DAY 1

Fasting For Breakthrough and Empowering

Are there areas of your life where you feel stuck? Are you weary from waiting for a much-believed answer to prayer? Are you on the brink of giving up on a long-held promise of God? Do you feel like you are in the middle of an intense spiritual battle where you can’t get free from the bombardment of negative and depressing thoughts? Or maybe you’re battling with a physical condition, a financial pressure, temptation, relationship breakdown, or sin that is robbing you of your peace, joy and sense of wellbeing? Do you long for a greater anointing to be more effective in ministering to others? Or perhaps you’re simply bored with life and you’re lacking a sense of purpose or motivation?

There could be any number of different issues that you or the people around you are facing, where there is a desperate need for breakthrough. If any of that resonates with you, then you are in good company! Throughout the Bible we are given a glimpse into the lives of many great men and women of God who faced incredible trials and tribulations but got their breakthrough by humbling themselves through prayer and fasting.

There’s an interesting incident in the ministry of Jesus in Mark 9. The disciples (who presumably had been trained by Jesus in the ministry of deliverance), fail to cast a demon out of a young boy, and then witness Jesus successfully perform the deliverance. After this, ‘…his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting”’ (Mark 9:29 NKJV). New York pastor and author, Jon Tyson, comments on this incident: ‘The disciples were up against something that required a new level of desperation and power. They were going to have to press in through prayer and fasting.’ (Beautiful Resistance, chapter 4). It seems as if Jesus is indicating that certain types of strongholds in our lives and the lives of others need extra spiritual sensitivity. Tyson continues, ‘This kind, the struggle in front of us, will require us to shake off our apathy and numbness and seek him with desperation as we never have before. We will turn to prayer and fasting…’

So, why is prayer with fasting so powerful? 

First, it’s important to recognise that fasting doesn’t change God, but it can change us! Every time we fast, we position ourselves to subdue our fleshly appetites and surrender more fully to the person and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. King David said, ‘I humbled my body with fasting’ (Psalm 35:13). The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:27 says, ‘I discipline my body,’ no doubt helped by the fact that he was ‘often in fasting’ (2 Corinthians 11:27 ESV). Jon Tyson summarises it well: ‘Fasting is designed to shift our focus from our bodies to our spirits and from our flesh to our Father. The goal is to enter into deeper communion with him.’

That’s why Jesus fasted. Before entering into His public ministry, He spent 40 days fasting in the wilderness, overcoming the devil, who challenged His identity, His divine mission, and His allegiance to God (see Matthew 4:1-11). Following this extended fast, we read that Jesus then ‘returned in the power of the Spirit’ (Luke 4:14a) ready to enter His earthly ministry. If Jesus, the Son of God and the perfect human, prepared Himself through fasting, then we would do well to follow His example, even though it may not be for 40 days!

Today, fasting can still unlock God’s powerful mercies when needing a breakthrough either personally or on behalf of others. Remember, Jesus didn’t say to His disciples, “If you fast…” Rather, He said, “When you fast…” (Matthew 6:16).

So, ask yourself this question, ‘What am I going to fast from today?’