INTRODUCTION TO FASTING & PRAYER
#Thoughts #Prayers
Is that all we can offer is thoughts and prayers? Or… does our best response begin in prayer and continue after, “amen”?
Prayer is more than wishful thinking and offering good thoughts in others’ direction.
After bringing healing to a hurting man, preaching the Good News of God’s love, and seeing 3,000 people put their faith in Jesus and join the church, the Peter and John were arrested and threatened. After their release, they returned to meet and pray with their fellow believers. But rather than fight back with natural weapons or whine about their troubles, they prayed,
“Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus,” (Acts 4:29-30. NIV).
PRAY FIRST.
They prayed bold prayers, because they prayed regular prayers.
They prayed community- and world-changing prayers, because they prayed prayers that changed them first.
We are invited to pray HISTORY-SHAPING PRAYERS.
Is it enough to pray?
God wants to show His power and wonders through answered prayers.
“Greatest tragedy is the prayers that go unanswered, because they go unasked.” (Mark Batterson, The Circlemaker).
But let’s not stop at prayer,
“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly,” (Acts 4:31, NIV).
When we pray big bold prayers, we become bold through prayer. We are invited to participate with God in his response to our prayers.
Don’t pray then sit. Pray then act. Pray then go. Pray then give.
Let’s go ALL IN through fasting & prayer in 2025!
21 Days of Fasting and Prayer is a season to put our full focus on God, to fast and pray, and go all in by faith in 2025! A season of fasting and prayer challenges us to increase our awareness of God and a dependency on God like never before. As pastors, we genuinely believe that nearly everything significant that God does through the church is birthed in fasting and prayer. It’s not that fasting and prayer forces the hand of God. No! God’s not impressed with our fasting. Rather, fasting and prayer opens our hearts and churches for God to impress Himself on us and to do his work in us then through us.
It’s not that we need more of God; it’s that God wants more of us. Fasting and prayer is a way to give God more of us and welcome His “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” into our lives and churches.
PRAY FIRST
Let’s pray first rather than as a last resort. Let’s gather together in 21 Days of Fasting & Prayer. Rather than jumping into our plans for the New Year, we want to seek God for His plans and purposes in the 2025.
We don’t want to get busy and do first. We want to pray first.
As churches, we are joining together to fast and pray for God to do a new and powerful work in our area. On our own, we can only do our best. Together, we can only do what we do best together. But when we pray together, God brings his best to our best and cities, communities, and churches are powerfully impacted.
When we “pray first,” we are praying like everything depends on God. But it also means that we do something when we finish this season of prayer. Then, we work like everything depends on us. After “amen,” we get active becoming part of the God-response to the prayers we’ve prayed.
FASTING & PRAYER FOR OUR CITY
Let’s join together as the Church in our region to seek God, to humble ourselves in repentance and leverage our natural appetites as alarm clocks to focus our attention fully on God. Let’s use the start of 2025 as a time of sacred intensity, as a spiritual renewal.
We are “For Our City” churches unified in prayer as the Church. We are praying boldly for: God’s Kingdom to grow through local thriving churches, for healing in our communities, for transformation in our cities, and for new spiritual life to come to our nation and generation.
We unify in a 21-day fast together following the model in the Book of Daniel, claiming breakthrough from God for the spiritual needs of ourselves and our communities, asking God's blessing over the church of this region. Let’s unite our hearts and focus our prayers and leverage our desires, in order to seek God’s face in repentance and humility.
This guide provides more instructions about how you can be a part of this region-wide 21 Days of Fasting & Prayer, and I hope each of you will join the For Our City churches and pastors at our different locations for an evening of unified prayer and worship. I guarantee this season of fasting and prayer will be the most exciting, challenging, and intense time of the year—both for you individually and for the church!
THANK YOU for going ALL IN and participating in this life-giving prayer movement.