21 Day Fast – Week 1

Fasting to find your strength and security in God

We met last night for the half of night of prayer and heard so many amazing testimonies about the fast.  For those of you who do not know, City Bowl Church are doing a 21 day fast from 7 January to 28 January.  You can choose how you want to fast – Daniel fast, liquid fast, water only.  Food does provide comfort, pleasure and strength, but sometimes we need to take our focus off food in order to find our strength and security in God.  Jesus fasted as well as Moses, Esther, Elijah, David, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel amongst others.  Fasting is for people with needs in order to press into asking God to provide breakthroughs.  Daniel fasted for three weeks before receiving his breakthrough.  If he had not fasted and prayed and fought the spiritual battle, the angel would probably not have made it to Daniel.  Fasting is for people struggling with unbelief.  The act of fasting is act of faith because you are expecting God to do more through the discipline of fasting.   Fasting is for Christians that need consistency in their walk with God.  We are admonished to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17).  Fasting helps us to pray without ceasing because each time we have hunger pangs, we are reminded to pray.  Fasting is not only for super Christians, but those of us who have needs, who struggle with unbelief and who need consistency in their walk with God.

Fasting to deal with your heart

Fasting exposes what is in your heart.  We are sometimes at our wits end because of feeling weak through fasting and then it brings up what we call in our family “ugly angry” – the latent sins in our hearts that remains buried during normal times but come to the fore during extraordinary difficult times like fasting.  We need to deal with those ugly things that come up in our hearts.  If you have not spent the first week confessing your sins, I would encourage you to do so in this second week.  Also take time to spend time reading God’s Word – use a reading plan.  Pray in this second week for City Bowl Church that we would remain in that sweet spot of God’s will.  We need to refine our vision and mission.  Ask God to give us generous wisdom in this respect.   Pray in the Spirit as often as you can.

First time fasting? Start slow

If you have not fasted before, please start small – skip one meal a day to start with.  We will have two further half nights of prayer on Friday 19 January and Friday 26 January.  Both of these will be held at various homes that will be announced closer to the time.