Fasting

Fasting has the potential for significant impact in our lives. Through fasting and prayer, the Holy Spirit can transform your life personally and God can speak to you in new and dynamic ways.

Fasting and prayer can also work on a much grander scale. According to Scripture, personal experience, and observation, we are convinced that when God’s people fast with a proper Biblical motive (seeking God’s face and not His hand) with a broken, repentant, and contrite spirit, God will hear from heaven and heal our lives, our churches, our communities, our nation, and our world. Fasting and prayer can bring about revival – a change in our nation, the nations of the earth, and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Biblical fasting is, very simply, denying oneself something for the sake of seeking and honoring God.

“Prayer is connecting with God; fasting is disconnecting ourselves from the world.”

That’s a great way to describe the feeling. In addition to food, you can also fast other things that keep you connected to the world. These may include television, social media, video games, and more.

 


Types of Fasts:

  • Complete Fast
    In this type of fast, you drink only liquids, typically water with light juices as an option.
  • 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.
  • Partial Fast
    This fast is sometimes called the “Jewish Fast” and involves abstaining from eating any type of food in the morning and afternoon. This can either correlate to specific times of the day, such as 6:00 am to 3:00 pm, or from sunup to sundown.
  • 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. For example, 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.