40 Days of Prayer and Fasting InitiativeSample

Welcome, dear reader, to Day 1 of a 40-day devotional centered on two practices of the Christian faith: prayer and fasting. Let’s start with a confession and a promise. Here’s the confession: if you indeed choose to pray and fast alongside this devotional for the next 40 days, you’re not in for an easy month and a half! If it’s easy you’re looking for, you’re better served spending time on Netflix and not YouVersion. But here’s the promise: if you do indeed choose to pray and fast alongside this devotional for the next 40 days, it will most certainly be worth it.

Why will your endeavor be worthwhile? Because, quite simply, prayer is everything. Prayer is the steady anchor of the Christian life. Prayer is our central mode of communication with our Creator. Prayer is the means by which we receive the Father’s love. Prayer is the wind in our sails. And, of course, prayer is the means by which the world is radically transformed.

That last point is one worth stating again in a different way: God moves according to our prayers! This is a radical and true reality of the Christian life. God hears when we speak. And often, God says yes. And in the scriptures, when the people of God pair together the twin practices of prayer and fasting, God has this longstanding habit of showing up and doing beautiful things. So for the next 40 days, we will pray, and we will fast, because prayer is everything, and we dream that perhaps God might show up and hear His people pray, and His “yes” might just radically transform our neighborhoods, our cities, our nation, our world, our hearts. And that, reader, is worth your time.

So, how will this devotional aid you in your journey? Over these 40 days, we’ll pray for three big things. We’ll pray that the Church would be Alive, the Lost would be Found, and that the Nations would be Reached. This reading plan is broken up into three sections, each centered on one of those big prayers. Each day, this devotional will give you a passage to meditate on, a short devotional, and some prayer prompts. Also paired with this devotional will be some videos on how to engage in the fasting practice.

Here on Day 1 of your journey, perhaps the best next step would be one of “consecration.” To consecrate means to declare something sacred. It’s a removal of one’s shoes before stepping on holy ground. So right now, take some time to quiet your mind before the Lord and pray over these next 40 days.

• Pray for endurance in your disciplines.
• Pray that they would produce godliness in you.
• Pray they would be holy days of unparalleled intimacy with Jesus.

Read Mark 12:30 today as you center your heart for the next 40 days.