Preparing The Way Of The Lord – 40 Day Fast
POSTED ON 01/02/10
A few months ago, I felt the Lord showing me the number 11/11.
It seemed like this number was everywhere – I don’t know if this has ever happened to you – I just couldn’t escape it. There were times when I’d be praying, open my eyes, and the time would be 11:11; it all seemed really weird! I started asking the Lord what He was trying to show me, but I didn’t really seem to have a clear answer until November 11 2009, which just happened to be my birthday.
I had an unexplained sense that there was something really significant about my birthday, and I also felt the Lord calling me to do a 40-day fast. Since I’d be in Hamilton, USA for a youth conference called ‘Winter Ramp’ (amazingly for 11 days!), I decided to do it when I returned. I picked a date without really thinking about it.
Not long after putting the date in my diary, I got a text from a work colleague, asking me if I’d consider doing a 40-day fast, starting in January. I took this as confirmation that this was of God – I mean how many times do you get a text from a friend asking you to join in with a 40-day fast?! So after all this I just thought it might be worth checking up the date I had put down for the 40day fast just to be prepare for it etc… And guess what date I had it down for? 11th January!!! and if you write out the date it’s 01-11-10…
On my birthday – 11/11/09 – while I was praying, the song ‘Prepare the Way’ by Eddie James came on. You can hear Lou Engle at the beginning of the song, praying for a great awakening – it’s really powerful! The song always has a big impact on me; Lou’s prayers, and passion, just wreck me. So this song started playing and I was weeping, crying out to God, and I felt the Lord say that this number, 11/11, was significant to John the Baptist and his call to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ (Matthew 11:11 talks about John the Baptist).
That morning I knew the Lord was calling me to be someone who would follow in John’s footsteps and ‘prepare the way of the Lord’. God used another friend to confirm this: while she was praying for me (without any prior knowledge of what was happening to me), she said, ‘I feel the Lord saying, “A voice of one in the wilderness crying, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” She went on to say, ‘I feel like this is going to involve fasting.’ For me, this was amazing, and I had a sense of this being the Word of the Lord.
A few weeks after this, I was at work talking to a friend (who, again, had no idea what had been happening), and he looked at the Prayer Storm flyer and pointed out to me that the meeting is going to be on for 11hours. I hadn’t even noticed that! That led to us talking about how I had been seeing 11/11 everywhere and he said, ‘Wow! I saw that number this morning in prayers and didn’t know what it meant, so I guess it’s linked to this somehow!’. Right after that conversation I went into the prayer room, turned on my phone to play some music in the background, and guess what the time was… 1.11pm. I was checking the emails on my iphone later that day and it said ‘downloading 11/11 messages’.
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