Heroes of Fasting - Day 10

It's tenth and final day of our 10-day fast! Here is today's "Heroes of Fasting" video (3:01), from Matt Bennett, Founder and CEO of Christian Union Day and Night.

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Transcript
Hi, Matt Bennett here. We're looking at heroes of fasting. In the previous video, we heard the story and saw the episode of Queen Esther, a heroic woman, a Jewish woman, married to the King of Persia. She had to intervene. She had to go before him, even though she wasn't called, and she risked her life in doing this, because she had to stop a decree that had been issued against Jews throughout the Persian Empire.

She had her friends there in the City of Susa fast for three days and nights, and then she went before the King. The King gave great success to her, because he overturned the decree, and God was extremely gracious to her in this. But it wasn't just her and those in the citadel of Susa that fasted. It was Jews all over the Persian Empire. There’s 127 provinces. It was a massive empire. It stretched from Ethiopia to India, just thousands of Jews.

When they got the news that a decree had been issued that would lead to their annihilation, they also saw the implications of it and took action. The way they took action … it says here in chapter 4 of Esther, verse 3, it says … "In every province, wherever the King's 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."

A lot of people ask, "Well, what can we do? How can we make a difference in our country? How can we see revival? What do we do?" What we do is that we mourn and we fast and we call on God. That's what we do. That's the steps, and then the Lord works. He'll call us to do some other things as well, but that's the first step that we do.

They fasted and prayed for 70 days. We see that in the account of what happened. In those times, when a person fasted, typically they would fast just during the day, and they would have dinner at night, unless it says otherwise. It was 70 days of thousands and thousands of Jews through the empire doing this.

They did it because they knew God heard prayer. They did it because they knew that fasting made a difference. They did it, and they made the sacrifice, because it was worth it. It was worth it, given the stakes that were before them, and it could've meant the annihilation of the entire people, of Jews. They went after this, and they did it. The Lord heard, and the Lord responded. They had a reprieve, and they were even able to get rid of their own enemies.

The same is true today, in the sense that, if we pray and fast and seek the Lord for revival in the United States, the stakes are huge, but if thousands of us do this in the United States, the Lord will hear and He will respond. It's up to us. This is the first thing that we are to do is to seek His face. He'll call us to do other things, as well, but this is how He brings about change in a nation. Thank you, and God bless.