I am excited about tomorrow because it will start the 16th straight year that Jackie and I have
observed a 40 day period of prayer and fasting which we begin on the
first of October. This post is taken from one I did several years
ago.
Our
fasting has been relatively minor. We began by abstaining from
carbonated beverages, deserts, and from eating anything between meals
but have made adjustments over the years to insure we have something
that will work. These things have worked because for us they are
difficult, they take a commitment to achieve, and we know that we can
see them through to the end. In the weeks before we start we each ask
the Lord to show us what we should be praying for, and then right
before we begin we talk together about the burdens that God has laid
on our hearts. Doing this we end up with a common prayer focus. And
prayer seems to be more effective when two or more are in agreement.
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Jackie
and I both believe that our annual fast has been an important part of
our lives. We praise God, not just for the answers to prayer and for
the spiritual growth that comes every year, but also for the goodness
of our Lord and Savior, whom we appreciate more because of this time
we have spent, unified in prayer and in denying the cravings of our
bodies. The results of this time have been much more than seeing God
move in the areas that we were praying for. They have shown us that
although we may begin and end on a certain day determined by us, the
God who loves us and who knows our needs is outside of time.
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For
example, our fast begins on the 1st of October and ends at midnight
on the 9th of November. On the first year we did our fast Jackie's
dad had a major heart attack on the 10th of November. He lived for 6
more days at the critical care heart center on the fifth floor of
Borgess Hospital before he went to be with his Blessed Redeemer.
Harry was a man of great faith, a gifted teacher of scripture who
prayed with many for salvation, for baptism in the Holy Spirit, for
healing and for deliverance. The family would usually look to him to
be the leader in praying for healing or for receiving a word from the
Lord. His heart attack became a time for many more in the family to
learn how to search the scriptures, to cry out to the Lord, and to
hear and speak forth the prophetic word.
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One of
the prophetic words during that time came from a vision that God gave
our daughter Ceci. She was with Jackie and some of her aunts and
cousins, praying intensely for Harry. They were in a semi-secluded
area in a hallway near the visitors waiting room, on the 5th floor
at Borgess. In the vision she saw angels with their swords drawn
coming into the hospital on the 1st floor, and fighting their way up
to the 5th floor, and she gave the play by play to the women as the
vision unfolded. To me this vision represents the power of their
collective intercessory prayer. God is showing that He is in control,
and that He does respond, even if the result was not the recovery
they were praying for. And one of the things that show me that God is
in control is that He led Jackie and I to fast and pray prior to
those events, preparing us, and especially Jackie, for the emotional
strain of seeing her father die, and for the intense time of prayer
and spiritual warfare that the family would be involved in.
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On the
next year we ended our fast as usual at midnight on the 9th of
November. Jackie had asked her mom to come and spend the night at our
house because it was near the 1st anniversary of Harry's heart attack
and she was worried about her mother being alone at that time. Helen
wasn't able to make it, but events proved to be very interesting.
There was an all day steady wind of between 40-50 mph. That evening
it started gusting to 60-70 mph. Occasionally we would hear a
"Whomp!", which was the sound of a tree falling somewhere
nearby. The power was out before we went to bed and Jackie and I
prayed for protection for ourselves, our 15 year old daughter Becky,
and for our house. Shortly after ending our prayer we heard and felt
the tremendous crash of trees hitting our house, followed by the
scream of our daughter. I grabbed a flashlight and bolted down the
dark upstairs hallway to her room, finding her huddled in a ball on
the floor. There was a jagged 2 x 4 from the
roof truss sticking into the middle of her mattress. Looking up past
the wood and drywall and trees I could see the sky. Becky was unhurt
and did not know how she ended up on the floor and Jackie and I both
had the sense that an angel had intervened, moving Becky off her bed
at the last second.
Two
rooms sustained quite a bit of damage. The other belonged to our
daughter Missy who was away at college. And that was the room where
Jackie's mom would have been sleeping if she had come. There were a
couple more upsides to all of this. Tarps covered the roof for three
weeks before it could be repaired and it never rained during that
time. Being in a woods our roof was covered with moss and insurance
paid for a new moss resistant roof as well as for all the other
repairs. The missing trees opened up a nice large sunny area out
back, which Jackie had wanted for a long time. Even though our house
got hit, our time of prayer and fasting had prepared us. God
protected us physically and gave us more besides.
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Living
our lives as Christians is not about religion or religious acts. It
is not about if or how we fast or the fervency of our prayers, or the
volume of scripture we read. It all has to do with a living Lord, who
loves us and who wants to share a loving relationship with us. He
desires to be in every part of our lives, and He desires that we
share with Him the things that He finds pleasure in. Prayer and
fasting help in bringing down the barriers of the world and the flesh
that come between us and the relationship He wants to have with us.
One
time I read the 8th chapter of Ezekiel during my morning prayer time.
In it the Lord gave Ezekiel a series of visions showing the people of
Jerusalem engaged in idol worship, spirit worship, Tammuz worship and
sun worship. In one of those Ezekiel digs a hole through a wall to
uncover a secret place where seventy elders of the House of Israel
were standing, each with a censer filled with incense before walls
that had "every form of
creeping things and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols
of the House of Israel, were carved on the wall around it". Upon
reading this my stomach felt nauseous. I became sad because I
realized that God loved this people and wanted so much for them, and
in return they rejected Him. But of course, this isn't to point a
finger at a particular people. I realized that I too can think that I
have a secret place where God cannot see. And those things that are
kept in a secret place are just as much idols, and just as creepy and
detestable to God as were the things worshiped by the elders of the
House of Israel. I know these things will affect my
relationship with Him, so the solution is to bring everything into the
light. I do this not just because things will be better for me. These should be brought into the light because I understand that my sin hurts
the One who loves me.
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The
real benefit of a time of prayer and fasting is not just in what we
are seeking from Him. The practice declares that He is the Lord of
the Universe and that we believe that He is in control of our lives
and that we are putting our trust in Him for all things. That trust
will help soften our hearts, and a soft heart will bring a closer
relationship, and the love of God will give us the strength to
conform our lives to the pattern that He, in His love and wisdom, has
established for us.
