Spiritual Disciplines for Your Kids – Fasting

For the last few weeks, we have been looking at spiritual disciplines as a way of helping kids and teens develop habits that will help their spiritual growth and health. These are practices done by Jesus, the Apostles and/or early Christians. Perhaps the discipline most common in antiquity and least practiced today is fasting for spiritual reasons.

By the time of Jesus, fasting had several purposes. People might fast while in mourning, in the face of a local or national tragedy, to prepare for something important or as part of repentance or in service to God. In the time of Jesus, Yom Kippur was the only fast commanded by God, but many observed additional days of fasting associated with holidays and remembrances, like Purim.

Although we think of fasting mainly in terms of not being able to eat, it really had greater significance. Fasting was used as a time to stop a daily routine and use that time to reflect and connect with God through prayer. It also provided time to linger in those prayers and “listen” to what God might want the person to know. Finally, it was used as a time of introspection and repentance.

Our idea of how to conduct a fast is also very different from that of the Jews during the time of Jesus. Their fasts generally lasted from sunrise until the first stars appeared at sunset. Some fasted by not partaking of food or drink during those daylight hours while others only abstained from food. The fasts were generally broken at the appearance of the first stars during sunset.

Jewish children are not required to participate in fasting until they have reached the age of twelve or thirteen, the time at which they begin to take personal responsibility for their faith. Younger children, however, would have watched the adults they know fast on a regular basis and may have even looked forward to their first fast as a rite of passage.

Since health experts question the wisdom of children fasting for a number of reasons, it’s important to teach your kids the principles behind fasting without actually making them go without food for an entire day. (Having said that, our congregation does a special month of praying and fasting every January and the teens are some of the most willing participants.) Encourage them to fast from something they enjoy that takes up their free time for a day and use that time for the same purposes Christians do when they fast from food. For some children, going without their devices for an entire day would be more difficult than going without food.

Even though they aren’t fasting from food, go ahead and plan a special dinner for any night they have fasted. Serve it after sunset. Talk about fasting, its purposes and what they noticed about fasting from their activity. If you fast regularly, talk about how your attitudes and perceptions about fasting change over time. As they approach the teens years and may want to fast from food, make sure to set some safety parameters. Fasting for spiritual purposes is not a way to diet. It should be broken after the ten to twelve hours of daylight with a healthy meal. It’s probably best if they continue to drink water while fasting and teens with certain medical conditions like diabetes should continue to fast from something other than food. Remind them to focus on the spiritual and not other more secular things during the times they would have normally been eating.

While fasting for spiritual reasons has fallen out of fashion, Christians over the centuries have found it helps their focus, their Bible study and their prayer lives. It’s worth teaching your children how to fast and help them make it a regular habit.

Published by

Thereasa Winnett

Thereasa Winnett is the founder of Teach One Reach One and blogger at Parenting Like Hannah. She holds a BA in education from the College of William and Mary. She has served in all areas of ministry to children and teens for more than thirty years and regularly leads workshops for ministries and churches. She has conducted numerous workshops, including sessions at Points of Light’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service, the National Urban Ministry Conference, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, and Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration. Thereasa lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Greg, where she enjoys reading, knitting, traveling and cooking.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.