Sermon Tone Analysis

Fasting and praying …desperate for God

, Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.

For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.”

So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.”

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.

For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.”

So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.”

Surrendering to God is abandoning all that we have, to receive all that God possesses.

It is not the skills, talents, and gifts that God places in our hands that matter; it is the full, complete, unequivocal surrender of those meager abilities to Him that He uses to do great things in our lives.

Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, once said, “I discovered an astonishing truth; God is attracted to weakness.

He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need Him.”

The first step in any spiritual awakening is demolition.

We must become undone!

We cannot make any headway in seeking God without first tearing down all the accumulated junk in our souls.

Rationalizing has to cease.

We have to start seeing the sinful debris we hadn’t noticed before in our lives, which is what holds back the blessing of the God.

Sin grieves the Holy Spirit and quenches His power among us.

Prayer and fasting make the spirit and heart tender before a holy God.

We begin to see things like never before.

We see sins we have never noticed before.

Prayer and fasting makes us weak physically but strong spiritually.

I believe God is attracted to the weakness that comes to those who pray and fast.

, But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We at New Life Church must become a church that is weak and totally dependent upon God.

Our weakness will become a magnet for the mighty manifest presence of God.

When we surrender as followers of Christ we will see an unusual manifestation of God the Holy Spirit fall fresh upon us.

Surrender means we must empty ourselves and be filled again.

We must die to live; give it all up to gain.

No great work anywhere by anyone at any time has ever come about without surrender.

For His kingdom to come, our kingdom must perish.

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

When we surrender to God, we become better fathers, better mothers, better husbands, and better wives, better children, better students, better employees, better followers, and better leaders.

We must transfer our lives, our ideas, and our best-laid plans over to our heavenly Father’s control.

It is in the transfer of our bodies (all that we are), our minds (how we think), our spirits, (where God lives), our tongues, (every word we utter), our attitudes ( the way we respond to others), and our motives ( the reality of who we are).

We must give all that God have given us; we must transfer and give it over to Him in surrender for His great purposes.

We must live in God’s holy presence, focused on Him through the joys of the disciplines of fasting and prayer, the more we learn His character; the more we will desire Him more than life itself.

No one has ever made more promises than God, no one has ever kept more promises than God, and no one has even been more faithful than God.

God will be faithful to answer all His promises to those who pray and fast.

He knows that we are engaged in the battle of our lives because He has already told us:

“ For our struggles is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” ( NIV)

When we pray and fast, we are walking in the power of our weaknesses, strengthened by a Holy powerful God, we will face intense spiritual warfare.

Yet we will win because we are surrendered fully to Jesus.

Let us pray,

Fasting is abstaining from food with a spiritual goal in mind.

It is when you neglect the most powerful lust within you, which is for food, in order to pursue an in-depth, intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I’m totally convinced that there is a correlation in Scripture between humility and fasting and prayer.

We are called by God to humble ourselves before Him and fast and pray.

, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”

We are called to humble ourselves before God; the responsibility is on us to humble ourselves.

We are to lay ourselves before God facing our future boldly because of our trust in Him.

Nothing can create in us the holiness, humbleness boldness, blessedness, the sacred surrender, and strength through weakness like humbling ourselves before God.

A.W. Tozer said “Humility is as scarce as an albino robin.”

In our American culture, humility and seeking God in prayer and fasting is rare.

But before we must be willing to seek the help of our holy God and we must be brought low.

We must come to the place of desperation.

Let read our text again and gain a feel for what is going on here.

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.

For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.”

So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.

Desperation is not always a bad position to inhabit, I believe that God creates times within our heart and lives, desperate times to draw us closer to Him.

Desperation is not bad when we are desperate for God to move mightily in a situation or circumstance.

Because when we are desperate enough we will take radical action to change.

We see three movements in Ezra plight here, first Ezra finds himself in a place of desperation, a place where He needs his God to come and rescue him.

Then Ezra clearly sees the purpose of his desperation, which is to build more trust in him, the people and even the King, and finally Ezra remembers and relies on the promised deliverance from his desperation.

The place of desperation

, Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God…

Ezra finds himself in a predicament and a place where only humbling himself and his people before God can provide any relief.

So Ezra calls for a fast, he recognizes that desperation for God coupled with humbling themselves before God would be a winning combination.

Prayer, fasting and making their request known to God was their sacred strategy.

The people fasted and pleaded with God that He might miraculously grant them favor and safety.

Remember our God is attracted to weakness; God wants to demonstrate His power in our lives if we will just learn to depend on Him.

As you and I face an uncertain future, one thing is certain we serve a God who is able, and who responds to prayer and fasting.

, ‘Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know.

They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft.

But I, when they were sick—I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

The psalm say, they Repay Me Evil for Good.

The song returns to say more about the schemes of the pursuers: they rise up as malicious witnesses, and they repay me evil for good, these enemies especially gloat over David’s misfortunes yet, he has only shown them kindness.

Ezra called his people to fast, his only desperation was for the name of God to be lifted up and for their enemies to be defeated without man’s help but by the hand of God.

The fasting had the purpose of imploring from God a straighter plan or level field, free from hindrance, and so a prosperous journey.

Fasting was an evidence of a clean heart and a contrite spirit that seeks to gain the favor of God who is enthroned on high can only dwell among the lowly.

, ‘For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’

who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’

This is what all Christians must do when we are faced with a future against difficult odds.

The drama that is recorded in speaks of how King Jehoshaphat proclaimed a fast so that the people would seek the Lord for guidance, direction, and, most of all, protection.

As their enemies surrounded them, God was moved by their fasting and prayer and saved them in dramatic fashion.

Remember, some men came from the Moabites and Ammonites and told Jehoshaphat that a battle was brewing and coming against him from beyond the sea and he was afraid.

But look at what he did when facing a difficult future.

, And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.

And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, and said, “O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven?

You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations.

In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you.

Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?

And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.’

And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy—behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit.

O our God, will you not execute judgment on them?

For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us.