Prayer: Father, I see many responses in scripture to pleas for Your provision, protection, healing, and deliverance. I see the prayer and fasting of people like Ezra brought Your response. This is a formula for Your response to crisis and need. Amen.
Reading: Ezra 8 key: vs. 21-23 “Then I proclaimed a fast there at the Ahava River so that we might humble ourselves before our God and seek from Him a straight way for us, our little ones, and all of our possessions. For I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and cavalry to protect us from the enemy along the way, because we had spoken to the king saying, “The gracious hand of our God is upon everyone who seeks Him, but His great anger is against everyone who forsakes Him. So we fasted and sought our God about this, and He responded to our plea.” TLV
Attention: According to the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (HIBD), fasting is described as “the laying aside of food for a period of time when the believer is seeking to know God in a deeper experience. It is to be done as an act of God (pg. 560).” This description is speaking primarily of a personal fast. Today’s reading captures the proclamation by Ezra to a corporate fast by those he has gathered at the Ahava River in Babylon. It was a gathering point of Jews who were returning to Jerusalem. Rather than request the military protection from the King of Babylon, Ezra determines to ask Adonai for divine protection by “fasting” and “prayer,” and “He responded to our plea.”
How many times do we forfeit divine protection and provision because we do not utilize the weapons of “fasting” and “prayer.” However, in this instance, what was the result?
We are told that on the twelfth day of the first of the month, they set out for Jerusalem. “The hand of our God was upon us and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambush along the way” (vs. 31b). The result was they arrived in Jerusalem with divine protection from any harm. The pleas of their prayer and fasting had worked.
Do you have a problem or challenge which is too big for you? I encourage you to enact the prayer and fasting formula to your daily life and see what happens.
Action: I choose to utilize the formula of prayer and fasting in daily life problems and obstacles.
Yield: I choose to give my problems and challenges over to God.
Engage: I choose to engage with the Holy Spirit over my daily obstacles and challenges.
Relationship: I choose to live in intimacy with God.
Prayer: Father, life with You is better than any life separated from You. I pray that every obstacle, challenge and problem will be overcome by the power of Your Spirit. Amen.
Memory Verse: 1 John 5:3-5 “For this is the love of God—that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone born of God overcomes the world. And the victory that has overcome the world is this—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world, if not the one who believes that Yeshua is Ben-Elohim?” TLV
Music Video: Carman—Overcomin’ Child of God https://youtu.be/br8nFYqY2ho?si=2o0RUs3wjpAHaL-h
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!”