I recently heard a sermon about fasting and I was reminded of a dialogue between some Israelites and God in Zechariah 7 and 8:

A group of Israelites have returned from exile in Babylon a little while ago. During the more than 70 years of exile, they developed a habit of holding fasting days on specific months — a fasting of lament about the destruction of Jerusalem. They ask if they should continue this practice in light of the ongoing rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple. The answer God gives is highly instructive about not just fasting but about our lives as a whole:

When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?
 And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?

Fasting and Eating For Whom?

There seems to be a way of fasting where you are not fasting for God. (Let’s keep in mind: Fasting is not the mere outward act of abstaining from food, it’s abstinence from what normally physically satifies me so I am more receptive for God nourishing me directly.)

But not only is there a way of fasting without God, but there is also a way of eating without God. So you can do everything in your daily life either with or without God — no matter if one activity seems “more holy” on the outside than another.

This is crucial: We always have a choice of either doing things for ourselves — i.e. doing things alone, doing things just the way we want, trusting in our own strength — or for God. What is so wonderful about doing things for God is that we are not first and foremost doing something for Him (although that is certainly part of it) — it’s about doing everything with Him and in harmony or symphony with Him.

That is just another way of stating what the New Testament writers describe as:

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Redeeming Our Grief and Contortions

God could have left it there, saying “First learn living in the ways of My goodness, then we can talk about fasting” (see the rest of Zechariah 7 after the top verse). But he does not simply cut off the false practice! In chapter 8 he revisits the topic and says:

The fast of the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth month shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness and cheerful feasts. Therefore love truth and peace!

When we return to God, all our sorrow and lament and even all our mislead religious efforts of trying to please Him are redeemed. He takes it all — all our authentic grief and hurt but also all our perversions of what is good — and turns it into feasts of joy!