The Altar
Forty days
The long wilderness
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Matthew 4:2 · King James Version
Why this one
Moses, Elijah and Jesus each spent forty days apart. This is not a beginner's fast and it is not undertaken on impulse.
The shape of it
Almost always kept as a partial fast — one meal a day, or Daniel-style, for forty days. A forty-day total fast is medically dangerous and should never be attempted without a doctor.
What to expect
This is a season, not an event. Tell your household. Expect opposition, and expect clarity.
Breaking it
Days, not hours. Take advice.
Day by day
- Forty days is too long to run on intensity. Pick a rhythm you can keep on day thirty-five and keep it from day one.
Before you begin. Fasting is a spiritual discipline, not a medical one, and it is not for everybody. Do not fast from food without speaking to a doctor if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, diabetic, underweight, taking medication that must be taken with food, recovering from illness or surgery, under eighteen, or if you have any history of an eating disorder. There is no shame in fasting from something other than food — media, spending, sleep for a night, a habit. God is not measuring your stomach.