21 Days of Prayer & Fasting

January 10, 2025

We invite you to join us in a period of 21 days of prayer and fasting from January 5-26. We do this to devote ourselves to the Lord, seeking the Kingdom first, above and before all else. It is a time of consecrating ourselves to the Lord at the start of a new year.

Jesus said: “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

This time of prayer and fasting is like planting a seed, believing that God will bring it to fruition.

How can you participate?

It’s all up to you. You are welcome to join in whatever way works for you. This is a great time though to take a step and do something that is out of the ordinary for you.

Here are some suggestions:

Prayer Rythms

Morning: 5&5 (5 minutes of silent prayer & reading 5 Psalms)

Silent prayer focuses on intimacy with God. It is focused and receptive and a great way to start the day. Why not take 5 minutes (time yourself if you must) at the start of every day. 

Then continue by opening Scripture. When you read 5 Psalms a day, you can work your way through the entire prayer book of the Bible in just one month. 

A great way to do this is to do 5 Psalms a day, starting with the day of the week, and then add thirty for each next one. So, when you start on January 1st, you read Psalm 1, 31, 61, 91 and 121. The next day you read Psalm 2, 32, 62, 92 and 122, and so on. 

Noon: The Lord’s Prayer

What if we’d all set an alarm for 12:00pm to pray the Lord’s Prayer. It is a simple, but powerful practice, grounding us in the prayer that the Lord has given us. 

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the glory and the power. Forever and ever. Amen. 

Evening: 10 minutes of prayer for the church

A time of prayer like this is also a great opportunity to lean into contending prayer. As we believe that the year 2025 is going to be a year of breakthrough, we invite you to pray into this, to contend for a fresh move of God in our church community. 

Here is the prayer focus for the three different weeks

  • Week 1: The Building

    We are searching for a new location for our Sunday gatherings. Pray for provision and direction in this process. 

  • Week 2: Our Vision

    Our vision is to build “a community of disciples of Jesus with a passion to worship God, care for one another and bring God’s love into a broken world”. In the second week, we will be praying into this.

  • Week 3: A fresh move of the Spirit

    Let’s seek the Lord for a fresh move of the Spirit in our midst. We believe that God comes where He’s wanted. So let us express our longing for Him, and lean into a deeper craving for His presence.

Fasting

Prayer and fasting often go together in the Bible. Fasting is an incredibly powerful tool to offer ourselves to God, grow in holiness and amplify our prayers. 

Two important notions about fasting:

  1. There is no obligation to fast at all. If there are any physical or mental health reasons that prevent you from fasting, this is absolutely fine. We advise against fasting in a way that is putting your health at risk. Also, if you just don’t want to, that’s okay.
  2. Approach fasting in a way that it supports your prayer. Fasting should not be a goal in itself, it should support and strengthen our focus of prayer. It is about letting go of one thing, in order to lean into the other. Make sure that the way that you fast is supporting your devotion to the Lord, not distracting you from it.

Here are some ways you could choose to fast:

  • A partial fast, for example; simplifying your meals, cutting out certain foods like sugar and alcohol, or perhaps doing a Daniel fast (only fruit & vegetables)
  • A regular fast; for example, you could set aside two days a week to do a full day fast from the one dinner to the next (skipping over breakfast and lunch
  • Working your way to a full week of fasting; beginning with 7 days of simplifying your meals, then 7 days of a Daniel fast and then 7 days complete fast

When you choose to fast, it is important to start where you are. Again, the goal of the fast is not to fast, but to offer yourself to the Lord.