(Day 18) Seeking God Through His Word, Prayer, and Fasting

Seeking God will not be without incident. There will be much opposition and resistance to our efforts to get closer to our Lord and Savior. Much of the problem resides within us; our sin nature fights against the desire of our heart to experience a deeper level of fellowship with Christ. As we pour through the Word of God, we do it to receive answers and comforting words. Our spiritual hearing is developed and trained to detect the voice of God and we become more acquainted with His ways. When we store up the treasures of His Word in our hearts, it gives us a plentiful supply of wisdom gems to live by as we traverse through life. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord (Colossians 3:16).

The richness of having the Word of God in our hearts prepares us to have communion and conversation with Christ. When we are full of His Word, we admonish one another and are able to encourage ourselves as His Word sparks us into praise and a song with grace in our hearts to the Lord. Through treasuring His Word, we've gotten all the more closer to Him because as we're singing with grace in our hearts to Him, He's drawing near; Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you (James 4:8).

Through prayer, the closeness deepens. With His Word in our hearts, God is able to speak to us from His timeless truth and say the words that our hearts need to hear. Prayer is not just about our requests and lists of things we want God to do. All through the Word of God we see Him inviting us to approach Him in prayer with our concerns and requests, but we shouldn't overlook the two-way aspect of the conversation. He doesn't just want us to ask, seek, knock (see St. Matthew 7:7-11), He also wants us to quiet our hearts and listen. Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).

1. Be still - to not exert your efforts. We must let God be God in our lives. When we put our hands all over things, our impatience and lack of understanding creates greater problems and issues.

2. Know that I am God - In our stillness, we learn to trust God and hear from Him what He would have us to do. We then can grow in our knowledge of the greatness of God that He will be exalted in the earth.

Which brings us to fasting. In our stillness and quietly waiting on God, we're not just passing time. As we endeavor to go further into the presence of God, near to His heart, we can fast. Fasting deprives the outer man and revives the inner man. Through fasting, we neglect the feeding of our physical body, and focus on feeding our spirit. Fasting is a way of offering ourselves to God, demonstrating sacrifice and a sincere desire to break through fleshly resistance to achieve a closer walk with the Lord. One of the rewards of seeking God through fasting is that God gives us specific directions. Because we have been storing up on His Word, and conversing with Him in prayer, our hearing ability is developing to know His voice - As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away (Acts 13:2-3).

We want God's will for our lives; to walk in the details and specifics of what He has ordained for us. We've made enough missteps and had enough trips and falls to realize we need the Lord to guide us in the way that He wants us to go. God has a grand plan for each of us and we are to seek Him to be led by His Spirit. Through His Word, prayer, and fasting, we gain access into His divine counsel and He discloses to our hearts what we need for each day. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end (Jeremiah 29:11).

From the heart and hand of Pastor Reginald Reaves