Somewhere between Juba and Kajo Keji, South Sudan, food wasn’t something you could count on, so we traveled with protein bars and snacks as backup. Missing several days of meals is just ordinary life there. A harsh reality that the people live with every day, and we were careful not to expect anything different at the end of a long road.
After a seven-hour drive, we pulled into a three-room cinder block hostel. Rustic does not give full weight to just how remote and third-world deep we were into the continent. No running water, bars where the windows should have been, and a hole in the ground a hundred yards out served as the bathroom. But there was a small kitchen beside the main building that doubled as the dining room for anyone passing through.
And after only snacking on trail mix, we were tired, hungry, and ready for a hot meal. The hostess set a shiny metal pot on the table and scooped out a red stew over rice that smelled better than anything we had eaten all day.
I took my first bite and started chewing. And kept on chewing for what felt like five minutes without much progress on this small piece of meat. I asked the hostess what kind of meat was in the stew, and she looked puzzled for a moment before saying, “Meat.” I asked again, and her face hardened the second time as she said sternly, “MEAT,” and walked away without another word. We knew we were there to serve and not to be served, so we kept eating and tried to ignore the question we had just been told not to ask. But questioning each other on what we thought we might be eating.
As we sat there, a three-legged dog wandered into the doorway and sat watching us. When no one was looking, I tossed him one of the pieces from my bowl. He looked at it for a long moment, walked away, and never came back to it.
That night taught me how far it is between being hungry and being grateful for a meal you cannot identify. It also taught me something deeper about what it means to go without food on purpose. The body argues as the mind tries not to relent. There is something about an empty stomach that makes the question of who actually sustains you stop being theoretical and start being personal. That is exactly what Jesus is doing in Matthew 6 when he turns from giving and praying to the third leg of the disciple’s private life with the Father.
Matthew 6:16-18 (ESV)
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” ²
This is the third movement in Jesus’ teaching on private discipline, following the same pattern he set with giving and praying earlier in the chapter. All three were assumed practices in first-century Jewish life rather than optional spiritual extras. The strict observers fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and the Pharisee in Luke 18:12 boasts of exactly that schedule as proof of his spiritual seriousness. Notice that Jesus does not say if you fast, but when you fast, just as he said when you give and when you pray. He assumes that the disciples who walk with him will eventually take all three of these on as part of normal Christian life.
The Greek in this passage is sharp in a way most English translations cannot fully capture. The hypocrites disfigure their faces using a word, aphanizousin, that means to render unrecognizable. They do this so their fasting will appear to others using a word, phanōsin, built on the same root. They obscure the face so the face can be seen, which is the whole trick of religious performance summed up in a single verb pairing. The disciple of Jesus is told to do the exact opposite: anoint the head and wash the face, look like every other day, and let the only audience that ultimately matters be the Father who sees what no crowd can see.
Fasting strips a man down in a way that giving and praying do not. Giving costs you money and praying costs you time, but fasting costs you the very thing your body is screaming for, and there is no faking it. Either you ate, or you did not, and the body keeps score with a precision that no public display can manufacture. That is why Scripture pairs fasting with prayer at nearly every major turning point in redemptive history. Moses on Sinai, Esther before the king, Daniel in mourning, Jesus in the wilderness, and the church at Antioch before sending out Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:2-3 all walked through serious moments with their bodies brought under the authority of the Spirit through fasting and prayer together. John Piper has argued in his work on this discipline that fasting is the physical confession that God himself is treasured more than the things he gives us. The man who has never told his stomach no will rarely have the spiritual muscle to tell his lust, his pride, or his anger no when those appetites come calling.
The prophet Isaiah cut to the heart of this centuries before Jesus ever said a word about it. He wrote that the fast God chooses is the one that loosens the bonds of wickedness, undoes the straps of the yoke, lets the oppressed go free, and breaks every yoke (Isaiah 58:6 ESV). Joel said the same thing in different words when he called the people to rend their hearts and not their garments (Joel 2:13 ESV). The torn clothing meant absolutely nothing without a torn heart underneath it, and the disfigured face means absolutely nothing without a heart that is genuinely seeking after God. Of the three disciplines Jesus lays out in the Sermon on the Mount, fasting is the one most quietly missing from the modern Western Christian life. The body that has never learned to say no does not yet know how to say yes.
When was the last time your stomach taught your soul something it could not have learned any other way?
What appetite in your life is currently giving the orders that should be taking them?
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