Today we will be dealing with 20 bible verses about fasting and prayer
What is fasting?
Fasting is an act of challenging your self to abstain from anything that will serve as a stumbling block to our prayers.
Fasting as a Christian is choosing to stay away from food , water or deprive oneself of what you enjoy doing for a particular period of time to build or strengthen your spiritual hunger. When fasting we set aside fleshly and our carnal desires to commune intensely with God and pray.It’s like telling God I’m being sincere with you, I’m hungry for you, I’m thirsty for you, it’s like we are concentrating our total self to the holy spirit.
We can’t fast without praying.
Praying without fasting is like going on hunger strike and making your body suffer at the end of the day or better say you want to go on diet because at the end of the day nothing is achieved. Most importantly Jesus expected us to fast and pray. It’s our way of Life, it’s part of a Christian journey that brings about your growth with god the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Fasting and prayer has so many benefits. It build your relationship with Him remember when the bible says we should build our trust in God because He is our solid rock and every other is a sinking sand. It helps us overcome temptations, conquer the wiles of the Devil, build a very intimate relationship with God, gets more insight from the word of God. Fasting and prayer opens our eyes to things that we do that are displeasing and can separate us from God’s grace. We have countless benefits of fasting and prayer.
Here we will talk about bible verses that shows how Jesus Himself values fasting and praying.
1. Matthew 6:16-18
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
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. 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.
4. 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.
5. Luke 2:37
And then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.
6. Ezra 8:21-23
Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.” So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.
7. Isaiah 58:1-10
Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?
8. Matthew 9:14-15
Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
9. Psalm 35:13
But I, when they were sick— I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.
10. Psalm 69:10
When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.
11. 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.
12. Isaiah 58:3
Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.
13. Acts 13:2-3
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.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
14. Judges 20:26
Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.
15. Zechariah 7:5
Say to all the people of the land and the priests, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?
16. Mark 2:18
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?
17. 2 Samuel 12:21
Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.
18. Daniel 6:18
Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.
19. Nehemiah 9:1
Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.
20. 2 Samuel 12:16
David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.
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