Your Faith will be tested
Fasting will test your hunger (physically) and your will (mentally). More than that, it will test your faith. Fasting is a powerful experience, but is surprisingly ordinary, too. You likely will not hear angels singing or have visions of walking on clouds. Instead often fasting will feel like a grind, day after day skipping one meal after another.
Fasting is lonely. It separates you from food and people. Meanwhile God remains invisible and mostly inaudible. Separating yourself from the physical world to enter the spiritual realm is hard.
You will have thoughts like, Why am I fasting? This is crazy! What’s the purpose? I’m ready to quit.
As your faith is tested, ultimately you will be victorious and resolve to keep fighting (yes, it’s a fight). You will persevere because of your faith in the spiritual work that comes from fasting (keep reading).
Your Spirit is engaged
The Spirit is the part of the trinity that resides in us and is ever available and willing to work on our behalf. The Spirit is our intercessor that connects us, and our prayers, directly to God. I know it’s confusing because the Spirit is God, too.
By faith, fasters must expect that when you engage the body and the mind through fasting, God’s Spirit is getting energized as well. It’s an invisible dynamic, which is why it requires faith.
God’s attention will shine brighter on your life
God notices when you fast. He sees what this sacrifice means to you. When we take steps to draw nearer to God, He notices. Jesus says in Matthew 6 that God will reward you for fasting. Even if you don’t experience anything spiritually or physically (except weight loss and hunger), or realize immediate answer to prayer, you trust that fasting puts God’s giant spotlight squarely on your life. [Refer to Divine Applause, Chapter 4, 11, 12]
You’ll tap into a great power source
Jesus told the disciples that certain miracles could only be performed through prayer and fasting. Some acts of God require more than just prayer alone. Fasting is what you do when you’re ready to open your heart and pour your deepest burdens out to God.
You want favor and protection on the lives of your children, your grandchildren, and your grandchildren’s children? The fasting power runs deep. You want God’s anointing on your future spouse whom you may not have even met? Fast! You want deliverance from addiction and for God bind the hands of the enemy? Fast.
Or maybe you just want to know that God hears your ordinary prayers and that His attention on your life shines just a little big brighter. Fasting does this.
Fasting is turbo-charged prayer. Fasting throws kerosene on the fire to fame up the prayers, taking them from Level 1 to Level 2, 3,4…
If there’s a prayer dial, fasting turns it up. If prayer is measured in ounces, fasting makes prayers felt in pounds. However prayer intensity is measured by God, fasting raises to a greater power.
