40 Days to Heal a Nation’s Racial DivideSample

Overview

Welcome to 40 days of fasting, prayer and action to heal a nation's racial divide. To set accurate expectation, here's a brief overview. This plan is offered with transformation in mind. Thus, the first half is excavation and honestly identifying the issues. The second half is geared toward solution and action. Each day includes relevant events, Biblical foundation, reflection questions and a prayer. This takes about 5-10 minutes; though you are welcome to spend longer seeking the Lord and going deeper. Here's where we're headed. 

• Week 1: Fasting, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare
• Week 2: Value of Life
• Week 3: Family and Justice
• Weeks 4-6: One Family in God

Week 1: Fasting, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Day 2: Why Fast & Pray?

“Father, What’s Your solution? Not just for now, but forever? What stops violence and murder born from racism forever?” I cry out to God. I can’t move until I hear from Him. 

“This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting,” He impresses upon my heart. I immediately recognize His answer as Matthew 17:21, which becomes the central passage for the 40|50 movement.

As seas of protesters flood the streets all over the world in solidarity against racism and violence, I humble myself before the Lord in the conversation above, seeking eternal solutions. 

What do we do? What can we do? I feel so helpless. This could be how the father in Matthew 17 feels when he kneels before Jesus asking Him to deliver his son from the demon trying to kill him. 

Jesus’s disciples ask Him why they are not able to cast out the demon and He explains that it’s because of the littleness of their faith. The kind of demon assigned to kill only leaves through the kind of faith built up through fasting and prayer.

Why is fasting necessary to heal our nations’ racial divide? Because some situations are tougher than others, like demonic strongholds that have been in place for centuries. This is further complicated when we turn a blind eye in complicity or cannot agree whether demonic strongholds even still exist.  

We need simple mustard-seed faith that comes through prayer and fasting:

• to move the mountain of systemic oppression
• to unite us in truth on the root and cause of such oppression, and 
• to believe that all things are possible, including nations that are racism-free.

PRAYER:

Lord, we come to You kneeling as the father did in Matthew 17, humbling ourselves as a nation and asking forgiveness for the littleness of our faith. Please help us to believe that racial healing in our country is possible. Deliver us from the evil one. We need You, in Jesus’s Name, Amen.