Fasting: What’s the Point?

Mar 8, 2026 | By Tiffany Gee UT ‘26

I didn’t grow up observing Lent. To my teenage self, Lent meant seeing my Catholic friends arriving at school with ash on their foreheads. The same friends would later inform me that they were giving up social media, or sweets, or red meat. Not understanding what any of this meant at the time, I accepted this practice was for those more religious than I. Maybe it was some type of New Year’s Resolution thing I didn’t know about. 

I would later come to realize that what my friends were doing was a form of fasting. I had previously understood fasting as simply not eating food. In my family, fasting was seen as an absurd thing to do. Both my parents had grown up not knowing where their next meal would come from, so to voluntarily refuse food made little to no sense at all. While I knew the stories of the Israelites fasting for forty days and of Jesus’ fast in the desert, I figured this was a bygone discipline, and its only purpose today was to serve as some form of religious “extra credit.” 

It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I decided to try fasting. My small group was planning to do a 24-hour fast shortly before Easter. I didn’t want to be the only one left out, so I participated. Spiritually, I was largely unaffected by this fast, likely because I went into it still not understanding its purpose. Sometime later, I learned that fasting was a way to bring us closer to God. Sacrificing something good, like food, reminds us of someone who is vastly greater. We do not fast to mourn, as the Israelites in the Old Testament did, but to live in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice for us. 

The process of fasting is challenging, and while our flesh may feel miserable, we can rest easy knowing from whom true sustenance comes. Following Christ is something we can delight in, as Psalm 119:103 tells us that His words are sweeter than honey. I occasionally hear stories of people who fast from eating for forty days, just as it is done in the Bible. They report not feeling hungry at all, which, from a worldly perspective, should be impossible. These cases are certainly exceptional, but His daily bread is necessary and sufficient for all.