Message #4 (of 20) from the PrayerPower radio series
"The Deeper Life of Prayer"

by Kaye Johns

Most Christians today have little experience with fasting, and the loss may be ours. Throughout the Bible and for hundreds of years after Christ, God’s people fasted.

Wesley Duewel in his book Mighty Prevailing Prayer says, "Fasting is a God-ordained form of self-denial...When you long to strengthen and discipline your prayer habits, add fasting. When you seek to humble yourself before God in total submission to His will, add fasting. When you face an overwhelming need, a human impossibility, and your soul hungers to see God intervene by supernatural power, add fasting.

"...Jesus said, ‘Then they will fast.’ You and I have no more right to omit fasting because we feel no special emotional prompting than we have a right to omit prayer, Bible reading or assembling with God’s children for lack of some special emotional prompting. Fasting is just as biblical and normal a part of a spiritual walk of obedience with God as are these others." [Wesley Duewel, Mighty Prevailing Prayer, 1990, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp.180, 193]

Fasting, like much else in our Christian walk, is an option. It is our choice. But we lose something significant if we ignore the Spirit’s prompting to fast. Would God’s people for so many years have added fasting to their prayer lives if He didn’t honor it in a special way?

Pray with me now -- Father, help us to be willing to fast as You may lead us, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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