Have you ever been so desperate that you had to fast? You had to go to prayer? Your need was so critical that just saying you were praying about it wasn’t enough. A bedtime lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer wasn’t going to get it. You had to get down to business.
The question for the day is,
“Do we have to work for answered prayers? Do we have to fast continually, check off our Daily Bread chart and say so many “Our Father who art in heaven…” prayers?”
The answer is, “No.” We are the ones who need the changing, not God.
Fasting and prayer changes US, strengthens US, molds our character, changes our heart, mind and soul, gives US direction, wisdom, and clears up things that were muddy before!
The Bible tells us that the prophet Daniel fasted on a regular basis. It has even recorded three of those fasts for us to look at and observe. In one of them he goes completely without any food at all. “And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes…” Daniel 9:3 KJV.
In the other two fasts that are recorded in the book of Daniel, he participated in partial fasts where he ate some foods, but refrained from others.
Each time Daniel fasted, we can find one thing he was very consistent with; he never failed to pray!
Look at the verse above again in Daniel 9:3, “…to seek by prayer and supplications.” Even when it doesn’t specifically mention prayer, we know Daniel prayed because he was a Hebrew prophet and a man of God. He would not have fasted without prayer! The Jewish people understood that the two went together.
God can speak to us because we have allowed Him to cleanse things from our minds when we fast. We have taken time to be with Him and pushed some things aside; things that we liked, maybe even loved, that were important to us. We laid them down in order to be with Him.
Our motives must be pure when we pray. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 ESV. We are praying for our needs, not necessarily our wants. Max Lucado said it so well, “You have to wonder if God’s most merciful act is His refusal to answer some of our prayers!”
Our heart must be right! “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me…” Psalm 66:18 KJV.
We must pray in faith, believing and we pray His will in all things. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” 1 John 5:14 ESV.
Then we must pray with perseverance! “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke 18:1 NIV.
And we must be thankful. “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” 1 Chronicles 16:34 ESV.
When we fast, we show the Lord that we want to draw closer to Him and lay aside things that might hinder us in our walk. We aren’t bargaining with God and we are not begging God. We aren’t jumping through hoops or just checking off boxes. We just realize that if our flesh is submitted to Him, His wants and desires for us become OUR wants and desires. We begin to reflect His glory and not our own!
And even if the situation doesn’t change, WE have been changed, WE have been strengthened for whatever lies ahead.
In The Daniel Fast Devotional, we talk about a different person in the Bible who sought God by fasting every day of the 21 day fast. Some of them were desperate like Hannah, she just HAD to fast too! Others did it out of selfishness as with Ahab and Jezebel. Each story is true, intriguing, and will teach us the good and the bad motives behind fasting. Also, at the end of each chapter, there are wonderful recipes that are Daniel Fast approved. Get your copy today!
