The Daniel Fast for Financial Advancement
Today’s financial pressures are causing more and more anxiety, stress, and burdens on more men and women. Many followers of Christ come to the Lord to seek His wisdom, intervention, and financial outpouring to relieve them of stress.
While this can serve as a wake-up call for better financial management or a push to earn more money through a higher paying job or more hours, for some it is an opportunity to draw closer to God, to learn a deeper level of dependence on Him and discover Him as your only Source and Provider.
This article will introduce you to some of the initial steps in learning how to increase your dependence on the Lord. Since this is such an important topic, this writing will only serve as a starting point. My hope is that you continue to study God’s Word and learn more about who God is, who you are in Him, and how you can access the blessings, peace, and joy He longs for you to have.
While this is not exhaustive, here are four of the steps you can take to achieve financial breakthrough:
1. Know what God says about finances. You can hear your Father through revelation or His Word. There are many general truths in the Bible that God wants His children to be whole, blessed, and even rich. Study the Word and select three or four promises to anchor your faith.
The details must come from Him personally by the Spirit of God. For example, if you are considering a specific job or move, wait for His confirmation before asking Him to release His power to do so. Once you’ve heard from Him, then you can have faith to move on.
2. You must choose to believe it! Faith is a choice! Believing is a choice! When you first believed in Jesus, it was a choice! In the same way, you must choose to believe that God wants to give you the desires of your heart. This belief is not always in your soul (your intellect), but rather in your spirit. Remember, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. This is one of the most powerful benefits of fasting – your spirit is taking over our soul (also known in the Bible as your flesh). Even if your intellect has unbelief, move your spirit to trust God’s Word. Faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of God. Listen to teaching tapes, read books, and study the scriptures to feed your spirit with God’s truths.
3. You must believe you get it! Faith is a spiritual matter. Faith comes from our spirit to the Spirit of God. Faith believes in the invisible. Again, consider your faith that Christ is in you. When she accepted Christ as her Lord, she confessed with her mouth, believed with her heart, and received Him into her heart by faith. The same is true of the other promises of God.
2 Corinthians 9: 8 says: And God can make all grace abound to you, so that, always having all that is sufficient in all things, you may have an abundance for every good work.“This promise is specifically about money! Paul is writing to the Corinthian men and women who supported him with their financial gifts. He is saying that God can meet all your needs in a” more than sufficient way “that they can give abundantly to the works of God.That is a powerful promise to believe and receive.
Four. You must act as if you received it! By accepting the truth of God’s Word in your heart, you can take spirit-led steps! Remember, faith is an act! James 2:14, 17-18, 26 teaches, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save you? So also faith in itself, if it has no works, is dead. faith, and I have works. “Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”
Faith without actions is dead! That’s a bold statement, but it’s true. So does that mean you need to go out there and start spending money you don’t have? No! But it does mean that you can start taking some actions to exercise your spirit and mind to align with God’s truth. Perhaps you have an upcoming bill that you believe will receive the funds. Write the check and put it where you will see it. Thank God for meeting your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus! Believe you get it. And then when the funds come in, send the check and continue to praise God for His provision.
Fasting for spiritual advancement can become one of the most important growth moments in your spiritual life. There is no other topic in the Bible that receives more attention than provision, money, and wealth. You are about to begin a journey to unravel some of your own attitudes and beliefs about money, God, His Word, and your own practices.
Ask the Holy Spirit to teach and guide you in this area. He knows the Truth, He can guide you on the Path you must follow and He can shine the Light on your circumstances today. Get close to God and He will draw close to you. Trust Him and let Him fill you with His love, His care, and His provision.