Fasting in the Bible #6 The Daniel Fast

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Daniel and his friends were in a pagan land, far from home training for leadership. He was a man who prayed three times a day and didn’t compromise his principles. The training Dan 1:4 would be all sorts of things Daniel would have been uncomfortable

v4 language and literature of Babylonians – pretty toxic!

  • Read and understand Arcadian including Enuma Elish – how Marduk created the cosmos. Marduk defeats and splits Tiamat into two to create sky and land and seas. Demon god named Qingu executes him and mixes his blood with clay to create humans.  ie evil from origin (rather than created from breath of God and then fell) Daniel and three friends learning that.
  • Learning divination practices – lot of Babylonian literature about that and astrology and reading a dead lambs liver!
  • Dream interpretation – different to Biblical dream interpretation. Tell the wise man the dream, the interpreter would consult the commentaries, researching.

Daniel picks his battles – we can’t have a go at everything at once in our workplaces, but we can pick the right fights with God’s help. He went for rich pagan food as a opportunity to prove God.

The Daniel fast has been popularised for health principles – a no rich food diet. Interestingly if you read the text, by faith they got fatter! Babylonian wise men were expected to be fat.

“Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” 14 So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. 16 So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

Relief B, section 2 of 3 detail - Palace of Sargon II, Khorsabad - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07547

The Daniel Fast actually left room for God to work! Daniel Fast books are written to help us loose weight, but for Daniel himself, by faith he gained weight! The Lord did the opposite of what would naturally happen.

For most of us we will loose weight doing a Daniel Fast and it’s like a spiritual detox as well as physically healthy. We crave rich food and snacks and Ultra Processed Foods – they are addictive and the cause of much health problems and obesity. A Daniel Fast is telling your emotions and soul “no” to those bad food habits and breaking bad food issues.

It allows the Lord to work on setting your free in the area of food.

Daniel 10:3 shows us that Daniel refusal to drink wine and choice food was a temporary measure. For 3 weeks he abstained again, so it wasn’t a permanent diet choice!

How we react with our toxic culture is not formulaic. Use wisdom and see what the Lord wants us to protest or engage with.

Note that the protest was a private one, as he approached the steward to ask!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR - ANDY MOYLE

Andy planted the Gateway Church in Sept 2007. He and Janet love to gather different nations together to grow in Christ while eating good food! He also helps to shape and serve a couple of Relational Mission's church plants in mainland Europe. Andy and Janet run regularly, largely to offset the hospitality eating! He also runs a popular WordPress plugin Church Admin