January 2025 - Week of Prayer and Fasting
Next week, we’re inviting everyone to join us for a Week of Prayer and Fasting. Will you join us?
As a church across our four locations, we’ll be taking time to breathe in God’s presence and breathe out His love into the world. Through prayer and intentional living, we want to encounter God deeply, see lives transformed, and seek His justice and revival in our communities.
Each day will have a focus, starting our week with Breathing In - encountering God’s presence personally and as a church. We will then move to Breathing Out as the week progresses, living out His presence in our families, workplaces, and wider communities.
Fasting for breakthrough
There are people in our community who have experience of fasting for long periods of time, there are people who have never fasted, and many who sit somewhere inbetween the two! I’d encourage us all to take a step during this week to fast in some way, to refocus our attention on Jesus. If you’ve never fasted in prayer before this is a great opportunity to start, and try fasting in some way or another. Andrew Murray, the South African pastor says;
“Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.”
So why not try fasting something through the week whether that’s:
fasting a single meal
food for 24 hours or more
social media
television
alcohol
Consider how you might make a sacrifice through fasting to commit yourself to Jesus, and to seeking his Kingdom.
If you’d like to read more about fasting, our prayer page on our website has some more information and signposting.
(For health reasons, total food fasts for a day or more aren’t recommended for the following groups; anyone under 16, expectant or breast-feeding mothers, anyone with a medical disorder affected by diet like diabetes, and it’s also recommended that anyone with a history of eating disorders should not enter into a total food fast. If you want to take on a total food fast for an extended period of multiple days or weeks, don’t make the decision alone. Consult your doctor for a recommended diet in the run up to and end of the fast).
Opportunities to pray with and for others
We’ll also have opportunities to gather as a Farnborough community to pray and worship together throughout the week.
Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday evenings we will gather on Zoom from 7-7.30pm as members of our team lead us in prayer. https://us05web.zoom.us/j/97783958669?pwd=L2JzOVNRMzl1UCs1WnAxZ25YRmdTUT09
Meeting ID: 977 8395 8669
Passcode: 858020On Thursday we will gather at our building to pray 7-8pm
On Friday we won’t gather together, but I encourage everyone to find a few minutes during your day to prayer walk the areas around the places you live or work. Whether you have 10 minutes or an hour to spare, why not pray for the people in those communities as you walk!
Sunday 2nd February we will gather for a time of worship from 7-8pm
Personal Devotion through the Week
To help you engage throughout the week, we encourage you to make use of these resources:
This blog! We will be sending out a short daily devotional from Monday - Friday, each one written by members of our Kerith Farnborough community, to help focus our prayers each day. We’ll post them to our social media feeds also (search for @kerithfarnborough)
Our central social media feeds (@kerithcommunitychurch) will be sharing some helpful pointers to help us focus during the day.
Lectio 365 is a free app that guides you in prayer through scripture at the beginning, middle, and end of your day.
Simon Benham’s Prayercast: A daily 15-minute guided prayer session led by people in the wider Kerith community, live on facebook every weekday morning on Facebook 6:45am (and available to catch up after.)
24/7 Prayer Resources: Free downloadable guides to help you pray, including tips on fasting.
Kerith’s 1 Hour Guided Prayer: A helpful audio podcast we’ve put together to guide you through an hour of prayer.
We would also love to hear from you with any prayer requests - not just next week, but every week! You can complete a prayer card at the Info Point at church with a request or an answered prayer, and these will be passed onto a team of people who will stand with you in prayer.
Let’s come together to seek God in a fresh way and step into all He has for us. We’re excited to see what He will do through this time of prayer and fasting. If you see breakthrough, or experience His presence in fresh and deeper ways during the week, we would love to stand and celebrate with you.
Be blessed and stay close to Jesus - remembering those words of Moses “If your presence does not go with us Lord - please do not send us up from here!” Our prayer is that we all experience the presence of God in fresh and deeper ways next week, and in the weeks beyond.
Sonia
Kerith Site Pastor