Profits, IV

Ezra 8:²³ “So we fasted and earnestly prayed that our God would take care of us, and he heard our prayer.”

Fasting and praying add fuel to your sacrifice. It becomes explosive and the results are evident even in with our physical bodies. The last time I shared this story, it helped a teenager breakthrough and he got out of it. I used to bed wet when I was growing up. I am not proud of it, but that was the situation at the time, and it happened until I was sixteen years old. By this time, I was in boarding school. Do you know how embarrassing that is? You don’t even want to know. It was horrible and shameful. I was not saved, but I grew up with my grandmother, I saw her pray and fast, and I saw her call upon the Name of Jesus. I was sixteen and I did not need anyone to tell me, I said to God, ‘You, the God that my grandmother is always praying to, it is You I am talking to. I am going to fast for three days; I do not want to see this ‘thing’ again’.

I fasted for three days; I did not eat anything and that was the end of bedwetting in my life – the end! I was not saved even though I had a consciousness of God. I was many years after that I decided to follow Jesus. To say that God does not listen to people that are not saved is a lie. God is God; He has not guaranteed those who are not yet believers anything. That is like He has guaranteed us that are in the faith, but He listens to the cry of the broken hearted, He does. I got to the point that I knew that the situation had to end and the only thing I knew was to pray and fast. This is why what you do in front of your children is so important because they are watching. You cannot be a hypocrite before them because they can also see your hypocrisy. I knew my grandmother prays genuinely and she did not miss prayers. So, I reasoned that this God must be there, and I decided to fast, and He broke the back of it.

Now I am saved and then someone is saying that fasting is ‘Old Testament’ and as New Testament Christians, we do not need to fast anymore. What does that even mean? Then people excuse lack of power because they do not want to pay the price. People excuse the lack of miracles and the supernatural because they do not want to pay the price. There is a price to pay; sometimes God allows us to make physical sacrifices so that He can cause there to be a supernatural release. That is how He has chosen to operate. A physical sacrifice mysteriously produces [provokes] a supernatural release and we gain favour on every side. Daniel was praying [physical sacrifice], and it brought about a supernatural release. We get to influence what happens in the heavenlies.

2Cor.4:¹⁶ “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (KJV). When you consider what you are desiring of God, and you take your position in fasting, sometimes it appears that you are emaciating. Have you fasted to the point that it alarms the people around you? Though the outward man perishes, the inner man becomes stronger and stronger. You become unbelievably anointed because you have paid the price.

Prayer:  Father, give me the grace to wait on You, to fast and pray, in Jesus Name. Amen!