WEEK TWO FOCUS… CREATING SPACE FOR HIS VOICE

- DAY 12 | greater ALIGNMENT

Matt 17:17-21 Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. 21 However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” NKJV

I want to go a little further today in my blog from yesterday about “Alignment.” In this story when Jesus was talking with his disciples about the little boy, he Jesus was telling them the problem was not the demon; the problem was unbelief.

The first thing He said was, “O faithless and perverse generation.” That might seem a bit hard, but Jesus wasn’t being mean. This is so important to understand…

 

He used two distinctive words that described the root cause of their unbelief: by “faithless” He meant they were too disconnected from God, and “perverse” meant instead that they were too connected to the world.

 

He used two distinctive words that described the root cause of their unbelief: by “faithless” He meant they were too disconnected from God, and “perverse” meant instead that they were too connected to the world.

The disciples were too gunked up! Today, things haven’t changed much… People are too disconnected from God and too connected to the world and its distractions, the result is always unbelief.

What are distractions? Distractions are those things that keep you in bondage to what isn’t important!

So instead of walking in faith, we walk in unbelief, and God’s kingdom doesn’t manifest with power. What’s the answer? Prayer and Fasting!

Jesus didn’t tell His boys just to pray. He said to pray and fast. Both were necessary, because prayer connects us to God and fasting disconnects us from the world.

So together, they bring us into greater alignment with heaven. When you pray and fast, the first thing that comes out is not the “demon” or the problem but what comes out is the unbelief…the real problem!

Fasting deals with the root cause of unbelief. The demon’s coming out, or
whatever miracle you need, is just a by-product of your believing in God and walking in faith.

When you come into alignment with God, you begin to see His perfect will done in your life, as God has already established it in heaven. God’s kingdom and power start to manifest in your earth, and that’s when you get to the point where, as Jesus said, you can speak to the mountain that’s been causing you so much pain and see it cast into the sea (Mark 11:23)

But to come into this level of alignment with Him so you can see those results, you will need to pray and fast.

Fasting really is not about trying to get miracles and breakthroughs from God…

It is about aligning yourself with God and what He already wants. We don’t fast to get God to change something. We fast so that we are changed and come into a greater level of faith.

God has already given us everything we need for living a godly life (2 Peter 1:3). We actually don’t need to get anything from God; we just need to learn how to walk in what He gave us when we got saved.

There’s another very important thing I want to point out. When the disciples were faced with this crisis, because of their unbelief, or misalignment, they were unprepared to deal with the challenge at hand. But when Jesus was faced with the crisis, He didn’t have to stop and go on a quick three-day fast to solve the problem. He was already in such alignment with His Father in heaven that He knew what the Father’s will was.

Fasting aligns you with God and prepares you before the crisis even hits.

Jesus was basically telling the disciples, “You need to pray and fast before you encounter the crisis.” He was saying that prayer and fasting are part of our preparation as believers to destroy the words of the Evil One.

Prayer and fasting should be proactive, not reactive.

Through fasting we shut down our natural man so the spiritual man can rise up! Re-Awaken My Heart is about starving our unbelief and feeding our faith. We move our earth into alignment with God’s heaven where now anything can happen and “all things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23)

- Sam Hinn