Fasting may look different. (Matthew 9:14-17)

Was Isaiah 58:1-14 (6-7 are the ones that got me the most) That faster is all to often used as a religious practice and not as a personal, relational, act. When asked, JESUS points out that they are feasting, and why shouldn't they? The Son of Man, the Son of GOD, is right there with them, healing the sick, setting the captive free, and placing hope into the lives of the broken and the lost.

Wanting HIM to be here, seeing how world the broken is, how much we continue to repeat the same monstrous acts, seeing the repetition of evil acts entering the hearts of those who say they Worthship Love. [Follow JESUS] It's heart rending, it should be. If we truly think about it for a moment it should break our hearts and send us to tears, if it doesn't, even for a moment, then that too is a place to pray, that GOD would not let our hearts grow cold and dead as stone.
When we are there, that is weeping, in those moments we can fast, give a meal up, a painful thing, to help remember the pain the world is in while we thrive on HIS joy.
We know this is not the end. We know there is hope. We know there is Joy, we know how this story ends, that we have hope because we have seen HIM act. We have road markers, testimonies, shared places of hope and joy-song, of praise-song, where HE has brought us through. Through the valleys of death we thought would claim us, but didn't because HE IS greater. Through the storms that seemed like they would drown us, but didn't because HE IS Greater.
We have a place of great joy, hope, a place of strong shelter and rest, where we are serving the Prince of Shalom and so are able to bask in HIS shalom as we follow HIM.
Fasting is a reminder of the pain of this world and a prompt to prayer. A place of giving up of self to gain what is real. Not a place to say "look at me" not a thing to wear or do as a cause for applause. Fasting is something we are called to do with joy in our hearts; so maybe it is a little different. Maybe it's not about trying to twist the arm of the sky-being prayed to, what it if it's about putting down a part of me, the "me" that isn't me, -the "me" that wants to destroy, that evil in me- and learning that: "...a person does not live on food alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of ADONAI." -Duet 8:3

Isaiah 58 (Trust Fasting header)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2058&version=CJB;MSG;NIV
Deuteronomy 8 (Don't forget The LORD header)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%208&version=MSG;CJB;NIV
Joel 2:12-13