The Power of Prayer and Fasting: 21 Days That Can Change Your Life

191 Pages·2016·0.68 MB·English

by  Marilyn Hickey

Copyright © 2006 by Marilyn Hickey All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a
review.

The health advice in this book is not intended to replace the services of a trained health professional.
Fasting can be dangerous and you are advised to consult with your health care professional with regard to
all matters relating to your health, and in particular regarding matters which may require diagnosis or
medical attention. If you are pregnant, overweight or have other special conditions requiring attention, you
should seek a professional opinion and consider modification of the fasting program.

Unless otherwise specified, all Scripture references are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scriptures noted CEV are taken from THE CONTEMPORARY VERSION.

Copyright © 1991 by the American Bible Society. Used by permission.
Scriptures noted NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright
© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
All rights reserved.
Scriptures noted NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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First eBook Edition: February 2006

ISBN: 978-0-446-55042-0

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I: GOD’S CALL TO PRAY AND FAST

1: FASTING AND PRAYER ARE FOR THE CHURCH TODAY

2: HOW FASTING AND PRAYER ARE LINKED

3: THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE OF FASTING

4: TEN BASIC PRINCIPLES OF PRAYER

5: A TWENTY-ONE-DAY FAST FOR A BREAKTHROUGH IN HABITS

6: CHOOSING THE FAST THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

7: PRACTICAL TIPS ABOUT FASTING

PART II: GOD’S PURPOSES FOR OUR FASTING AND PRAYING

8: LOOSING THE BANDS OF WICKEDNESS

9: UNDOING HEAVY BURDENS

10: LETTING THE OPPRESSED GO FREE

11: BREAKING EVERY YOKE

12: FEEDING THE HUNGRY

13: PROVIDING FOR THE POOR AND CLOTHING THE NAKED

14: RESTORING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

15: BRINGING HEALING SPEEDILY

16: THE BREAKING FORTH OF LIGHT

17: ESTABLISHING A PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

18: THE REVEALING OF GOD’S GLORY

19: A TURNING POINT FOR GOD’S “NEW THING”

APPENDIX

To my son-in-law, Reece Bowling, and my daughter, Sarah

Bowling. Reece is better than a son; he is like seven sons to me.

He is prayerful, encouraging, and sympathetic. Sarah has
always been a good friend to me, but now she is my best

spiritual friend. Sometimes I wonder how I can be so blessed!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to express my gratitude and acknowledge the contribution of Dr.
Augustine Obinnah to this book. Dr. Obinnah is a physician I have come to
know and respect; he and his family are members of our church congregation at
Orchard Road Christian Center in Denver.

I asked Dr. Obinnah to do a thorough review of this manuscript prior to

publication, and offer his medical insights on the subject of fasting, which have
been incorporated into the text.

Thanks as well to Bob Rodgers for permitting me to use his comprehensive

fasting program materials.

I also appreciate the online resource by Dr. Elson M. Haas, “Nutritional

Program for Fasting,” and the online resource from Freedomyou.com titled
“How to Break a Fast.”

INTRODUCTION

WHY I PERSONALLY FAST AND PRAY

I not only teach people to fast and pray. I personally fast and pray. I have done
so for the past forty-five years.

Why?
First, I have found that prayer and fasting go together like conjoined twins

that cannot be divided. When I am in prolonged and fervent prayer, I
automatically find that I have less desire for food—indeed, less need for food.
When I feel a need to cleanse my physical system through modified forms of
fasting, I nearly always find that I have a greater longing to cleanse all aspects of
my life—especially my spirit—through longer and more intense times of prayer
with the Lord.

Second, as I have observed many ministers who are truly anointed of God

and are highly effective in both reaching the lost and taking God’s healing power
to people in great need, I have concluded that fasting and prayer are integral
parts of their lives. An emphasis on prayer, accompanied by fasting, appears to
be a very serious component of any ministry that results in life-changing
conversions and miracles.

Third, I have found in my personal life that when I fast as part of a time of

focused and intense prayer, I am more sensitive to the Holy Spirit, the voice of
God, and I am better able to discern the direction God desires for me to take.
Fasting helps me to “put down” my flesh and opens me to the still, small voice
of the Lord. I usually find that after a fast, I have renewed enthusiasm and even
greater courage for undertaking the tasks the Lord has set before me.

I have not engaged in what I consider to be prolonged fasting. My husband

has been led by God to go on several forty-day fasts in his life. He has also
experienced twenty-one-day and ten-day fasts.

experienced twenty-one-day and ten-day fasts.

Prolonged fasting of this type is hard on my body. The Lord gave me a

personal pattern for fasting when I first began to teach. He led me to fast and
pray seven meals a week. I found that I could do these in any order—for
example, I could fast one meal and eat two meals a day for each of seven days,
or I might eat two meals a day for three days, eat only one meal a day for two
days, and eat three meals for two days. For years, I followed a pattern of fasting
seven meals a week except when I was on vacation with my family. This
practice helped me greatly in staying at a consistent place in my spiritual life so I
could hear God’s voice plainly.

If you study the early church, you will find that a number of the church

fathers wrote about fasting and practiced those disciplines often. The Roman
Catholic Church has recommended fasting for hundreds of years. The Protestant
denominations, however, have not placed an emphasis on fasting, largely, I
believe, because Protestant leaders in the last hundred years have not done a
great deal of teaching about fasting and praying or encouraged people to do it.

Years ago I had an opportunity to travel to South Korea and to visit with Dr.

Paul Yonggi Cho’s mother-in-law, who was the leader at a retreat center called
Prayer Mountain outside Seoul. She, along with Dr. Cho, believed that prayer
and fasting are what birthed a great revival in South Korea so that today, the
nation is 40 percent Christian, when it formerly was 98 percent Buddhist. In
attending services and board meetings with Dr. Cho, I learned a great deal about
combining fasting and prayer, and especially fasting and praying in the Spirit.
Much of what I know today about fasting and prayer I learned from Dr. Cho and
his mother-in-law.

I also learned valuable lessons about fasting and prayer from my mother.

When my father was admitted to a mental hospital and the attending
psychiatrists told my mother that he would never come out of that hospital, my
mother immediately began to fast and pray for his healing. Within a year, my
father was born again, baptized in water, and out of that hospital! I believe my
father is in heaven today largely because of my mother’s practice of fasting and
praying for him during the months of his illness.

I thank God for the way that fasting and prayer open the heavens so we might

experience an outpouring of God’s power and blessings. I am 100 percent
convinced that these practices are musts for believers.

A LONG-STANDING COMMITMENT TO FASTING AND
PRAYING

PRAYING

About fifteen years ago, we began a more formal program of fasting and praying
in our church in Colorado. We called it “21 Days of Prayer and Fasting.” We
have done this at the beginning of each year, and we have found that our church
comes out of this three-week time of prayer and fasting highly energized, highly
focused, and highly unified to undertake the ministry challenges God has
revealed to us as a body.

During the three weeks of prayer and fasting, we have special prayer

meetings—including added prayer meetings early in the morning, at noontime,
and some evenings. These additional meetings give all members of the pastoral
staff an opportunity to lead in prayer, which is important both to them and to the
people in our church. We also have designated nights for people to pray and then
to write down their personal, spiritual, family, material, and financial goals for
the coming year. We have special times of prayer for specific needs. Our entire
ministry staff and church staff participate, as do the majority of the members of
our congregation.

Through the years, my husband has led a Monday night prayer meeting.

During these first three weeks of the year, that prayer meeting becomes part of
the “21 Days of Prayer and Fasting.”

The results have been absolutely wonderful. There’s a fresh anointing in our

church services and at times, unusual answers to prayer. It seems to me that our
altar calls—when we call people to come forward and receive Jesus Christ as
their Savior—are more intense and fruitful. We also see ongoing answers to
prayer throughout the year. It is not at all unusual for someone to say months
later, “God has answered a prayer I prayed during the ‘21 Days of Prayer and
Fasting’!”

The “21 Days of Prayer and Fasting” produces very real and strong bonds

among the people who undertake this program together. Their hearts are knit
together in unusual ways. Many people have reported that in the weeks that
follow this program, they find they need to do less “remedial” prayer to fix
problems or resolve a crisis that may arise. Rather, they find themselves
engaging in preventive prayer to put a stop to the enemy before he has a chance
to gain even a toehold in their lives.

There’s an entire chapter on this twenty-one-day fast later in this book.

CONSISTENCY AND STRENGTH

CONSISTENCY AND STRENGTH

Finally, and this is of the utmost importance, an ongoing pattern of prayer and
fasting has given me a consistency in my spiritual life. It has given me a
consistency in receiving insights into God’s Word. Plain and simple, I get more
out of my Bible reading when I accompany it with regular prayer and fasting.

I also experience greater consistency in overcoming the attacks of the enemy

against my life. I believe very strongly that I have not fallen into many of the
pits that the devil had prepared for me because I was praying and fasting
regularly and had the ability to discern various pitfalls in advance.

All persons have areas of weakness in their lives, and I believe strongly that

prayer and fasting give people strength in areas of weakness. Sometimes it is
strength that prepares a person in advance to deal with problems that might arise.
Sometimes it is strength to compensate for personal weaknesses. Sometimes it is
strength to overcome mistakes.

Certainly a practice of prayer and fasting does not keep a person from failing,

stumbling, or doing dumb things from time to time. In more than forty years of
pastoring a church with my husband, and in more than thirty years of leading a
television and radio ministry, I have done some dumb things. But God, in His
great mercy, brought me through those mistakes and gave me the insight and
courage to overcome and reverse the mistakes, and in the end, emerge stronger
and more effective for the gospel. I believe prayer and fasting paved the way for
me to make it through very difficult times—it gave me the spiritual strength
necessary to overcome and to persevere.

There’s a saying that goes something like this: “If you always do the same

thing, don’t be surprised when you get the same results.” Most people feel
compelled to begin a time of prayer and fasting because they don’t like the
results they have been getting from prayer alone. There is a need in their lives.
They sense that they need to do something more, something differently, or
something new to have a breakthrough or to reach a new level of spiritual
maturity.

For many people, that something new is prayer coupled with fasting. I

strongly recommend this biblical practice to you.

—Marilyn Hickey

PART I

GOD’S CALL TO PRAY AND FAST

1

FASTING AND PRAYER ARE FOR THE CHURCH

TODAY

“Fasting and prayer? Didn’t those go out of style decades ago?” The woman
who said this to me was a godly woman, a woman who had been in the church
all her life, and a woman intent on obeying the Lord. She knew her Bible. She
was very serious in her questions.

Yet for some reason, she had concluded—at least subconsciously—that

fasting and prayer were no longer intended for believers in today’s world.

The truth is, fasting and prayer are for today! In fact, now more than ever!
The combination of fasting and praying is not a fad or a novelty approach to

spiritual discipline. Fasting and praying are not part of a human-engineered
method or plan. They are not the means to manipulate a situation or to create a
circumstance. Fasting and praying are Bible-based disciplines that are
appropriate for all believers of all ages throughout all centuries in all parts of the
world.

Through the years, I have learned that many people in the church have never

been taught about fasting and prayer, and many have therefore never fasted and
prayed. As a result, they don’t know why fasting and praying are important,
what the Bible teaches about fasting, or how to fast. To many, fasting sounds
like drudgery—or a form of religious works. To others, fasting sounds extremely
difficult. People tend to stand in awe at reports of those who have fasted for
several weeks. When I hear about such fasts, I no doubt think what they think: If
I fasted that long, I’d die! I couldn’t possibly do that!

Let me assure you at the outset of this book that I am not advocating

prolonged periods of fasting for every believer. A fast can be as short as one

meal. Neither do I advocate fasting and praying for the mere sake of saying with
self-righteousness, “I have fasted and prayed about this.” I do not advocate
fasting so that the hungry in a foreign nation might have the food you would
have eaten that day—which is highly unlikely. I do not advocate fasting apart
from prayer.

KEY REASONS TO FAST AND PRAY

I do, however, encourage every believer to fast and pray for two very important
reasons:

1. The Scriptures Teach Us to Fast and Pray

The Bible has a great deal to say about both fasting and praying, including
commands to fast and pray. The Bible also gives us examples of people who
fasted and prayed, using different types of fasts for different reasons, all of
which are very positive results. Jesus fasted and prayed. Jesus’ disciples fasted
and prayed after the Resurrection. Many of the Old Testament heroes and
heroines of the faith fasted and prayed. The followers of John the Baptist fasted
and prayed. Many people in the early church fasted and prayed. What the
Scriptures have taught us directly and by the examples of the saints is surely
something we are to do.

2. Fasting and Prayer Put You into the Best Possible Position for a
Breakthrough

That breakthrough might be in the realm of the spirit. It may be in the realm of
your emotions or personal habits. It may be in the realm of a very practical area
of life, such as a relationship or finances. What I have seen repeatedly through
the years—not only in the Scriptures but in countless personal stories that others
have told me—is that periods of fasting and prayer produce great spiritual
results, many of which fall into the realm of a breakthrough. What wasn’t a
reality . . . suddenly was. What hadn’t worked . . . suddenly did. The unwanted
situation or object that was there . . . suddenly wasn’t there. The relationship that
was unloving . . . suddenly was loving. The job that hadn’t materialized . . .
suddenly did.