Watch Focus: Ask for the Rain—A 21-Day Fast for Humbling, Repentance, and Revival
 

Friday, Sept 4, 2015 We are seeking God’s face, declaring a 21-Day Corporate Fast starting Sept. 8, a fast for humbling, repentance, and revival. In recent days, Christians have been deeply grieved as we have been confronted with videos that vividly reveal the tragedy that is abortion on a massive scale, with baby parts being put out for sale. We have also been grieved by the recent court decisions promoting homosexual marriages that further illustrate the moral backsliding of our nation from the Judeo-Christian foundations of our nation. We see 92 million Americans without jobs, and our cities riven with violence and racial division. The nuclear agreements with Iran have also put our friend and ally Israel in a very precarious place of danger.

In the midst of all of this and other challenging issues, we turn to the living God, remembering His promise, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

Please join us in whatever manner you are able in this 21-Day Corporate Fast. Jesus said, “This kind does not go out but through prayer and fasting” (Matt. 17:21). When Israel faced genocide at the hands of Haman’s decree, God’s people fasted and prayed: “Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!” (Esther 4:16). When Ezra and the exiles that returned with him to Jerusalem needed protection from enemy raiders they fasted: “Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from Him the right way for us and our little ones and all our possessions. For I was ashamed to request of the king an escort of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the road, because we had spoken to the king, saying, “The hand of our God is upon all those for good who seek Him, but His power and His wrath are against all those who forsake Him.” So we fasted and entreated our God for this, and He answered our prayer” (Ezra 8:21-23).

Let us humble ourselves in this fast. Just like Daniel, we say we have sinned and done wrong (see Dan. 9:3-7). But, we cry out to the Lord, that He may forgive and heal our land. May He cleanse us and revive us personally, as a church, and as a nation. May the Lord restore us spiritually and morally. May He restore America back to her greatness.

2 Chron. 7:14, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Zech. 10:1, "Ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain. The Lord will make flashing clouds; He will give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone.”

Joel 1:13, 14, “Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; wail, you who minister before the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, you who minister to my God; for the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.”

Matt. 17:21; Ezra 8:21-23; Esther 4:16