Jan 31st 18 Posted by Natalie Nichols in Fasting

What’s Your Fasting Testimony? Share It and Put God on Display

What did God do as a result of your fasting and prayer? If He worked in your life in any way, take a moment to share your testimony. It will put God on display—and bless and encourage others!

Anything God did is testimony-worthy! Although dramatic accounts are wonderful, they’re not the only kind that demonstrate God’s goodness and faithfulness. Anything God has done in your life—large or small—is worth telling others about and expressing praise and thanks to God!

What Did God Do During Your Fast?

What did God do during your fast?

For example:

• Did you hear His voice more clearly?
• Did you sense His presence more strongly?
• Were you convicted of sins, prompting you to repent and stop sinning?
• Did your hunger for God increase?
• Did God speak to you through His word?
• Did you experience God’s sustaining power during the fast—enabling you to persevere through weakness and keep your fast?
• Did you realize what bottom line desires have been controlling you? Perhaps desires for food, or television, or technology, or sports, or entertainment?
• Did you discover what you previously submitted to time and again in order to cover up the weakness of your hunger for God?
• Did you receive an answer to prayer as a result of your fast?

When we seek God first, He honors it … even months afterward. Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (HCSB). When we prioritize God and His kingdom, as we do when we fast and pray, God responds. He rewards us.

“When you fast…your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:17-18, NIV).

When we fast, we receive blessings that would not have been ours had we not sought God first above all else. This does not mean our lives become perfect and trial-free. No, God still allows hardships; they are of far too much spiritual benefit to us. But when we fast, things happen in the midst of our trials that we would have missed had we not fasted. Blessings occur weeks, months, even years after our season of fasting and prayer.

Have you engaged in a season of fasting and prayer before? If so, were there things that occurred after the fast—even weeks or months afterward—that you felt were God’s response to your diligent seeking?

For example:

• Did you receive direction or wisdom from God?
• Did you receive protection or provision from Him?
• Were you able to hear God better throughout the year as a result of
  your fasting and prayer?
• Did God continue the spiritual change in you that began during your fast?
• Did He heal a relationship?
• Did a lost loved-one come to Christ?
• Did God address one of your causes for fasting?

Personal Example: Blessings Ten Months Later

In The Secret Teller, I shared about a time when God gave me direction in the months following Pursuit 21. During the fast, I experienced the blessings that fasting always brings—the subjection of my flesh to the Spirit, the ability to hear God’s voice and sense His presence more clearly, an increased awareness of sin, repentance, etc. That alone was worth the fast!

I was also praying about a problem for which I needed a breakthrough. It was a desperate situation, so I felt led to continue beyond Pursuit 21 and fast a total of forty days. During my fast, nothing seemed to happen to address the desperate situation. But the Holy Spirit had planted the seed needed for the breakthrough—and He did so during the fast. I just hadn’t realized it. It took weeks and months for me to fully recognize it… and respond.

On my fast, God orchestrated events so that I ended up purchasing a certain book. God began faintly speaking to me during the fast through that book. But I had no idea how He would speak through it and give me specific, life-changing direction in the weeks and months to come—all from one “chance” moment on a fast when I ended up getting the last copy of an in-demand book at a conference attended by thousands of people.

Turns out, I was seeking something from God … but He was seeking something from me. My desperate situation had persisted several years, yet I had missed this critical fact. I was frustrated that God had not done something. All the while, He was waiting on me to take a certain step. I was clueless about this and would’ve remained clueless … were it not for fasting, the hungry handmaid of faith.

In the weeks following the fast, the Holy Spirit continued speaking to me through the sermons in that book. Over time, His faint whispers became deafening shouts. There was no denying His direction: God could not give the breakthrough I desired until I first took a certain step of faith—a risky, terrifying step.

It would have been disastrous had I mis-heard God and taken this step apart from His leading. So I was hesitant, wanting confirmation that it was indeed His will. God was patient; He kept reiterating and confirming that this step of faith was His will, and I must take it.

Finally, in October, ten months after my 40-day fast, I reached the place of taking that step of faith. Due to speak at a women’s conference that month, I was fasting so that I might hear what God wanted to say to the women. While I was on that fast (which would never have happened without my fast in January), God drew a line in the sand: my caution about this step of faith had become disobedience. I knew what God’s will was on the matter. He had confirmed it dozens of times. By this point, I had no justified caution. It was sheer unbelief—I ultimately didn’t trust God to come through. My disobedience was quenching the Holy Spirit.

So I had a choice: I could obey God, take the step of faith (mail the signed papers to finalize it) and God would use me at the conference—He would put His power on my words. Or I could persist in my God-grieving unbelief, and speak to the women alone, in the power of my flesh—God would not anoint me due to my sin of unbelief, and the women would not receive the bread from Heaven that they needed..

When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see my rebellion for what it was, I repented, took the faith-step and mailed the signed papers that instant. God gave me the grace to obey Him. It was monumental. Not only did God speak to the women at the conference and do a deep work in their lives, He did a work in my life… ten months after my fasting and prayer! And in addition, when the enemy whispered doubt about my obedience, or it seemed I was suffering negative consequences from the step of faith, I had total peace and 100% confidence that I’d heard God correctly. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt or worry.

None of this would have happened apart from those days of fasting and prayer in January. I had prayed about this issue for years prior. But only when I was desperate enough to fast forty days did things change. God was not the one who was changed—I was. God did not need to change; I did. I was not able to hear God like I needed to until I sought Him through fasting and prayer.

This is an example of how the results of our fast can occur weeks, months, and even years later.

Now it’s your turn!

If you’ve fasted before and you noticed ways God changed you or your situation after the fast, this is a great time to share it … while it’s fresh on your mind after Pursuit 21, while we’re on the topic! 

Take a Moment to Let Us Know

Please take a moment to let us know what God has done in your life. Your comments will encourage us greatly—and they will put God’s goodness and faithfulness on display to others!

Your testimony may also also encourage someone to enter a Biblical fast and take their prayer to a higher level! I noticed this week that quite a few people who joined Pursuit 21 this year did so after reading the testimonies from others. So if you were blessed by Pursuit 21 and feel someone else would benefit from a season of fasting and prayer, by all means, share your fasting testimony!

Questions:

• What did God do in your life during your recent season of fasting and prayer?
• Have you engaged in a season of fasting and prayer before? If so, were there things that occurred after the fast—even weeks or months later—that you felt were God’s response to your diligent seeking?
• Please take a moment to share your testimony below.

–

Fill out my online form.

–

 

 
Follow @ShadesofGrace_