Disclaimer: Before we begin, we acknowledge not everyone can fast from food. This is in no way encouraging you to push yourself to give up something that is unsafe for your body.
2 Timothy 2:20-22
“Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
Part of what we accomplish through fasting is the discipline of denying our flesh of the things we use to satisfy our bodies that should be given to God. Biblical fasting always involves food because food is such a driving force in our lives. When we go without food, our bodies weaken and we quickly see the things rise to the surface that need to be rooted out of our flesh. We recognize what we need to allow God to remove from us and exchange them for His attributes. We take on a position of humility and submit our will to the Lord. Fasting is a time where we allow God to break the patterns of sin in which we have engaged and exchange them for his righteousness. In our weakness, we have the opportunity to turn to Jesus to be our strength. It invites him in to sanctify and refine us so we can be a clean conduit through which he flows.
Our bodies are the temple of God. Sometimes we let things into our life that are contrary to the will of God. We see a physical example of what this looks like in Nehemiah 13, when Nehemiah removes Tobiah’s belongings from the temple, cleanses the rooms, and restores them to their rightful purposes for the Lord. Just like the physical temple of the Old Testament, we are a vessel where God dwells. He doesn’t just want part of us, he wants all of us. When he occupies every space, we get to walk in the freedom he died for. It is his kindness and love that reveals the areas we need to turn away from and allow him to cleanse.
God puts his statutes in place for our freedom. He does not want us to be slaves to sin, he wants us free! Shame, isolation, guilt, fear all want to hold us captive and keep us from relationship with God and each other. Freedom requires us to let go of things of the world that gratify our flesh but do not bring glory to God. As we focus on cleansing our bodies physically and spiritually, let us lean into Jesus as he recalibrates our fleshly desires and makes us into clean vessels for honorable use. As we prepare corporately for Worship Prayer and Healing Gathering, let us contend not only for the cleansing of our personal bodies, but for our church body as a whole. We want to be a healthy church, filled with the fruit of the Spirit, flowing in the power of the Holy Spirit. May we be unhindered to see people healed, delivered, and set free! Our personal breakthroughs contribute to our corporate breakthrough.
Listening Prayer:
Holy Spirit, your word says it’s your kindness that leads us to repentance. I thank you that you reveal what needs pruning in me because you love me and want me to bear good fruit in my life. Please bring to mind any sins of my flesh that you want to root out of me. What behaviors do I need to give up? What aspects of my character do you want to transform during this fast? Write down what you hear.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, I want to honor you with all that I am. I want to be a blessing to you in my body and in the body of Christ. I ask that you give me victory over the areas of my flesh that seek to hold me captive. I pray you would root out all things that hinder me from experiencing your best. I repent of __________ (say the areas the Holy Spirit revealed in the listening prayer). Help me to turn from them. I submit to you my will, my desires, my flesh, and my weakness. Thank you that when I am weak, you are strong. I take comfort in your strength and power that are always there to help me. I ask that you would remove my sin from me as far as the east is from the west. Thank you for your cleansing blood, for your forgiveness, and your righteousness that covers me and makes me whole. As you work in me, would you also do a cleansing work in our church body, that we may be clean vessels for honorable use both individually and as a whole. In Jesus’ matchless name, Amen.
Resource: Bible Verses on Sanctification Of Our Body
1 Corinthians 6:17-20
“But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
2 Timothy 2:20-22
“Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
1 Thessalonians 4:1-5
“Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;”
Galatians 5:16-24
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do[e] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”