Prayer Focus-Fasting

JOHN SHIRK – In the Year of Focus, we take a look at fasting.

In the Bible, fasting is often connected with the practice of going without food to seek God more fervently.

Sometimes, people fasted to repent of sins. At other times, people fasted in a time of crisis, such as Queen Esther when her people’s survival was under threat. At other times, believers fasted to seek God’s direction or commit leaders to ministry. This happened in the early church.

There are right ways and wrong ways to do fasting. The LORD says in Isaiah 58, verse 6, “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? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.”

Fasting is worth examining for a faith-focused life.

John Shirk

john@wjtl.com