11 Ways Fasting Chisels Character
"Foodie", just like "pre-marital sex" is a Satanic repackaging of what God calls, "glutton."
🔥First announcement:
We are doing a 21-Day Fasting Challenge (water fast) from May 19-June 8, join us any time!
For details, check out this post:
🎀Another announcement:
I created my 3rd Substack newsletter: In the Mind of A Princess with a new account
(as you can tell this thing is quite addictive) for girls.FOR GIRLS!!!
If you are already my reader, and you’re a girl please be ready to subscribe and pray (probably need to fast as well) that I’ll send my first newsletter asap.
Fasting Day 10
I’m writing this now because last night, for the first time, I asked for prayers. Stomach pain and lower belly cramps struck me down—I literally cried out to God for relief.
My flesh whispered, "Just eat something, and you’ll feel better." So I lay there, wrestling with it:
If I get up and warm a cup of chocolate milk, drinking it will break my ketosis. Tomorrow, I’d be back in hell—and the guilt would be unbearable to face. But if I endure this, at least I can confidently ask Him to take responsibility for my suffering.
No brainer. I chose the latter. Then I told the Lord: Unless You send an angel—physically incarnated—to command me to break my fast before June 8, I won’t stop. Any other voice isn’t Yours.
I’m glad I broadcast this fast. The prayers of my brothers and sisters carried me through the darkness before dawn on Day 10.
Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5
This weeping for the night and shout of joy in the morning happened every three days during my fast so far. I wanted to quit on Day 6. I almost quit last night. I don’t know when the next time will be, but I’ll hold onto the Word of God.
In this article:
It’s not food you can’t give up on
How fasting chisels character
It’s not food you can’t give up on
Day 10 is the very middle of this fast.
The middle is the hardest. The middle is what they call “average,” “lukewarm,” “mediocre.” Many give up in the middle. Many never reach the mountaintop to see the sunrise from there.
These past 9 days have chiseled my character like no other. I realized how easily we give up—day after day, year after year—how small quits lead to abortion of destiny. How distracted I was. How much time I've wasted. How small I've dreamed. How much fear was in my executions.
How vague the voice of God was to me—until now.
When you crinkle the bag, your pet gets excited. That’s us. These past nine days, the crinkling of the bag has become the burning of my heart. I get excited, I rush and wag my tail, eager to hear what He has to say.
Food is necessary—created for our nourishment and enjoyment. Fasting doesn't condemn food, but by removing it, we see where we truly stand in life and in Christ.
In Spirited Away (2001), the protagonist's parents turn into pigs for their gluttony. I remember in 2023, when I first decided to fast for spiritual reasons, I felt visceral disgust toward myself—I saw her parents in me. I felt like a pig. No one would assume a slim girl could be a glutton, but I was. I kept eating because I dreaded facing life. As long as I was eating, I had an excuse to remain distracted.
If you can’t give up on food, it's not just about craving—it's because you're refusing to confront how far your life has strayed from what you envisioned.
How fasting chisels character
NO.1 Promise
Our sense of fulfillment is largely determined by how many promises we’ve kept to ourselves. New Year’s resolutions fail because most people aren’t promise-keepers—unlike God.
If you can’t keep your promises to yourself and to God, who will trust you to keep your promises to others?
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.” Luke 16:10
Fasting is a small discipline compared to your divine purpose on earth. If you fail to keep this simple commitment, how can God trust you with greater destiny? If you can’t endure fasting, how will you persevere “till death do you part” in marriage?
No.2 Focus
Purposelessness leads to boredom. Boredom breeds craving. Craving demands distraction. Distraction guarantees failure.
But remove that craving—when food is no longer an option—and you're forced to confront first your boredom, then your purposelessness. This is your breakthrough: all mild but persistent pain in life springs from this—a life without purpose.
No.3 Self-control
Will you look away from temptations? Will you snap off the thought of it? For God hates even the imagination of evil. (Zechariah 8:17)
Your cravings don’t just come from within—it besieges you: cooking from your house, food from the street, food on the internet, food in your memory, on your tastebud, food in your dreams, food you heard people talking about, food you cook for your children when you’re fasting—
Food is everywhere, inside, outside, physically, mentally, spiritually (in dreams). What should you say then?
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4
No.4 Faith
If you would get all you ever wanted in life as long as you fulfill your fasting goal—will you be able to endure till the end?
If the answer is "yes," now you just figured out one thing:
You couldn't endure till the end because you lack faith. You don't believe that God will really answer and your suffering is not worth it.
“Let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” James 1:7-8
No.5 Pleasure Delay
Since I was young, my father told me about this world-famous experiment after I passed his test (my parents tested me throughout my childhood, which was borderline child abuse):
They told all the little kids they could have one candy now, or if they waited two more hours, they could get ten (the exact numbers might be inaccurate).
They tracked these kids into adulthood, and the results were significant: those who delayed pleasure from childhood were much more successful than those who didn't.
Food is the easiest, quickest, most convenient, affordable, and accessible source of instant gratification—and on top of that, it's also the least condemned.
Go figure: what's killing your potential is the very thing supposed to nourish your body.
No.6 Time Management
Each day stretches thrice as long without the hours lost to grocery shopping, cooking, eating, chilling after eating, dozing after chilling—what will you do with it?
“The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11
Time and chance happen to you just as they happen to your role models. How you spend your time and seize your chances determines who you will become.
No.7 Patience
“For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.” Isaiah 64:4
Daniel fasted for 21 days because Gabriel showed up on the 21st day. Patience is not perseverance. Perseverance is actively grinding through hardship, but patience is passively waiting on God and not doing what He didn’t tell you to do. Abraham’s fathering of Ishmael is the classic example.
Patience is— “The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still.” (Exodus 14:14)
“There is one who scatters, yet increases more; and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty.” Proverbs 11:24
If you’re able and willing, consider:
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No.8 Courage
All fears scream out of the flesh, and only when the flesh dies, can you start to live.
“Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14
It takes courage—renewed courage each day to push through. When we fear, we eat; that’s our natural reaction. Now when you can’t eat, you must confront your fear—either it swallows you up or you strangle it to death.
No.9 Renewed Mind
You begin to think clearly, think everything through, with hope. You realize it’s not worth it to give up your birthright for a bowl of soup. It’s not worth it to abort your fast for just a meal—something you could enjoy for the rest of your life any time.
You hear God—this time for real. Everything you hear is sown into your heart and the enemy cannot steal it. Not only will you dream bigger but also you will plan it out according to His guidance. Breakthroughs happen where obedience is.
“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.” Matthew 13:18
No.10 Steadfast Hope, Peace, Joy
Food brings comfort but gluttony brings anxiety. When the comfort is gone, do you still have hope, peace, and joy? What is the source of them?—once you think these through, you will realize: your god is never Jesus Christ but comfort, pleasure, success, and vanity.
Life does not always comfort us. When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, do you still have hope, peace, and joy?
Character is the ability to stay hopeful, peaceful, joyful, and truthful in all circumstances.
“These people draw near to Me with their mouth,
And honor Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.” Matthew 15:8
No.11 Humility
Gluttony breeds pride like nothing else. When you refuse food, you deny yourself. When you deny yourself, all of a sudden, you find yourself floating upon deep waters alone in a storm. Your stomach shuts up, your itch for dopamine relieves, your hope has nowhere to anchor except on God.
You are forced to admit your limit and understand that “no man is an island” and “two are better than one.” I wouldn't be able to make it to Day 10 without all the brothers and sisters fasting and praying with me and for me.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24
I need to read this more than once. So much to unpack. Alice this is a sermon for sure. You need to consider writing a book sometime in the future.
Your resolve is blowing my mind