As Christians, prayer and fasting should be a very important part of our lives. Jesus was the Son of God but still started His ministry with fasting and prayer. The Bible says He fasted and prayed for forty days and forty nights. This is because as a human He needed to subject His body to God through fasting and prayer to accomplish the will of God for His life on earth.
Fasting and prayer help us to draw closer to God and enables us to receive spiritual strength to achieve the things that He has ordained for us. When we fast and pray our spirit, soul and body are attuned toward God. We can overcome sins and bad habits through fasting and prayer.
These Bible verses will help to understand more about fasting and prayer:
1). Joel 2:12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
2). Acts 14:23 “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”
3). Isaiah 58:6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
4). Acts 13:2 “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
5). Mark 9:29 ‘And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”’
6). Esther 4:16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
7). Acts 13:3 “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”
8). Joel 1:14 “Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.”
9). Nehemiah 1:4 “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
10). Matthew 4:2 “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”
11). Psalm 69:10 “When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.”
12). Daniel 9:3 “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.”
13). Matthew 4:4 “But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
