How to Prayer Fast and Encourage Others to Join You

According to one blogger, there are about 77 references to fasting in the Bible. My favorite is this verse,

Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” Esther 4:16

CRU describes fasting as,

“…abstaining from food for spiritual purposes. Simply going without food because it is not available or for medical reasons is not biblical fasting. There must be a spiritual motivation to qualify a fast as biblical.” 

One of the wrong motivations is to be “…seen by others.”  Social Media can quickly become a popularity gauge or misunderstood because of its visual nature. If someone posts a good deed or that they are fasting, someone immediately assumes it’s to “…bask in their admiration” of your spirituality. Examine your motivations.

My experience with a prayer fast is not eating from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in one day, only drinking liquids. I wear a bracelet that says “Pray”, given to me by the hostess of a home I was staying at, as a physical reminder to pray and not to eat. The gnawing hunger in my gut and the discomfort remind me why I am praying and the rawness of a situation. Because social media is visual and simultaneous with face-to-face life, I live by example. I post that I will do a prayer fast and invite others to join me in the cause. My motivations are to inspire others to take the world’s brokenness seriously and give it to God.

So, post about your prayer fast…

  • Post a picture of a verse you highlighted in the Bible, and invite people to join you on a prayer fast.
  • Paint or draw, or have your kids draw, something that shows a prayer fast, and invite people to join with you when you post that picture.
  • Use your social media as a journal. After a prayer fast, maybe done in secret, post your thoughts on fasting that day with a nice photo of where you were as you were fasting.
  • A fast may not be avoiding food, but maybe it’s an electronic fast? Or a social media fast?

What other ideas can you come up with to inspire people to join you in a prayer fast? 

Fasting Resources: