When Prayer and Fasting Become a Transaction (Prayer Series Pt 4)


 

Recovering the Heart of Spiritual Disciplines from the Obsession with Results

In many churches today, prayer and fasting are taught almost exclusively as tools for outcomes. Fast so God will answer. Pray harder so doors will open. Sacrifice food, time, or comfort and expect a breakthrough in return.

The language is often subtle, but the message becomes clear: results validate the discipline.

This approach feels practical and measurable. People want solutions. Pastors want testimonies. Congregations want evidence that spiritual practices “work.” But when prayer and fasting are reduced to spiritual leverage, something vital is lost — and something dangerous quietly takes its place.


The Problem: Turning God into a Means

When prayer and fasting are framed primarily around results, they begin to reshape our theology. God slowly becomes the means to our desired ends rather than the end Himself.

The assumptions may go unspoken, but they are deeply felt:

  • If nothing changes externally, the prayer or fast failed.

  • If God does not respond as expected, the person lacked faith or discipline.

  • If outcomes improve, the method is validated.

Over time, this produces anxiety, comparison, and shame. Spiritual maturity becomes measured by visible success rather than faithfulness, humility, or love.

Prayer becomes performance.
Fasting becomes negotiation.


What Prayer Is Actually For

At its core, prayer is not about getting God to do what we want. It is about drawing near to Him and learning to trust Him.

Prayer reorients us. It slows us down. It exposes our fears, desires, and illusions of control while placing them before a faithful Father.

Prayer is:

  • relationship before request

  • presence before productivity

  • listening before speaking

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, the opening words were not about outcomes but worship:

“Hallowed be your name.”

Prayer begins with alignment before it moves to asking.

Christians do ask boldly — Scripture encourages that — but requests flow from relationship, not leverage.


What Fasting Is Actually About

Fasting is even more misunderstood. In Scripture, fasting is not a hunger strike meant to pressure heaven. It is a voluntary laying aside of comfort that heightens awareness — of God, of self, and of dependence.

Fasting reveals:

  • how deeply we rely on consumption to cope,

  • how easily desire controls our attention,

  • how fragile our sense of self-sufficiency really is.

The purpose of fasting is not to force God’s hand, but to loosen our grip on our own control.


When Results Do Happen

Prayer and fasting do sometimes coincide with remarkable change. Decisions clarify. Relationships heal. Circumstances shift. God truly does act in response to prayer.

But these outcomes are gifts, not guarantees — and never the point.

When results become central:

  • God’s silence feels like rejection.

  • Waiting feels like punishment.

  • Faith becomes conditional.

When formation becomes central:

  • Silence becomes invitation.

  • Waiting becomes trust.

  • Faith becomes resilient.


A More Faithful Way to Teach Spiritual Disciplines

The church serves believers best not by promising outcomes, but by shaping expectations rightly.

Prayer and fasting should be taught as:

  • practices of surrender, not strategies,

  • ways of being shaped, not techniques for control,

  • acts of faithfulness, not transactions.

The real question is not:

“What will I get if I pray and fast?”

But:

“Who am I becoming as I pray and fast?”


The Hard Truth

Sometimes people pray and fast — and nothing changes externally. The job is still lost. The illness remains. The conflict persists.

If results are the measure, these moments feel like failure.

But if prayer and fasting are about communion with God, then even unanswered prayers can deepen faith, humility, endurance, and love.

These are not flashy outcomes. They rarely become testimonies from a stage. Yet they are the very substance of spiritual maturity.


Conclusion

Prayer and fasting were never meant to be spiritual shortcuts to success. They are slow, honest, often uncomfortable practices that train us to live without illusions of control.

When taught rightly, they free believers from performance and invite them into trust.

The goal is not results.

The goal is communion with God — and the kind of formation that lasts longer than any breakthrough ever could.


This post continues the journey begun in the first three reflections of this series, where we examined how prayer can slowly become shaped by performance, conditions, and spiritual transactions rather than grace. Together, those posts exposed common ways prayer is misunderstood; this one begins rebuilding a healthier vision of spiritual disciplines themselves. In the coming articles, we will move further into a constructive theology of prayer — exploring what Scripture teaches about prayer. 


Rooted in Jesus Grace,

Mara Wellspring 



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