Fasting and Prayer

Faith needs the Word of God AND prayer for its full development and growth!

Prayer needs fasting to gain power to bring deliverance to people and circumstances that are difficult! Fasting has produced wonders when prayer and faith came together! They are MIRACLES and they are happening in this century today! They will still happen when people fast and pray because fasting with prayer will break the power of evil! Isaiah 58:6 says, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness!"

In Korea, Christians go often to "Prayer Mountain," owned and operated by the Yoido Full Gospel (Assemblies of God) Church in Seoul, Korea. I have heard many testimonies of diseases totally healed and/or circumstances completely reversed. Are the Korean people the only people who experience these phenominal answers to prayer? No! People from many countries who heard of Prayer Mountain made application to rent a room at Prayer Mountain and traveled to Korea to spend quaility time in prayer with other believers who are also fasting and praying. On any given day, as many as 2,000 people from all over Korea and/or other countries will have visited Prayer Mountain to spend quality time in prayer.

One outstanding incident that happened while I was still a missionary in Korea, concerned a businessman. He had just returned from the bank with the payroll for his employees when the entire money bag disappeared. Stunned and frightened as to what he should do, he called his Christian associates who worked with him and told them he was going to Prayer Mountain to fast and pray. He would return when he had an answer. This is a common decision among believers in Korea when there seems to be no other recourse. It was the middle of the week. He fasted and prayed asking God to supernaturally intervene and cause the person who took the payroll to return it. By that weekend he received a call. The person on the other end of the line confessed he was the one who stole the money and asked his boss, "If I return the entire amount will you forgive me and not turn me over to the police?" When he was assured he would be forgiven, the thief drove the 30 miles to Prayer Mountain and surrendered the payroll, still in the same bag, in the same amount of bills and change as the owner had received it from the bank. "Why didn't you spend it?" the owner asked. "Every time I put my hand in the bag," the thief said, "my hand began to tremble uncontrolably and I knew this was something different....maybe God was telling me to return it." The boss forgave the thief and led him to the Lord and today the would-be thief is a born again spirit-filled believer and one of the elders of the church! What a lesson! But the greater lesson was that fasting and earnest prayer brought the answer! Today, miracles are still happening when people are desperate and serious enough to fast and pray for their answer.

"ALL things are possible to him that believeth!" Mark 9:23.

Fasting is not abstaining from meats except fish. It is not drinking only juices but continuing with a heavy daily schedule, or abstaining from some pleasures but not others. It is coming away from the cares of life to pray, especially during the time you would normally have your meals. It is making a sacrifice of your time for God Who alone can bring a supernatural answer! It was said of the Israelites, "When you fast, you still do the things you enjoy. There is no self-denial. You fill up your day with things, business or pleasure. In other words, you set your own plans how you will fast!" It is best to follow the plan God directed Isaiah to give us. The question is "To see our family born again and have healing in our life, are we serious enough to fast and pray for it?"

In Isaiah 58:6, we read of God's purposes in fasting and praying:
1. To loose the bands of wickedness, perhaps over your family, city or from witchcraft.
2. To undo heavy burdens such as your need for finances to pay bills, to find a job that will last or family squabbles and bickering.
3. To let the oppressed go free. Today many people suffer from depression, being overcome with grief, working with ungodly work partners and experiencing defiance with children.
4. To break every yoke such as drugs, alcohol, perversion, unfaithfulness, sickness, a spreading disease or weakness, continual poverty and/or bad habits.

Isaiah 58:7-8 adds, Before you begin a fast "Hide not thyself from thy own flesh." Don't pretend all is well if you know it is not. Take care to confess, repent and mend family disputes first and then when you fast and pray, your prayers will not be hindered.

God has given us solutions in His Word to every situation: how to live in divine health, see our family return to the Lord, make us strong in the calling He placed in us, give direction when we don't know what to do and to break every bondage. The answers lie within our reach. The answer is to fast and pray!