"In prayer you shall perceive ... the way out of every situation that has no exit." 
                                                                                                           - Medjugorje March 28, 1985

"Do novenas of fasting and renunciation so that satan be far from you and grace be around you"                                                                                                             -  Medjugorje July 25, 2005

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Courageous spiritual warriors -

Your fast is accomplishing so much and midday today marks the halfway point of our spiritual climb! Many people live in dread, fear, or anxiety of what the future holds in this election, and they accomplish nothing for all those thoughts. But prayer lifts up those thoughts to God who controls everything, and although He already knew our thoughts ahead of time, by speaking to Him about our concerns, we ask to be united to His will. And fasting shows Him we really are serious. We are serious enough to stop our business as usual and we are willing to go without our usual comforts to augment our petition to God.

Fasting has been practiced to show repentance (the Ninevites in the story of Jonah);  to beg for deliverance (the book of Esther); to request clarity of purpose (St Paul prior to his missionary journey); and to prepare for spiritual battle (Christ in the desert). 

Taking Christ’s 40 day fast as inspiration for our three day fast, imagine Jesus mostly in prayer, walking about some, resting under a ledge for shade, praising God and enjoying the great expanse of earth and heaven. In the Judean desert he must have found some sources of water such as a spring or a puddle of rainwater in a hollow of a rock.

As we petition God for deliverance from our enemies, let’s take care to move slowly, rest often, avoid regular exercise, and sip water as needed. The principal objective is prayer, especially as it concerns renewing our country from the ground up. From the protection of the unborn, to the education and innocence of little children, to respect for just laws and punishment of evildoers in our government and globally, to the end of the attack on our lives through the injections … the needs are endless. But they all come down to bringing back fear of God and the desire to please Him and act according to how He designed creation to work. Never our own unlimited imagination of what freedom looks like. We have seen how that skews to the bizarre pretty fast.

   If you are reading through the Psalms, you are no doubt heartened to see how applicable so many of them are to our current day. Especially Psalm 55! God actually gave these words of the Psalms to David who sang them back to God, and here, thousands of years later, we too can pray them back to God. He must love to hear us pray His own words. You can’t go wrong!

  Thank you for fasting with us. If you are having difficulty, or are hungry, you are not alone. Thousands of us are praying and fasting together and God sees every one of you. 

Psalm 55

Listen to my prayer, O God,
    do not ignore my plea;
²     hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
³     because of what my enemy is saying,
    because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
    and assail me in their anger.

⁴ My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen on me.
⁵ Fear and trembling have beset me;
    horror has overwhelmed me.
⁶ I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest.
⁷ I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;^[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
    far from the tempest and storm.”

⁹ Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
    for I see violence and strife in the city.
¹⁰ Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
    malice and abuse are within it.
¹¹ Destructive forces are at work in the city;
    threats and lies never leave its streets.

¹² If an enemy were insulting me,
    I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
    I could hide.
¹³ But it is you, a man like myself,
    my companion, my close friend,
¹⁴ with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
    at the house of God,
as we walked about
    among the worshipers.

¹⁵ Let death take my enemies by surprise;
    let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
    for evil finds lodging among them.

¹⁶ As for me, I call to God,
    and the Lord saves me.
¹⁷ Evening, morning and noon
    I cry out in distress,
    and he hears my voice.
¹⁸ He rescues me unharmed
    from the battle waged against me,
    even though many oppose me.
¹⁹ God, who is enthroned from of old,
    who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
    because they have no fear of God.

²⁰ My companion attacks his friends;
    he violates his covenant.
²¹ His talk is smooth as butter,
    yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
    yet they are drawn swords.

²² Cast your cares on the Lord
    and he will sustain you;
he will never let
    the righteous be shaken.
²³ But you, God, will bring down the wicked
    into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
    will not live out half their days.

But as for me, I trust in you.

Jesus we trust in You!

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