Day 3 of Fasting and Prayer
Day three already! Now that we’re in high gear and focusing our attention on our Helper and only Hope, let’s kick it into “over-drive.” It’s time to turn the prayer focus inward and personal. The first key step in an prayer time, and particularly during an extended time of fasting, is to clear up our own personal spiritual lives before we can pray effectively for others. Jesus taught us to pray through His model prayer in Matthew 5, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” So, let’s ask for inward wholeness, forgiveness, personal cleansing, and a personal renewal.
Fasting and prayer is a purging process.
Are you having a hard time, right now, staying the course? It’s tough early in the fasting process to “want to” keep going. It’s difficult, uncomfortable, even painful.
Purging is the process of cleansing, cleaning out, or “sweeping the house clean.” When I purge my computer, I sift through all the files, and delete or remove the unused, unnecessary, or damaging ones. My anti-virus software helps, as well as the defragmenater. The point: throughout the year, our lives get cluttered with sin, shame, guilt, sinful images and thoughts, pride and selfish ambition, and on and on. The spiritual dirty laundry builds up in the corner closets of our life, and a thick layer of complacent dust can lay over our passion for God, His Word, and His purposes.
This is an opportunity to clean out the dirty laundry and wipe the dust from our spiritual lives.
Read Psalm 51 and Isaiah 1:15-18.
Then pray through Psalm 51 as you begin to clean up your Spirit and allow the antivirus software of the Holy Spirit to purge the damaging files in your life, as well as take out the clutter and renew your spirit.
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