since it is closely linked with the intimate sense of religion. Perhaps this is the explanation for the demise of fasting in our day. When the sense of God diminishes, fasting disappears.

EDWARD FARRELL1

INTRODUCTIONA Homesickness for God

The birthplace of Christian fasting is homesickness for God. In the summer of 1967 I had been in love with Noël for a whole year. If you had told me then that we would have to wait another year and a half to marry, I would have protested firmly. For us, it seemed, the sooner the better. It was the summer before my senior year in college. I was working as a water safety instructor at a Christian athletic camp in South Carolina. She was hundreds of miles away working as a waitress.

Never had I known an aching like this one. I had been homesick before, but never like this. Every day I would write her a letter and talk about this longing. In the late morning, just before lunch, there would be mail call. When I heard my name and saw the lavender envelope, my appetite would be taken away. Or, more accurately, my hunger for food was silenced by the hunger of my heart. Often, instead of eating lunch with the campers, I would take the letter to a quiet place in the woods and sit down on the leaves for a different kind of meal. It wasn’t the real thing. But the color, the smell, the script, the message, the signature were foretastes. And with them, week by week, I was strengthened in hope, and the reality just over the horizon was kept alive in my heart.

The Romance and the Resistance of Fasting

Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God. But the story of my heart-hunger to be with Noël could be misleading. It tells only half the story of Christian fasting. Half of Christian fasting is that our physical appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense. The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so intense. In the first half, appetite is lost. In the second half, appetite is resisted. In the first, we yield to the higher hunger that is. In the second, we fight for the higher hunger that isn’t. Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.

God’s Greatest Adversaries Are His Gifts

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18–20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, “as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, “The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). “The pleasures of life” and “the desires for other things”—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.

The Deadening Effects of Innocent Delights

Therefore, when I say that the root of Christian fasting is the hunger of homesickness for God, I mean that we will do anything and go without anything if, by any means, we might protect ourselves from the deadening effects of innocent delights and preserve the sweet longings of our homesickness for God. Not just food, but anything. Several years ago I called our people to fast for a twenty-four-hour period once a week (breakfast and lunch on Wednesdays, if possible) during the month of January. We were facing huge issues of self-assessment and direction, and we needed the fullness of God’s presence with all his wisdom and purifying power. Within a few days I got this note in the mail:

I’m behind this. I think God is in it. It doesn’t work for me on Wednesday. I’m with people over lunch every day. So I have a couple of things I believe are from the Spirit that may be more of a fast for some than food. I thought not watching television for a week, or for a month, or a night of the week when I normally watch it, might be more of a fast than food. Instead of watching my favorite program, I might spend the time talking and listening to God. I wonder if there might be others for whom this would be a fast and would be a focused time of prayer to them.

I said to the congregation the next Sunday, “Amen. If you say, ‘Fasting on Wednesday doesn’t work for me,’ that’s okay. If your heart is right and you’re open to the Lord and you’re asking him, ‘Lord, draw me into the spirit of awakening through fasting,’ he will show you. He’ll show you when and how. If your health doesn’t allow for that, if the doctor says, ‘No fasting for you,’ that’s fine. The Great Physician knows all about that, and something else will work for you.”

The issue is not food per se. The issue is anything and everything that is, or can be, a substitute for God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981), the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, delivered a great sermon on fasting when he was preaching through the Sermon on the Mount in 1959–1960. In it he said,

Fasting if we conceive of it truly, must not . . . be confined to the question of food and drink; fasting should really be made to include abstinence from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some special spiritual purpose. There are many bodily functions which are right and normal and perfectly legitimate, but which for special peculiar reasons in certain circumstances should be controlled. That is fasting.2

My assumption so far has been that good things can do great damage. Oxen and fields and marriage can keep you out of the kingdom of heaven. Which is why Jesus says, “No one of you can be my disciple who does not bid farewell to all his own possessions” (Luke 14:33 AT3). Anything can stand in the way of true discipleship—not just evil, and not just food, but anything. Nor should it be surprising that the greatest competitors for our devotion and affection for God would be some of his most precious gifts.

When Abraham Preferred God to the Life of His Son

How does fasting help us keep from turning gifts into gods? Consider the almost-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. When Abraham had stretched out his hand to kill his son and the heir of God’s promise, “the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me’” (Genesis 22:11–12). Now here was a radical kind of fast: the sacrifice of a son. God did not call for this “fast” because Isaac was evil. On the contrary, it was because in Abraham’s eyes he was so good. Indeed he seemed indispensable for the fulfillment of God’s promise. Fasting is not the forfeit of evil but of good.

But why would God call for such a thing? Because it was a test. Does Abraham delight in the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:3) more than he delights in his own son? God spoke through the angel: “Now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” These words, “now I know”—what do they mean? Did God not know that Abraham was a God-fearing man and that he valued God above his son? The Bible teaches that God knows the hearts of all men (1 Kings 8:39; Acts 1:24); indeed, he “fashions the hearts of them all” (Psalm 33:15). Why then the test? Here is the way C. S. Lewis answers the question:

I am concerned with the question] “If God is omniscient he must have known what Abraham would do, without any experiment; why, then, this needless torture?” But as St. Augustine points out, whatever God knew, Abraham at any rate did not know that this obedience would endure such a command until the event taught him; and the obedience which he did not know that he would choose, he cannot be said to have chosen. The reality of Abraham’s obedience was the act itself; and what God knew in knowing that Abraham “would obey” was Abraham’s actual obedience on that mountain top at that moment. To say that God “need not have tried the experiment” is to say that because God knows, the thing known by God need not exist.4

God wills to know the actual, lived-out reality of our preference for him over all things. And he wills that we have the testimony of our own authenticity through acts of actual preference of God over his gifts. Lewis is right that God may as well not have created the world, but only imagined it, if his knowing what “would be” is as good as his knowing it in the very act. God wills that he have an experiential-knowing, an actual seeing-knowing, a watching-knowing. A real lived-out human act of preference for God over his gifts is the actual lived-out glorification of God’s excellence for which he created the world. Fasting is not the only way, or the main way, that we glorify God in preferring him above his gifts. But it is one way. And it is a way that can serve all the others.

Eating as the Anesthesia of Sadness

Lewis referred to St. Augustine. What Augustine said was this: “For the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers through temptation, by some kind of experimental and not merely verbal self-interrogation.”5 In other words, we easily deceive ourselves that we love God unless our love is frequently put to the test, and we must show our preferences not merely with words but with sacrifice. Admittedly the sacrifice of a son says more than the sacrifice of a sandwich. But the principle is the same. And many small acts of preferring fellowship with God above food can form a habit of communion and contentment that makes one ready for the ultimate sacrifice. This is one way that fasting serves all our acts of love to God. It keeps the preferring faculty on alert and sharp. It does not let the issue rest. It forces us to ask repeatedly: do I really hunger for God? Do I miss him? Do I long for him? Or have I begun to be content with his gifts?

Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us. What are our bottom-line passions? In his chapter on fasting in Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says, “More than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. This is a wonderful benefit to the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We cover up what is inside of us with food and other things.”6

Psychologically, that sort of thing is spoken of a lot today, especially in regard to people who have much pain in their lives. We would say they “medicate” their pain with food. They anesthetize themselves to the hurt inside by eating. But this is not some rare, technical syndrome. All of us do it. Everybody. No exceptions. We all ease our discomfort using food and cover our unhappiness by setting our eyes on dinnertime. Which is why fasting exposes all of us—our pain, our pride, our anger. Foster continues:

If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled my soul with fasting” [Psalm 35:13]. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear—if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first, we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger. And then, we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.7

One of the reasons for fasting is to know what is in us—just as Abraham showed what was in him. In fasting it will come out. You will see it. And you will have to deal with it or quickly smother it again. When midmorning comes and you want food so badly that the thought of lunch becomes as sweet as a summer vacation, then suddenly you realize, “Oh, I forgot, I made a commitment. I can’t have that pleasure. I’m fasting for lunch too.” Then what are you going to do with all the unhappiness inside? Formerly, you blocked it out with the hope of a tasty lunch. The hope of food gave you the good feelings to balance out the bad feelings. But now the balance is off. You must find another way to deal with it.

The Hungry Handmaid of Faith

At these points we really begin to discover what our spiritual resources are. The things I discover about my soul are so valuable for the fight of faith. I almost subtitled this book: Fasting—the Hungry Handmaid of Faith. What a servant she is! Humbly and quietly, with scarcely a movement, she brings up out of the dark places of my soul the dissatisfactions in relationships, the frustrations of the ministry, the fears of failure, the emptiness of wasted time. And just when my heart begins to retreat to the delicious hope of eating supper with friends at Pizza Hut, she quietly reminds me: not tonight. It can be a devastating experience at first. Will I find spiritual communion with God sweet enough, and hope in his promises deep enough, not just to cope, but to flourish and rejoice in him? Or will I rationalize away my need to fast and retreat to the medication of food? The apostle Paul said, “I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Fasting reveals the measure of food’s mastery over us—or television or computers or whatever we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God.

Why Did God Create Bread and Hunger?

One of the reasons food has this amazing power is that it is so basic to our existence. Why is this? I mean, why did God create bread and design human beings to need it for life? He could have created life that has no need of food. He is God. He could have done it any way he pleased. Why bread? And why hunger and thirst? My answer is very simple: He created bread so that we would have some idea of what the Son of God is like when he says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). And he created the rhythm of thirst and satisfaction so that we would have some idea of what faith in Christ is like when Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). God did not have to create beings who need food and water and who have capacities for pleasant tastes.

But man is not the center of the universe, God is. And everything, as Paul says, is “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). “To him” means everything exists to call attention to him and to bring admiration to him. In Colossians 1:16, Paul says more specifically that “all things were created through [Christ] and for [Christ].” Therefore bread was created for the glory of Christ. Hunger and thirst were created for the glory of Christ. And fasting was created for the glory of Christ.

Which means that bread magnifies Christ in two ways: by being eaten with gratitude for his goodness, and by being forfeited out of hunger for God himself. When we eat, we taste the emblem of our heavenly food—the Bread of Life. And when we fast we say, “I love the Reality above the emblem.” In the heart of the saint both eating and fasting are worship. Both magnify Christ. Both send the heart—grateful and yearning—to the Giver. Each has its appointed place, and each has its danger. The danger of eating is that we fall in love with the gift; the danger of fasting is that we belittle the gift and glory in our willpower.

How the Book Is Organized

There is no safe and easy way home to heaven. The hard and narrow way is strewn with obstacles and many fatal paths of innocent pleasure. There is a war to be fought within and without. And one of the weapons along the way is fasting. Therefore this book has an inward and an outward thrust. It’s about the inward war with our own appetites that compete with hunger for God. And it’s about the outward war of revival and reformation and world evangelization and social justice and cultural engagement. Though they are deeply interwoven, the first three chapters are more inward, and the last three are more outward. And the one in the middle is a crossover chapter because longing and fasting for the coming of Christ is intensely personal but demands global engagement until he comes.

Why I Wrote This Book

My aim and my prayer in writing this book is that it might awaken a hunger for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. Fasting proves the presence, and fans the flame, of that hunger. It is an intensifier of spiritual desire. It is a faithful enemy of fatal bondage to innocent things. It is the physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence: “This much, O God, I long for you and for the manifestation of your glory in the world!”

One might think that those who feast most often on communion with God are least hungry. They turn often from the innocent pleasures of the world to linger more directly in the presence of God through the revelation of his Word. And there they eat the Bread of Heaven and drink the Living Water by meditation and faith. But, paradoxically, it is not so that they are the least hungry saints. The opposite is the case. The strongest, most mature Christians I have ever met are the hungriest for God. It might seem that those who eat most would be least hungry. But that’s not the way it works with an inexhaustible fountain, and an infinite feast, and a glorious Lord.

When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, you only get hungrier for God. The more satisfaction you experience from God, while still in this world, the greater your desire for the next. For, as C. S. Lewis said, “Our best havings are wantings.”8

The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for