Discover the power of fasting and prayer through our inspiring Bible verses about fasting and prayer. Learn how to deepen your relationship with God and find spiritual strength.
Fasting and prayer are powerful spiritual practices that can help us deepen our relationship with God. When you pray, you are communicating with God and seeking His guidance and wisdom. When you fast, you are denying yourself earthly pleasures in order to focus on your relationship with God.
This article will explore some of the most inspiring Bible verses about fasting and prayer and how they can help you spiritually.
See also: Prayer Points For Protection With Bible Verses.
What Is Fasting?
Fasting as we know it is simply abstaining from food or intake of any form of food in the body for a certain time period. From a biblical point of view:
- Fasting helps us to draw nearer to God
- Fasting is a time we develop personal relationship with God
- Fasting helps us to grow spiritually
- Fasting helps us to have control over our flesh so we don’t commit sin
- Fasting helps us to be spiritually focused
- Fasting helps us to connect with Heaven
- Fasting helps us to gain access to the super-natural
- Fasting helps us to have angelic encounter
How To Fast As A Christian
Matthew 6:17-18
“But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.“
- First set a time and date to seek the face of God
- Ensure you abstain from eating that morning of your fasting
- Go to a quite place or in your room away from any distraction
- Switch off your mobile phone or put in silence and store it away from you
- Start by worshiping and praising God in your dialect
- Go on your knees before God and first repent of your sins
- When praying, abstain from shouting so no one else knows that you are fasting and praying
- When praying avoid vain repetitions just like the heathens do – Matthew 6:7
- Fasting is not the place for you to be asking God for wealth or riches etc. but rather pray to God for wisdom, open encounter, pray for God to show you your future, pray for divine direction, pray for God to kill any sinful habit in your life like sexual immorality, evil thoughts in your heart, and so on
- When fasting, humble yourself before God Almighty
How to Pray as a Christian
Throughout Jesus time on earth, He prayed at every moment in His life and His disciple took notice of how important prayer was to Jesus. They saw that in every miracles Jesus performed, He prayed to His father in Heaven before the impossible happened.
The Lord’s Prayer
Now a time came when Jesus had finished praying, one of His disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. Then Jesus taught the disciples how to pray with this simple prayer:
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” – Matthew 6:9-13 (KJV)
See also: Prayers For Spiritual Cleansing
Bible Verses About Fasting and Prayer
1. “For forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry.” – Luke 4:2
2. “So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” – Exodus 34:28
3. “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.” – Nehemiah 1:4
4. “Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.” – Daniel 6:18
5. “But I, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.” – Psalm 35:13
6. “Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.” – Judges 20:26
7. “Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.” – Ezra 8:21
8. “And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.” – 1 Samuel 31:13
9. “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” – Daniel 9:3
10. “Now Johns disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, Why do Johns disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” – Mark 2:18
11. “And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.” – 2 Samuel 1:12
12. “Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.” – Joel 1:14
13. “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” – Acts 13:3
14. “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” – 1 Corinthians 9:27
15. “When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.” – Psalm 69:10
16. “But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” – Matthew 4:4
17. “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” – Esther 4:16
18. “And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” – Acts 9:9
19. “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it? Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.” – Isaiah 58:3
20. “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” – Matthew 4:2
21. “And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” – Mark 9:29
22. “Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles.” – Ezra 10:6
23. “And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.” – 1 Kings 19:8
24. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” – Acts 13:2
25. “Then all the people came to persuade David to eat bread while it was yet day. But David swore, saying, God do so to me and more also, if I taste bread or anything else till the sun goes down!” – 2 Samuel 3:35
26. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” – 2 Chronicles 7:14
27. “I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” – Daniel 10:3
28. “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” – Acts 14:23
29. “That your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Matthew 6:18
30. “And Cornelius said, Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing.” – Acts 10:30
31. “So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, We have sinned against the Lord. And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.” – 1 Samuel 7:6
32. “Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” – Joel 2:12
33. “Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” – Jeremiah 14:12
34. “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” – 1 Corinthians 7:5
35. “And Jesus said to them, Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” – Matthew 9:15
36. “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.” – Nehemiah 9:1
37. “And in every province, wherever the kings command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.” – Esther 4:3
38. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” – Isaiah 58:6
39. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly.” – Joel 2:15
40. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” – 1 Corinthians 10:31
41. “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” – Luke 18:12
42. “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” – Matthew 6:16
43. “So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.” – Ezra 8:23
44. “In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.” – 2 Corinthians 11:27
45. “Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” – Matthew 9:14
46. “Say to all the people of the land and the priests, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?” – Zechariah 7:5
47. “And then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.” – Luke 2:37
48. “My knees are weak through fasting; my body has become gaunt, with no fat.” – Psalm 109:24
49. “David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.” – 2 Samuel 12:16
50. “Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness and cheerful feasts. Therefore love truth and peace.” – Zechariah 8:19
Examples Of Fasting In The Bible
- Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights while on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments from God (See Exodus 34:28).
- King David fasted and prayed for his sick child, who still died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him, but he saw their faces and knew what had happened. David then got up, washed himself, and worshiped God. (See 2 Samuel 12:16-20).
- Queen Esther called for a fast among the Jews when they were in danger of being killed by the king’s decree. They fasted for three days and nights before Esther went to the king and pleaded for their lives (See Esther 4:15-16).
- Daniel fasted for three weeks, eating no meat, wine, or rich food. He prayed and asked God for understanding and wisdom, and an angel was sent to him with a vision (Daniel 10:1-21).
- The people of Nineveh fasted and put on sackcloth when Jonah prophesied that God would destroy their city. God saw their repentance and relented from his judgment (Jonah 3:5-10).
- Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the wilderness, where the devil tempted him. He emerged from the fast strengthened and empowered for his ministry (Matthew 4:1-11).
- The apostles fasted and prayed when choosing someone to replace Judas Iscariot as a disciple. They believed God would guide them in their decision (Acts 1:12-26).
- Anna, a prophetess, worshiped at the temple day and night, fasting and praying, and she was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah when he was presented at the temple (Luke 2:36-38).
- The church in Antioch fasted and prayed before sending out Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. This shows the importance of seeking God’s guidance before embarking on a significant task or journey (Acts 13:1-3).
- Nehemiah fasted and prayed when he heard about the desperate situation of the Jews who had returned from exile to Jerusalem. He asked God for favor with the king of Persia so that he could lead a rebuilding effort to restore the city walls and gates (Nehemiah 1:1-11).
Prayer and Fasting Quotes
- “Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.” – Andy Murray
- “Our prayers and fastings are of less avail, unless they are aided by almsgiving.” – Cyprian
- “We must continue in prayer if we are to get an outpouring of the Spirit. Christ says there are some things we shall not get, unless we pray and fast, yes, “prayer and fasting.” We must control the flesh and abstain from whatever hinders direct fellowship with God.” – Bonar Law
- “Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.” – John Wesley
- “Man shall not live by bread alone.” – Matthew McConaughey
- “I desired as many as could to join together in fasting and prayer, that God would restore the spirit of love and of a sound mind to the poor deluded rebels in America.” – John Wesley
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See also: Bible Verses – Prayers Against Affliction KJV
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