Step Four in Crisis: Show God You’re Serious
By Rick Warren
“As I prayed, I fasted and wore rough sackcloth, and I sprinkled myself with ashes.” Daniel 9:3 (TLB)
Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9 provides us with a great model for how to pray during a crisis. In the last few devotionals, we’ve learned from this passage to let God speak to us before we speak to him. Then, we focus our attention on God and seek him. And, we express our desires with emotions.
Next, the kind of prayer God answers during a crisis is one where we demonstrate our seriousness. You need to signal to God that you are determined about your need. It isn’t just a whim or a casual thought. You need to let God see how important it is to you.
Daniel described three different ways he signaled his seriousness to God: “To show my sadness, I fasted, put on rough cloth, and sat in ashes” (Daniel 9:3 NCV).
We’re going to focus on the first thing he did: He fasted from food. Fasting is a spiritual discipline that people have employed for centuries.
Jesus said some miracles could only happen through prayer and fasting, not by prayer alone. Why? Fasting tells God you’re serious about your prayer.
Moses fasted before he received the Ten Commandments. The Israelites fasted before they went into many of their major battles. Daniel fasted in order to receive guidance from God. Nehemiah fasted before he began a major building project. Jesus fasted in victory over temptation.
Today, there are some negative connotations to fasting because we don’t like giving up something we love. But that shows that we don’t understand the power behind fasting—not because of what we do but because of how God responds to the humility and earnestness we show when we fast over something.
Fasting doesn’t have to be related to food. It’s about removing other things from your life so you can focus on prayer. For instance, you could give up watching TV or using social media for a specific time and use that time to pray.
What other things would you consider fasting from?
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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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