Abuses of fasting: 1. Any attempt to earn God’s blessing through fasting is clearly in contradiction to the scriptural teaching that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the ground for every spiritual blessing. Fasting is the humble response that puts us in a place to receive the life and victory Jesus has won for us. 2. One should never view fasting as a substitute for repentance and obedience. To do so turns fasting into a form of penance (cf. Isaiah 59:1-22). 3. To use [fasting as a means] to impress others. This is clearly what Jesus forbids in Matthew 6:18. The question is not so much whether others know about our fast but rather why we want them to know about it. The Scriptures make reference to corporate fasts, and thus fasting is not always a private matter. 4. [When we use fasting] to belittle the kind gifts of God. While on the one hand we can fall in love with the gift of food and not the Giver, on the other hand we can fail to enjoy the food with the taste buds that He provided and glory in our will power.