What is Fasting?
Fasting is the spiritual practice of giving up food or other activity for a period of time in order to better focus your thoughts and attention on God. For more info on the types of fasts, check below!
Why 21 days?
The 21 days is to give you the motivation to try and establish new habits in your life involving prayer. Many people make new lofty goals in the new year. What if we committed to praying every day for the next 21 days and then see what God can do with it?
Why Should I Fast?
Fasting provides us with an opportunity to be closer in union with God, and grow our recognition of our dependence on Him. It helps us power down our physical appetites, so that our spiritual appetites can become stronger.
Why are we emphasizing prayer with fasting?
Without the practice of prayer our fast is just making us hungry or will make us really miss the thing we gave up. With every instance of hunger or desire to do the activity we gave up we have an opportunity and a reminder to commune with God our Father.
We are challenging every person in our church to participate in this 21 days of prayer and fasting! We will spend 21 days refocusing and dedicating this year to the Lord through intentional prayer and the discipline of fasting. Each day of the month will have a prayer focus, and each week there will be a weekly challenge. Check the info out below to find out more!
Soul Fast
This fast is a great option if you do not have much experience fasting food, have health issues that prevent you from fasting food, or if you wish to refocus certain areas of your life that are out of balance.
You might choose to stop using social media or watching television for the duration of the fast and then carefully bring that element back into your life in healthy doses at the conclusion of the fast.
Partial Fast
This fast involves abstaining from eating any type of food during designated times of day. This can either be specific times of the day, such as 6:00 am to 3:00 pm, or from sunup to sundown.
An example of this fast might be that you skip breakfast and lunch, and only eat dinner once the sun has gone down. In the same way this challenges us physically it is wonderful reminder of our need to fill ourselves with God's word often.
Selective Fast
This type of fast involves removing certain elements from your diet. One example of a selective fast is the Daniel Fast, during which you remove meat, sweets, and bread from your diet and consume water and juice for fluids and fruits and vegetables for food.
It is encouraged to talk with your doctor before removing certain foods from your diet.
Complete Fast
In this type of fast, you drink only liquids, typically water with light juices as an option.
It is encouraged that you talk to your physician before doing this type of fast. This is the most intense type of fast. If you have never fasted for a long period of time, we would suggest starting with a smaller number of days, and then participating in the fast in one of the previous mentioned ways.
The timing or type of your fast is not as important as the strength of your focus on God as you fast.
Next Steps
1. Decide why you want to fast
2. Decide what kind of fast you want to do
3. Talk to your family about your fast
4. Schedule time with God in you daily calendar
Give yourself a reason to fast, and something to focus your prayer on through the 21 days.
Pray and ask God what he might have you fast.
Get accountability with people close to you, it will help you stay on track when it gets tough.
Make a plan for how you will daily spend time with God in prayer. Make an appointment, and don't let anything get in the way!
