21 Days of Prayer & Fasting

Pray 21 Kingdom Come slide

Throughout the last 2000 years, whenever God has moved in power, the Church has been marked by a deep devotion to prayer. At Christchurch, we want to see God move in power in us, our church, our city and our land. We long to see the name of Jesus known, loved and adored once again. So we are doing our best to become a church that roots everything we do in prayer - a PRAY FIRST church.

We begin this new year with 21 Days of prayer and fasting from 11-31 January 2025, and we'd love you to join us. Prayer is vital. Fasting is helpful but optional. And the fasting element can take many forms (see below), so we encourage you to do that in a form and rhythm that works for you.

See below for tips on how to engage meaningfully with this special prayer season. And for daily encouragements, tips and resources, please join our Christchurch WhatsApp community here, and then join the "Prayer and Thanksgiving" group.

General Tips

Make a Plan - Block out a special time for prayer in your diary for each day of the next 21 days. (Perhaps 30-60 minutes)

Keep a Prayer Journal - Write down each day your main Scriptures, prayer subjects and prayer requests, as well as any particular things you think God has been saying to you along the way.

Use a Scripture Plan to Guide your Prayers - For example, you could use the Church in Wales daily lectionary readings or work your way through John’s Gospel - 21 chapters in 21 days.

How to Pray for One Hour

In this season of devoting ourselves to prayer, it is good to stretch ourselves to pray for longer than usual. The idea of praying for 1 hour by yourself can seem daunting at first. But with a structure to follow, it can end up going by surprisingly quickly. Here is an example you could use:

Welcome - Ask God to guide you in worship and prayer (1 minute)
Worship - Read an opening Bible verse or psalm, then worship along to 1-3 worship songs or hymns (5-15 minutes)
Thanksgiving - Spend some time thanking God for His gospel, goodness and blessings. You could write them down in your journal if that’s easier. (3-5 minutes)
Read a Bible passage - e.g. from the lectionary. (3-5 minutes)
Pray in the light of that Bible passage (3-10 minutes)
Worship (3-10 minutes)
Read another Bible passage (5 minutes)
Pray for a specific list - e.g. individuals, families, roads, groups in the community, people who are lonely, etc (5-15 minutes)
Worship (3-10 minutes)
Wait on the Lord - Ask God to bring something or someone to mind that He especially wants you to pray for. (2-3 minutes)
Pray about whatever comes to mind. Or if nothing does, read another Bible passage and pray about the first thing that strikes you in it. (3-5 minutes)
Thank God for graciously hearing your prayers.
Close with the Lord's prayer, or another biblical prayer (e.g. Psalm 67)

Further tips:

To extend or fill up your time of prayer, you could insert another cycle of Worship-Bible-Prayer in the pattern above.
If you find yourself distracted by background noise while you pray, many people have found William Augusto’s “Soaking in the Presence” background music helpful: https://www.youtube.com/@SoakinginHisPresence

Praying with Fasting

Here is a 10-minute introduction to fasting from Rev Mark:

For a slightly longer explanation of Christian fasting, see this helpful infosheet from 24-Prayer.

And one book we recommend on this subject is "Hunger for God" by John Piper. It is available for around £12.50 from Eden and other online retailers.

BEFORE YOU FAST

Pre-fasting tip: If you drink caffeine regularly or enjoy sweet food, it can help to prepare your body for fasting by doing a detox from these things.

Medical note: If you have any kind of medical condition or history of eating disorders, please seek advice from your GP before embarking on any food-fasting. (Also see NHS links below.)

TYPES OF FASTING

There are many different ways to fast. Here are 4 examples:

Selective Fast: This type of fast involves removing certain elements from your diet. One example of a selective fast is the “Daniel Fast”, during which you remove meat, sweets, and bread from your diet and consume water and juice for fluids and fruits and vegetables for food.

Partial Fast: This fast is sometimes called the “Jewish Fast” and involves abstaining from eating any type of food in the morning and afternoon. This can either correlate to specific times of the day, such as 6:00 am to 3:00 pm, or from sunup to sundown. Often, this creates space for a special time of prayer during the day (e.g. during your lunch break.)

Complete Fast: In this type of fast, you drink only liquids, typically water. If you struggle to maintain the energy levels you need during this kind of fasting, some people find it helpful to drink light juices as well as water.

Soul Fast: This fast is a great option if you do not have much experience fasting food, have health issues that prevent you from fasting food, or if you wish to refocus certain areas of your life that are out of balance. You might want to try fasting one or more of the following:

Watching TV - either completely, or in the evenings
Social media
Alcohol
Talking (!)
Watching entertainment or sport

With thanks to the websites of 24-7 prayer and Church of the Highlands, Alabama, both of whom offer great examples of seeking God earnestly in prayer and fasting.

Resources: Prayer

Church in Wales Lectionary - Daily Bible readings can be found here: https://lectionary.churchinwales.org.uk/
Morning and Evening Prayer - See here for recorded services by the Church of England which you can follow and pray with.
"Why and How Do I Pray" - There are 2 great talks on prayer in the Media section of this website by Bishop John

The Prayer Course from 24-7 Prayer:

https://prayercourse.org/sessions/ - Watch the 8 sessions of the Prayer Course here.
https://prayercourse.org/toolshed/ - 30 tools to help you pray here

NHS Medical Advice on Fasting

Most online NHS advice is focussed on Ramadan, but there is plenty of helpful advice here for Christian fasting too. For example:
https://northeastlondon.icb.nhs.uk/news/plan-ahead-for-a-healthy-ramadan/
https://www.wuth.nhs.uk/media/7436/ramadan-health-guide.pdf

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