Fasting - A Lost Art

Posted by Dion Todd July 7th, 2015 7,138 Views 0 Comments

Fasting - A Lost Art

Do you want see God move in your life? Have you ever felt like things have become stagnant and that the fire has gone out? Do you want to carry the power of the Holy Spirit everywhere you go? Then you need to know about fasting.

Every Christian believes that you should pray, many believe in giving, but fasting is by large, a lost part of the Christian walk. I will share some of my life with you and what I have learned about fasting if you care to read on. This will be a brief guide to the power of fasting. It would take a much larger book to cover it in depth.

What is fasting?:
Fasting is abstaining from food for spiritual purposes and intentionally seeking God for a set time. Though there are examples in the Bible of people abstaining from food and water, we will discuss abstaining from food for safety.

- Fasting will help you rekindle that fire and draw closer to God. James 4:8 reads “Come near to God and He will come near to you.”

- Fasting will set you free from things that bind you. When you have not eaten in a week, you will not be thinking about that bad habit…that will be the least of your concerns. Practicing fasting will help you live a disciplined life.

- Fasting will give you a deeper understanding of God’s word as His Holy Spirit will become real to you.

- Fasting will help you find direction in your life when you do not know which way to turn. Impossible things will suddenly resolve themselves.

- Fasting will cause you to be very sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Hearing a simple praise song will sometimes make you feel like you are being enveloped in a warm blanket. You will come to know the Comforter.

Fasting in the life of Jesus:
Fasting is mentioned all through the Bible, but I am mostly going to focus on Jesus, who is our example. It would take a book to cover all the fasting in the Bible in depth. First let’s cover the basics of whether fasting is even biblical and relevant to us.

- Jesus is our example and He fasted for forty days before He began His earthly ministry (Matt 4:2). He probably drank water and fasted from food because at the end, He was hungry, but not thirsty.

Giving, praying, and fasting were to be a part of His disciples lives. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus said:
- When you Give to the needy (Matt 6:2)
- When you Pray (Matt 6:5)
- When you Fast (Matt 6:16)

- Jesus said that one day, the Bridegroom would be taken away and in those days, His disciples would fast. He has now been taken away and these are the days that He spoke of. And they said to Him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” (Luke 5:33–35 ESV)

- Some strongholds require fasting and prayer together. In Matthew 17 the disciples of Jesus ran into a demon of epilepsy that they could not cast out. When they brought the boy to Jesus, He cast it out. When the disciples asked Him why they could not, He said: “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:21 AMP)

Why did people fast?
Fasting brings the power of God into your life. Jesus was baptized and full of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:1) but after fasting forty days and beating the temptation, He came out in the “Power” of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:14) and began His ministry on earth. There were no recorded miracles before His fast.

Fasting clears the airways where you can hear the Lord speaking to you. In Luke 2:36, a widow named Anna prayed and fasted at the temple and recognized the baby Jesus immediately. Also, she was in the right place at the right time.

The Apostles fasted and prayed before they made big decisions, sent out missionaries (Acts 13:3), or appointed leaders (Acts 14:23).

David fasted for mercy (2Sam 12:22). Judah fasted when in trouble (2Chr 20:3). Ezra fasted for protection (Ezra 8:21). Nehemiah fasted in repentance (Neh 1:4). Esther fasted for favor (Esth 4:16). Daniel fasted for wisdom and insight (Daniel 9:3). The people of Nineveh repented with fasting and God spared their city (Jonah 3:5).

Fasting is to humble yourself, not to draw attention:
As with many other things, when religious people show off their pious acts to call attention to themselves, they will get no reward from God. If you fast to be seen by men, then you already have your reward. The word “Hypocrite” means “Actor.”

Jesus said: “And whenever you are fasting, do not look gloomy and sour and dreary like the hypocrites, for they put on a dismal countenance, that their fasting may be apparent to and seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full already.” (Matthew 6:16 AMP)

We have been on many fasts over the years, and at first we were very paranoid about telling anyone, but that became a bondage in itself. When you are on a fast and someone asks you to dinner, you should not have to make up lies as to why you cannot go. So now we operate on a need-to-know basis. If a friend invites us to dinner during a fast, we just honestly tell them that we are on a fast right now, maybe we can catch up later. They understand, and we do not have to come up with excuses.

How fasting changed my own life:
In the early 1990s, I was painting condominiums making $6 an hour when I got a job with the Fluor Daniel Corporation as a maintenance foreman over a crew. It paid $13.50 an hour and had great benefits. The boss loved me. Many weeks I would bring home $1,000 after overtime and in the south, that was great money. It was by far the best job that I had ever worked at, but I had to work 12 hours every Saturday and Sunday and could not attend church. Soon I was able to afford a new home.

After about three years of working there, I became very zealous for the Lord. It was a personal revival. I would often listen to the Bible or sermons all day and all night even though I was not attending church. One of those days I heard a teaching by Derek Prince on fasting and it excited my spirit so much that I began a two week fast from food and drank only water.

The first week was full of annoying withdrawal symptoms, stomach pains, and bad attitudes. Nothing spiritual seemed to happen, just the noise of my deprived flesh screaming. The second week, I began to walk in a peace that I had never known before up to that point. When I heard a scripture from the Bible, a tremble would run through my body. Simply listening to a praise song would bring tears to my eyes. Sometimes the presence of God would settle on me, and my knees would buckle.

When I spoke the Word to someone, it was like I hit them between the eyes. One day I was working on the side of a building in a man-lift with one of my crew. We were about 60 feet up in the air. Looking back, it was mean, but I bounced the lift a few times and told him that if it broke, I knew where I was going, and then asked him if he did. He was a black man but he almost turned white. He told me the next morning that he rushed home, knelt by his bed and gave his heart to Jesus.

I repented of everything that I could remember, several times. Then I began to pray crazy prayers for the Lord to remove anything from my life that was holding me back. I just wanted to be closer to Him. I gave Him permission to have His way in my life.

At the end of the two weeks, they called me to the office and laid me off.

Well, that was not I was expecting or praying or fasting about, but the upside was that I could now attend church. The downside was that I was now unemployed with a new house payment. So I began to look for work, but none could be found. For some places, I was now overqualified. Others paid a third of what I was making so they thought that I would not stay and would not hire me.

Once a painting company hired me over the phone and told me show up on Monday. I prayed on the way down for the Lord to close the doors that He wanted me to stay out of and open the doors that I should walk through. When I got there, they had hired someone else that they thought was me, so no job for me. God shut the door.

I so wanted to serve God in any way that I could and as I attended church, someone out of the blue offered to pay my tuition for Bible College, so I enrolled. I could not find a job anywhere, and some days, I just went fishing. I would get up really early when the sun was coming up and the fog was just lifting from the black water of Waccamaw river and spend the day, just me and the Lord praying, fasting and listening to the Bible. I never really caught anything to speak of, but the last week of my unemployment, on the last cast before I headed home, I landed a 7 pound 3 ounce largemouth bass, which for the Waccamaw river is a big fish. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).

I prayed and told the Lord that I just wanted to be able to listen to the Bible during the day because it helped a lot with my school work. "Wherever you put me, please let me be able to listen to Your word.” I should have been more specific. I was thinking of working in a Christian bookstore or a church, and being around Christians all day. He had other plans for me.

I had just drew my last unemployment check and I was beginning to panic, when a temp service called me that I had put an application in with. A job had came open at a brass polishing plant called “Miracle Finishing” in my hometown of Conway South Carolina.

When I went down for an interview, the manager looked at me and the first thing that he said was: “Are you ready to start? Be sure to bring something to listen to because it is pretty boring here.” Then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said “This is what you asked Me for, to listen to My word.” I knew without a doubt that it was Him speaking and I agreed to start the next day.

Miracle Finishing was a prophetic name. It was a dirty, dark little hole-in-the-wall housed in a 60-year-old brick building that had changed hands many times. We polished brass plumbing parts by hand using huge buffing machines. It was horribly loud and dangerous. The machine would sometimes snatch a faucet away from you and spit it back at you with such force that it would knock you down. Every day I went home black as smut from the compound dust and our skin became tinted green from the brass.

It was a dead end job that paid about $5 an hour. You could see despair and hopelessness in the face of the people. The only people that worked here were those that had no choice. It was a last resort. Many were homeless. No one cared about anything. Most did various drugs. They would gather in circles and smoke pot, even the manager. Everyone came in hungover and were just hanging onto life. Huge jam boxes blasted death metal music all day so loud that you could feel it on your clothes.

And God put me right in the middle of them, and I knew it. My brother would come and visit and ask me what I was doing there, and tell me of other jobs that may be open. The owner of the company even asked me what I was doing there when I upgraded the company computer on my lunch break.

I knew that the Lord had put me there so I submitted and humbled myself like it was a game. I knew in my spirit that anything this bad had to be a test and that it would end.

I was around 28 years old, healthy and fit from hard work and weighed about 200 pounds. I fasted as much as I ate. The building was over 110 degrees in the summer and freezing in the winter. In time I was down to 160 pounds and thin as a rail, but probably the strongest spiritually that I have ever been.

Each day I polished brass parts at my machine while the Bible blasted through my headphones and I prayed in the Spirit, all day. At night, I attended seminary and worked on my degree. Weeks went by and nothing happened.

Finally during a week long fast, as I was working at the machine, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit suddenly settle on me like a warm covering. Then I felt something thick like oil being poured over the top of my head and running down my face and neck. I was totally convinced that someone was playing a trick on me and looked around then felt my head and face, but it was dry. Looking back, the Lord anointed me that day.

A morning soon after that, the guy working beside was being particularly obnoxious and blasting “Hells Bells” at 5 AM so loud that it hurt my teeth and I could not hear the Bible in my headphones at all. Something rose up inside of me and I suddenly declared “I claim this place in the name of Jesus Christ! This is now holy ground. satan, if you have anyone here that you want to keep, then you better get them out of here now!” A couple of hours later at the morning break, the guy beside me packed up his radio and quit. I never saw him again.

I fasted, prayed and listened to the Bible in my headphones, kept my head down and worked at my machine. I never witnessed or told anyone that I was a Christian. I sort of resented being there and was in survival mode just trying to make a living. But the environment began to change around me. People began to follow me and started to borrow my Bible CDs and teachings that they saw me carrying.

To shorten this up, they fired the manager and gave me his job. Then without me starting it or saying anything, the entire crew would form a prayer circle in the mornings and begin the day with prayer. They began to encourage me. When someone was injured, we all anointed them with oil and prayed for them. The Bible played over the intercom through the entire building. We all attended church together, when I went to church, I filled my entire row with visitors. The pastor loved me.

Eventually, Miracle Finishing was absorbed by another company, Wolverine Brass, and the Lord pushed me into my own computer business, which is a story of its own. Fasting changes things in your life and will make it exciting. Most of the testimonies in my life come from seasons of fasting.

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Another time we were fasting for seven days and on the last day, I went into my prayer room and felt that we were supposed to fast on until 10 days. I ignored it. When I came out of my prayer room, and my wife from hers, we sat down at the table and she said “I believe that we are supposed to fast 10 days.” I looked at the clock and it was 10:10. I knew that it was the Lord speaking, so we continued on.

On the tenth day, my son who had not spoken to me in over a year because of past divorce drama, drove up in my yard and we talked a while. My wife and I went to a family thanksgiving dinner and it suddenly became a prayer meeting. With all the nephews home from jail, we lined them up and as we prayed for them, they crumpled to the floor in tears. There was power flowing from us. My brother looked at me and said “I don’t know what you have done, but you are really on fire.”

When we visited our church that Sunday, the pastor’s wife asked us to pray for her, so we sat her in a chair and anointed her with oil. As we prayed she felt like her chair was being spun in a circle and that she was being lifted into the air. When she returned to us, with her eyes wide, she exclaimed that she had never experienced anything like that. We were carrying power, and it was from fasting.

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Over the years, I began to fast longer. I started with three days, then seven days, then two weeks, then three weeks, then thirty days, then forty days. I can share story after story of where a hopeless situation became a blessing by fasting. Eventually the Lord put me into ministry, but the miracles produced by fasting continue.

Not that long ago, I was working for a Christian company when the Lord began speaking to me to step back. I could not understand why He would want me leave my great job. I loved my job and it was the first time in my life that I got to work in a Christian environment. But the nagging feeling continued and my dreams were increasingly plagued with bad things like cars running off the road, or rolling backwards with no brakes and such.

Frustrated I started a forty-day juice fast to clear the air where I could get a better answer. I ate no food during this time, but lived off of water and vegetable juice. A couple of weeks into the fast, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was supposed to leave that job and there were no doors open elsewhere. In blind faith I gave my notice and started updating my resume to look for work. Quitting a good job in your forties is not that smart. I did not understand, but I knew that the Lord was speaking to me.

On the last week of our fast, the owner called me and told me that he had spent the weekend in prayer and the Lord told him to turn the ministry over to me. I went into the fast looking at becoming jobless and facing unemployment, and came out of the fast in our own ministry. We then incorporated as Refreshing Hope Ministries.

Fasting will cause the right things to happen even when you do not know what they are.

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Health Concerns:
I have done fasts for over twenty-five years and the only health changes that I have encountered were positive. If you are on prescription medication or have physical problems like diabetes, then maybe you should consult your doctor before starting a food fast. Though there are alternatives, everyone has something they like, that they can give up for a while. I often fast from gaming during my fasts and use that time to seek God by reading the Bible or journaling instead. I know people that fast from television. Everyone can do some type of fast and it is all valid. Abstaining from something that you enjoy and then using that time to intentionally seek the Lord is the core idea of fasting. 

In my experience, fasting has brought healing. A few years ago, I began having severe stomach problems, much like irritable bowel syndrome and it was becoming increasingly difficult to attend prayer meetings and such. I was so embarrassed because every time that it would get quiet to pray, my stomach would go to rumbling and churning uncontrollably, almost like it could sense it.

That August, we did a 30-day juice fast with fresh squeezed vegetable juice made out of kale, celery, carrots, apples and the like. By the third week we felt fifteen years younger and where we would usually come home from work and crash in the recliner exhausted, we would go walk on the beach for an hour. We felt great and had more energy than normal. By the end of the fast, my stomach problems had gone completely away and they have never returned. Something was built up in my system and giving it a reboot gave it time to heal properly. That or I received some deliverance during the fast, either way the problem was gone.

We have a great friend that is in his eighties and was having problems with his blood pressure, cholesterol and being sleepy all the time. He began replacing his lunch with fresh vegetable juice and his doctors are amazed at his progress. His blood pressure came down, he has lost weight, he is alert and his cholesterol has came into balance. Even fasting a meal has benefits.

When to fast:
There is no real set time to fast for a Christian. Certainly when the Lord calls you to fast, He will give you the grace and it is easy. But if we find that He has not called us to fast in a long time, then we declare a fast anyway and just set a start and stop date.

We used to fast every Wednesday from morning to morning with only water. Later we changed to fasting ten days a month, one full week and three Wednesdays. For a while we fasted one week a month. Lately we have done a “Daniel Fast” for the month of April and a “Juice Fast” for the month of August.

There is no wrong time to fast, though personally, I do not like fasting in the winter months because you are already cold and empty and the cold weather seems to magnify it. There is nothing like a warm bowl of soup on a cold winters day and replacing that with a glass of cold water will leave a memory that you will not soon forget. I stick to the warmer months for long fasts, though a few days we may do anytime for a quick tune-up.

Types of fasts:
There are many types of fasts mentioned in the Bible. I will cover some of them below. Everyone can do some type of fast and it is all valid. Abstaining from something that you enjoy and then using that time to intentionally seek the Lord is the core idea of fasting:

Exodus 34:28 Moses fasted forty days and nights with no food or water because he was in the supernatural presence of God. Warning: do not try this at home, unless you are literally standing in the Lord’s presence. Water is vital to your body functions and going without water for more than three days can kill you. I would not recommend fasting without water unless you have a clear word from the Lord.

Esther 4:16 Esther and her young women fasted three days and nights without food or water before she went in to see the king. She needed emergency help from the Lord and took drastic measures - hence, no water.

Daniel 10:2 Daniel did a twenty-one day vegan type fast where he “ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” We do this fast sometimes and find it refreshing. We eat salads, vegetables, fruits and nuts along with water. After a few weeks we have a sharper mind, feel better and our spiritual ears are restored. It is a completely valid fast from the Bible that almost anyone can do.

Luke 4:2 Jesus fasted forty days and nights, probably on just water. Luke said that He ate nothing, and afterwards was hungry but it does not mention water or being thirsty.

Jonah 3:6 The city of Nineveh did a corporate fast and even the livestock were not allowed to eat or drink. Though Jonah had declared that the city would be destroyed in forty days, when they humbled themselves, God showed them mercy and turned away. Desperate times called for desperate actions.

Typically for us we do a Daniel fast and eat vegetables, fruit and nuts, or a juice fast where we live off only water and vegetable juice. Straight water is a great fast but if you go very long and work, you will have no energy at all. Still, this is the way that I fasted when I was younger.

I know some people that fast from reality television because it means that much to them. I believe that you can give up anything for a while as a fast, but replace that time with something that will draw you closer to God. Everyone has something they like, that they can give up for a while. I often fast from gaming during my fasts and use that time to seek God by reading the Bible or journaling instead. I know people that fast from television. Everyone can do some type of fast and it is all valid. Abstaining from something that you enjoy and then using that time to intentionally seek the Lord is the core idea of fasting. 

I have found as I get older that water fasts are very difficult because I need energy to keep working. So a couple of years ago, we started juice fasting and it has been great for us. Sometimes we actually have more energy and feel like going for a walk on the beach after work. On a recent forty day fast, I ate no food but I drank about anything that I wanted. That said, there are things that do not work well on an empty stomach like coffee or milk. I mostly lived on:

* Water ( with a little lemon juice - great for cleansing your system and dissolving kidney stones )
* Almond Milk ( Very good - has a little protein )
* V8 Vegetable Juice ( or fresh vegetable juice from a juicer )
* Apple Juice
* Cranberry Juice
* When going to the gym and getting really weak, I would have a vegan protein shake with almond milk.

I avoided things with caffeine like coffee and tea. I also avoided dairy products because of gas and bloating.

What to expect:
When you start drawing close to God and intentionally seeking His face, the enemy will come to stop you. When Jesus went on His fast, the enemy came to tempt Him. It will happen to you as well. Bad attitudes, road rage, and things that you thought were not in you will rise to the top. God causes this junk to show itself so that it can be dealt with and you can get rid of it. Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

When you decide to fast, be resolute. Determine what you are going to allow and for how long, and do not waver. Set a start and stop date and do not tweak your diet as you go forward. If you allow any room for doubt, the enemy will hound you everyday. You are building discipline. Compromise is counter productive. Do not give the enemy an inch.

Prepare yourself. We make plans to go on a fast now and start clearing out our refrigerator and getting rid of the things that would tempt us. The week before, we change to a very light diet to make the transition easier. For example, on our last forty day juice fast, we ate salads, vegetables and some grilled fish the week before we began the actual fast. We adapted to it much better than a sudden stop. Also the extra fiber will help keep your system from becoming constipated when you stop eating at all.

Know that at times you may feel real hunger pains, but your body does not really need food. Your stomach operates by habit. If you have a couple of glasses of water, it will fool your stomach and the pains will subside.

Drink lots and lots of water or other liquids. This will flush out your kidneys as your body is detoxing, helps break down body fat and process it, and many other health benefits. Your body needs water to operate properly. Try and avoid coffee and tea as they are both stimulants and for me at least, do not set well on an empty stomach.

Make time to spend in prayer every day of the fast. I like to keep a journal and make small notes each day during the fast, write down what the Lord reveals to me and the dreams that I have. It is great to meditate on later. Also, create a prayer list of things that you want to see happen in your life and begin to pray over those every day. When they come to pass, scratch them off. By the end of my last long fast, my prayer list was empty.

When you start to eat again, ease back into it with some vegetables and salads. Going for a giant steak will wreak havoc on your digestive system and I say that from experience. This is often easier said than done.

Your stomach will have shrunk after a lengthy fast and though you may feel that you can eat an elephant, after a few bites, you will be full. If you use restraint from here on and don’t stretch your stomach back out, you can be very satisfied with small portions which will help those needing to lose weight.

Also after no food for a while, your taste buds will be sharpened and food tastes insanely good, though you will not be able to eat but a little before you are completely full. Here is a note from my journal describing my first meal after a long fast:

After forty days without food, we decided to break the fast with soup and a sandwich. We went to the market and bought fresh romaine lettuce, tomatoes, smoked turkey, pepper jack cheese and whole wheat bread. Then back at home we assembled our creation, and I was generous with the mayonnaise. We heated up a cast iron pan with a little sweet cream butter, and toasted the bread carefully.

As we sat at the candle lit table and took the first bite, I trembled all over and my eyes began to well up with tears. The creamy mayo and crisp lettuce tasted better than anything that I had ever eaten in my entire life. Every bite was sheer bliss and chills ran up and down my spine. Fasting will truly make you appreciate food and greatly sharpen your sense of smell and taste. Eating that meal was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Notes from a forty day fast juice fast:
Day one: was ok, I was only hungry with minor stomach pains.

Days two and three: I started having terrible headaches which were caused by caffeine withdrawal from my daily coffee. Tempers flare and minor things that would not usually bother me, start to become very annoying.

Day four: We lost about a pound a day during this stage, then after a couple of weeks it slowed to about 1/2 a day. I am cold and having to use a blanket in my prayer room, in summer.

Day five: I was cold all the time. Digesting food produces warmth. Without food, you can become cold even in the summer. We once fasted the month of February and it was one of the most miserable times of my life. I was cold and hungry and miserable for a month. I no longer fast in winter but prefer April and August now.

Day six: Went to the gym but after 30 minutes was completely exhausted. Shoulders and neck are really sore and stiff. Various body aches and pains as our body starts to detox. Planning on making the ultimate hotdog…

Day seven: Sore, achy and eyes are blurry. Beginning to have a calmness inside. The hunger is gone. Any exercise drags us down. Dreaming of a pizza with a porterhouse on top of it.

Day eight: Very difficult day. I had a horrible attitude. (Here I started to get insight about things in our life that we needed to address. They became irritants like pearls in an oyster.)

Day nine: My attitude was some better today and things have mostly quieted down. I am beginning to feel small waves of the presence of the Lord here and there.

Day ten: This fast seems very graceful so far. I have not been hungry at all lately.

Day eleven: We set aside this forty day span to be at home as much as possible and spend time with the Lord. We have canceled everything that we can. In the evenings we are watching Bobby Flay’s “Throwdown” and dreaming of the perfect country fried steak.

Day twelve: We went to gym today because we were so sore and stiff. I feel light headed if I stand up to fast. I feel sudden bursts of inspiration and say things that sometimes surprise me, in a good way.

Day thirteen: I have lost 15.5 pounds as of this morning. (I had a very interesting dream about work). Making plans to buy a grille, a fry daddy and a turkey cooker. ( We actually didn’t ).

Day fourteen: I feel like the Lord told me that a prayer of mine was soon to be answered.

Day fifteen: Had an episode where our heart was racing yesterday. After drinking some juice, it seemed better. Down 17 pounds.

Day sixteen: A neighbor suddenly showed up at our house today in tears. We prayed for them to be baptized in the Holy Spirit at our kitchen table and they began to sing in the spirit.

Day seventeen: I spent most the weekend reading and writing quietly at home. We are taking this month off from church because we serve so much there, it is very noisy.

Day twenty: Had a glass of V8 vegetable juice and it was shockingly good. Fresh juice is not easy to get when on the go. (Started having some issues at work at this point and became confused as to what to do.)

Day twenty-one: I don’t know what the future holds for us. Things have came to a head at work and it looks like I may soon be unemployed, but the Lord has been giving me dreams that we are going the wrong direction.

Day twenty-seven: I gave my resignation today. The Lord has given me six consecutive dreams, all negative. I don’t know what else to do but step away from this. I believe that this it is a step in the right direction though I do not understand. This mornings prayer time was very anointed.

Day twenty-eight: That was the right decision. There has been a huge increase in the presence of the Lord since I resigned. I do not know what the future holds, but I know that God is in it! My brother came to see me today and he was in tears with the presence of God all over him. He said that he has been waking up like this every day and wanted to know if I had been fasting.

Day twenty-nine: I had another dream from the Lord last night. ( Left out due to its personal nature. )

Day thirty: (The dream came to pass and involved workplace drama). Fasting has really brought some things out into the open.

Day thirty-one: I feel there is a change coming.

Day thirty-two: It’s now Labor Day. It feels strange to not have eaten since July. I weighed myself this morning and I have lost 21 pounds.

Day thirty-three: (I had another dream last night, but this one was positive. The Lord showed me that we would be fine.)

Day thirty-four: I have been waking up at 4 AM the last few mornings and praying for a while.

Day thirty-five: Many things have suddenly changed in our life. We have pruned somethings back at church, pulled back from working for some others, left my job, and suddenly now we are in full time ministry at RHM. Wow…

Day thirty-seven: I am beginning to get hungry now and then. Maybe it is because I am getting close to the end of the fast and I know that.

Day thirty-nine: One more day. My wife had a dream last night of a rocket ship that was about to take off. As I was reading a devotional this morning, it said that fasting was a booster rocket. Good things are coming!

Day forty: All in all this has been a great fast, but I am now ready to eat again. The last week my hunger has been increasing. I have lost 27 pounds over the last 40 days. God has removed several things out of our lives and now put us in our own ministry.

The End:
Thank you for reading! As you can see, fasting is an intricate part of our life and many of the testimonies that I write about, came out of seasons of fasting.

Fasting is real, it will break the chains and cause the impossible to become possible. We went into the fast above confused about what to do. The Lord pruned some things out of our life, and instead of becoming unemployed, we ended up in full time ministry. By the end, the confusion was gone and we had a clear vision from Him.

I encourage you, if your health allows, to try fasting. You have nothing to lose (but weight) and everything to gain.