Here is a thesis statement in my book on fasting:
Fasting is never the central spiritual discipline of the Christian life. Fasting is not a separable spiritual discipline like prayer or study or solitude. Instead, fasting is a physical condition in which all the disciplines can occur. Fasting is not effective in and of itself but is the expression of the kind of person â?? a person who has given all of herself or himself to God â?? that stands before God in trust and obedience, yearning for what that person wants in the face of God in the hope that God will hear that yearning.

Any comments?
One of my major concerns is that folks fast in order to get something, and they thereby convert fasting into a technique that intensifies something else. My view is that a person fully unified in spirit and body, heart and flesh, will fast spontaneously when confronted with certain kinds of conditions. To be sure, I’ve lifted this straight from the rough draft of the book and it doesn’t give context or the whole argument, but this does express my central idea.