Recently, have you noticed how each day brings news of rapid geopolitical change? Terrorists mingled with migrants are streaming across international borders. Unsustainable national debts are rising. Tensions are bubbling up to a boiling point in Europe and the Pacific. Turkey and Iran are threatening to invade Israel as Middle East tensions reach the breaking point. More and more countries are in dire straits morally, economically, socially and politically. In times like these, the Bible shows believers how to use the news of the day to go to our knees in seasons of prevailing prayer and fasting.
Biblical Examples of Prayer and Fasting
Nehemiah
Nehemiah showed believers how to face the troubles of his nation with prayer and fasting (Nehemiah 1). As a sensitive and merciful believer, Nehemiah took up the mantle of intercession to cry out for his country. When he learned of the great affliction and reproach endured by his people at Jerusalem, he “mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:3-4).
As a sensitive and merciful believer, Nehemiah took up the mantle of intercession to cry out for his country.
Daniel
The Scriptures show us how Daniel resorted to prayer and fasting as he wrestled with the geopolitical change of his day. Proud Babylon was defeated as the Medes and Persians rose to power (Daniel 9:1). According to Daniel 9:2, the prophet began to search the Scriptures to understand the importance of those recent events. Daniel testified, “And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: And I prayed unto the Lord my God…” (Daniel 9:3-4).
Jehoshaphat
When faced with a massive invasion from the nations east of Jordan and the Dead Sea, good King Jehoshaphat set himself to seek the Lord with prayer and fasting. The Scriptures tell us “And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the Lord: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord” (2 Chronicles 20:3-4). As each of us seeks the Lord, we believe that the Lord will stir up others to join us.
How to Pray and Fast for Your Nation
Mourning with Humility
As Ezra pointed out, the purpose for fasting is “… that we might afflict [or humble] ourselves before our God, to seek of Him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance” (Ezra 8:21). Daniel resorted to prayer and fasting as he mourned for his nation (Daniel 10:2-3).
Praying like Jesus
Jesus fasted as He prayed and assumed that His followers would do the same (Matthew 4:2; 6:17). Jesus did not say, “If you fast,” but “when you fast” (indicating that it would be a personal choice). But Jesus emphasized that His followers would fast (Matthew 9:15). Paul reiterated that prayer and fasting is the right approach when your family faces times of trouble (1 Corinthians 7:5).
Praying like the Apostles
Prayer with fasting is associated with some of the most significant developments in the Book of Acts (Acts 11:6; 13:2-3; 14:23). Even though they were dominated by the empire of Rome, these men chose to depend upon the Lord as He built His church.
Praying like our Ancestors
Our American ancestors confronted the depravity of their day with prayer and fasting. Evangelist James McGready pastored three churches on the Kentucky frontier after the Revolutionary War. He asked the believers in those three churches to make this commitment: pray and fast on the third Saturday of each month. In 1796 he wrote,
“We feel encouraged to unite our supplications to a prayer-hearing God for the outpouring of His Spirit, that His people may be quickened and comforted, and that our children and sinners generally may be converted.” [i]
And a year later, the Lord sent a sweeping revival that filled those Kentucky campgrounds with the fear of God as repentant sinners cried out to the Lord.
At the height of that revival, George Baxter, a college president, wrote the following to Archibald Alexander:
I found Kentucky the most moral place I had ever been in. . . . A religious awe seemed to pervade the country. During the awakenings, infidel clubs closed down, houses of prostitution were boarded up, and other vexatious social problems were, at least temporarily, solved.[ii]
No matter how bad things look, the right thing for believers to do is cry out to the Lord with prayer and fasting. Would you be willing to fast and pray that the Lord would pour out His Spirit upon our nation in our day? Pray that He would bring sinners and saints to repentance.
In times like these, the Bible shows believers how to use the news of the day to send us to our knees in seasons of prevailing prayer and fasting. Whether the news contains stories of creeping depravity or the rise and fall of nations, we can cry out to God Most High and He will hear us.
©Gordon A. Dickson, www.LiveServeLead.com
Live, Serve, Lead, helping others succeed
Portions of this article are excerpts from my book, 12 Ways You Can Make a Difference in This Crazy, Mixed-up World now available on Amazon, Audible and Spotify.
[i] Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994),130, quoted in Robert H. Lescelius, “The Second Great Awakening: The Watershed Revival,” Reformation and Revival 6, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 18–19, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/06-1/6-1_lescelius.pdf.
[ii] John F. Thornbury, “Interpreting the Great Awakening,” Reformation and Revival 1, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 66, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-2/1-2_thornbury.pdf.