Fasting

When I heard these words, I sat down and wept. I mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth, with dust on their heads.

…in order to confirm these days of Purim at their appointed time, just as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had established them and had committed themselves and their descendants to the times of fasting and lamentation.

Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting, but my prayers returned unanswered.

My knees are weak from fasting, and my body grows lean and gaunt.

…so you are to go to the house of the LORD on a day of fasting, and in the hearing of the people you are to read the words of the LORD from the scroll you have written at my dictation. Read them in the hearing of all the people of Judah who are coming from their cities.

Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting. No entertainment was brought before him, and sleep fled from him.

So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.”

After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.

When you fast, do not be somber like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward.

…so that your fasting will not be obvious to men, but only to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were often fasting. So people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t Your disciples fast like John’s disciples and those of the Pharisees?”

…and then was a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church, praying and fasting as they entrusted them to the Lord, in whom they had believed.