Three Days. No Food... Eek

Exodus 8:27 (NKJV) We will go three days journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God as He will command us.

Three days and I didn’t die. I laughed before typing this simply because the last time I attempted doing a juice fast for 3, maybe 7 days, mum told me I wasn’t going to die, but day 2 I went to her and said nope, I’m having my food because I am hungry!

Three days and I didn’t die. I have also tried a three days water fast back in 2021 or 2022 and I failed; I only managed one day. I had an app and everything, but, oh how wonderful it was when I caved.  

So why would I decide to do a water and juice fast for 3 days, Monday 26^th, Tuesday 27^th and Wednesday 28^th of this beautiful January? Fun facts, I didn’t make the decision. Think  of me as silly, but, that was God. He gave me no opportunity to think it through, or to overthink it, my thumbs moved much quicker than the umming and ahing I was doing on the Sunday. It was one of those, I didn’t choose the life, the life chose me, sort of moments.

On our usual morning devotion, Elysia said she was doing a 3-day water fast, my thumbs went quickly to the chat, and typed, “me too Elysia”, and this was followed by Davina’s “me too”. What was to be individual fasts became a group fast. Three of us fasting for three days. The ladies did a water fast, whilst I did water and juice, but you understand right, no food for three days. Food was replaced with prayer. Food was replaced with faith. Food was replaced with focus on God.

What’s the point? Why am I telling you about this? Well, I want to share some learnings.

Three Days. Three Lessons.

1 – I need to cultivate intentional prayer times.

I’ve seen the videos on being consistent in carving out time for prayer, nevertheless I failed to pay attention to them. I guess I needed to experience it to then understand it for myself. I wouldn’t have experienced the power in intentional praying had God not pushed me into saying “me too”.

There was also something I didn’t realise in the moment. The void that prayer filled. It was last night, my first day from fasting, where I reflected, realising, there was a gap, an emptiness in those two moments, 1pm and 6pm, where we had not prayed together. I realised a small portion of me wanted that 1pm and 6pm prayer time, I had looked forward to it while we were fasting, but, Thursday at 6pm upon remembering that the fast was over, I was drawn into my old reality. There was no regular 6pm prayer time with the girls. It was just me, in an empty house, with a cat curled up in his chair.

Now that I have tasted what it’s like to have set prayer times, I need to have this in my personal time.

2 – It’s all good asking God to silence the noise in our minds, but sometimes, that’s on us to do.

The song ‘open the eyes of my heart Lord’ there’s a small portion which I’ve heard that says ‘silence the noise in my mind Lord’. A powerful request. Have I sung that and meant it? Yes! Of course I have. Was the noise silenced? No! Why not? Simple, we need to turn the noise off.

Fun fact, I’ve come to enjoy Nollywood. It’s now unhealthy because I will come to the end of a movie and am still hearing these actors and actresses say ‘wetin dey happen?’ or ‘how far now?’ or ‘oga sorry now’. How can I hear God if I keep spending time watching these movies, as opposed to spending time in my Word? When I intentionally feed my mind with Nollywood, or Instagram feed and stories, are my prayers not wasted when I’m the one standing in the way of God speaking to me?

Over the three days, I took myself off social media, didn’t watch any Nollywood and because my focus was on God, I didn’t have time for idle talk. In doing this, God was able to communicate with me a whole lot better than before because the noise was silenced.

I must cut out some of the external noise, a whole lot more.

3 – He’s waiting for your prayers to be given to Him.  

This one, ever so often I say I want to restart this one thing in my life, but never really moved properly, until August last year. Now I’ve just come to realise that I wasn’t ready though I thought I was.

This time around, I offered the prayer up, and in doing so, I had individuals reach out to me, during the time of the fasting. Initially, I thought, since the message was sent last week, does it count? I read it late and it so happened that today (Monday at the time) is when I’ve seen it. Then Tuesday, day 2, a friend reached out to say that she knew someone who was after this particular service, but she wasn’t sure if I was up and running so wanted to know if I knew anyone. I’ll be honest, I almost passed it up. But God!

I gave a testimony about this earlier and in that moment realised, God was waiting for me with this request. He wanted me to come to Him, and with that, I saw what He did. I didn’t know how He would work things out, but, He had it all planned out for me.

Fighting with our prayer requests makes zero sense. If you want to see Him move, trust Him and give Him your prayer request.

Would I Do This Again?

I would. It’s such a key thing to do. I had told myself, even if God doesn’t answer me in the moment, let me take the lessons I can from it. He came through not only with lessons, but has shown me that He is answering my prayers.