Light of the World Today
There is a dimension of breakthrough that ordinary prayer alone does not reach. Fasting is the key that opens it. And every major turning point in Scripture carries the fingerprint of someone who fasted.
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"
Isaiah 58:6 NIV
We have arrived at the final part of this series. We have established that prayer is the mechanism through which human beings give God access to operate in the earth, that our prayers rise as incense before the throne of God in golden bowls, that they dispatch angels and dismantle spiritual strongholds, and that daily prayer is one of the most powerful acts a believer can perform. Today we add the dimension that multiplies everything we have discussed. When prayer is combined with fasting, it moves into a completely different category of spiritual power. The results recorded in Scripture whenever fasting and prayer were combined are among the most dramatic and the most decisive in the entire biblical narrative. And what was available to Esther, to Daniel, to Ezra and to the early church is available to you today.
What Fasting Actually Does
Fasting is not a hunger strike directed at God to pressure him into responding. It is not a religious performance designed to impress him with your self-discipline. And it is not a dietary practice dressed in spiritual language. Fasting is a deliberate act of humbling the soul before God. The Hebrew word for fasting used in Scripture is anah nephesh, which literally means to afflict or humble the soul. It is the act of voluntarily denying what the body most naturally craves in order to intensify the focus of the entire being on God and on what is being sought from him. When you fast, you are telling God with your body what your prayers are telling him with your words. That this matter is serious. That you need him. That you are not depending on your own ability to resolve it. And that you are willing to set aside your own comfort in order to press into his presence with everything you have.
Isaiah 58:6 in the NIV describes the kind of fasting God has chosen and its results are extraordinary. To loose the chains of injustice. To untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free. To break every yoke. These are not modest outcomes. They are the language of comprehensive, decisive spiritual liberation. Things that have been bound for years are loosed. Structures that have resisted every other form of spiritual engagement are broken. Fasting combined with genuine prayer reaches a dimension of the spiritual realm that prayer alone, for many situations, cannot fully access.
"However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."
Matthew 17:21 NKJV
Matthew 17:21 is one of the most direct and most arresting statements Jesus made about fasting. The disciples had tried to cast a demon out of a boy and failed. When they asked Jesus privately why they could not do it, he said this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. He was drawing a distinction between categories of spiritual resistance. Some things yield to ordinary prayer. Other things, deeper seated, more entrenched, longer established, require the concentrated spiritual intensity that comes from the combination of prayer and fasting. Not because God is withholding until you have suffered sufficiently. Because there are levels of spiritual authority that a fasting believer accesses that the unburdened, undisciplined appetite does not reach. The stomach that is full is often the spirit that is dull. But the person who has fasted is sharper, more alert in the spirit and more aligned with the frequency of heaven than the person who has not.
Three Biblical Turning Points That Were Preceded by Fasting
Esther: A fast that saved a nation
Esther 4:16 in the NIV records one of the most dramatic fasts in the entire Old Testament. Esther asked Mordecai to gather all the Jews in Susa and fast for her, neither eating nor drinking for three days, night or day. The situation was a death sentence. Haman had secured a royal decree for the annihilation of every Jewish person in the Persian Empire. Esther had to approach the king uninvited, an act that carried the penalty of death under Persian law, to appeal for the survival of her people. Before she took one step into the king's court she called an entire community to three days of fasting. She went in after the fast. The king extended his sceptre. She found favour. The decree was reversed. Haman was hanged on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai. An entire people who faced genocide were saved. And it began with three days of fasting before the crisis was addressed.
Daniel: A fast that released prophetic understanding
Daniel 9:3 in the NLT says Daniel turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. He was seeking understanding of the vision he had received about Israel's future. While he was still praying the angel Gabriel arrived and said Daniel, I have come to give you insight and understanding. Daniel 9:22 NLT. The answer to the question he had been wrestling with came during the fast. Not before it. Not after it was over. During. The act of fasting created a spiritual environment in which divine communication could be received with a clarity that had previously been unavailable. The fast did not earn the revelation. It prepared the receiver to receive it.
"So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer."
Ezra 8:23 NIV
The early church: A fast that released apostolic ministry
Acts 13:2-3 in the NLT says one day as these men were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said appoint Barnabas and Saul for the special work to which I have called them. So after more fasting and prayer, the men laid their hands on them and sent them on their way. The moment that launched the greatest missionary expansion in the history of the early church was born in a prayer meeting that included fasting. The Holy Spirit spoke during the fast. The specific call was released during the fast. And the sending was accompanied by further fasting. The entire trajectory of the gospel reaching Asia, Europe and ultimately the Western world began in a room where people were fasting and praying. That is not a coincidence. It is the consistent pattern of Scripture. Fasting creates the conditions for God to release what ordinary time has not yet produced.
What Fasting Also Does for You Personally
Isaiah 58:8 in the NLT says then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. The passage that begins with the yoke-breaking promise of verse six ends with a personal flourishing for the one who fasts. Healing arrives. Godliness leads forward. The glory of God becomes the rearguard behind you. Fasting does not just break things in the spiritual realm. It builds things in the person who fasts. It sharpens spiritual perception. It deepens intimacy with God. It strengthens the will and disciplines the appetites that, left undisciplined, tend to lead a person away from the things of God rather than toward them. The person who fasts regularly is a spiritually stronger, more perceptive and more surrendered person than the person who never does. Not because they are superior. Because they have been through a process that builds what comfort alone cannot produce.
How to Begin: A Practical Starting Point
Jesus said in Matthew 6:16 when you fast, not if you fast. He assumed his followers would fast. He gave instructions about how to do it rather than whether to do it. If you have never fasted or have only done so occasionally, begin practically rather than dramatically. Begin with one meal. Skip one meal this week and use that time for focused, specific, unhurried prayer about the situation that most needs a breakthrough. Then progress. One day. Then perhaps a full day of prayer and fasting on a specific need. Some people fast one day a week as a consistent spiritual discipline. Some fast at particular seasons of significant decision or spiritual battle. The length matters less than the sincerity and the consistency.
What matters most is that your fast is accompanied by genuine prayer directed at something specific. A fast without prayer is simply a diet. A fast with focused, faith-filled, Word-grounded prayer is a spiritual weapon that reaches dimensions of the spiritual realm that nothing else in your arsenal can access. Choose the specific thing you are bringing to God in the fast. Write it down. Bring it before God with every hunger pang as a reminder of what you are seeking. And expect that the God who honoured Esther's three days, who sent Gabriel to Daniel during his fast and who spoke to the early church during their fasting prayer meeting will meet you in yours. He has not changed. The mechanism has not changed. The invitation remains open. Begin.
So the Light of the World word for today and for the close of this entire five-part series is this. Daily prayer is the most powerful practice available to a believer. And when fasting is added to it, it reaches dimensions of the spiritual realm that nothing else can access. Nations have been saved through it. Prophetic understanding has been released through it. The greatest missionary movements in history have been launched through it. The chains have been loosed and the yokes have been broken through it. You have a situation that needs exactly that kind of engagement. Do not wait for a more convenient season. Begin today. The God who honoured Esther's three days will honour yours.
Memory verse for today
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"
Isaiah 58:6 NIV