Ever since I received the gift of praying in tongues, I had never attempted a 40-day fast while praying in tongues. One time, I decided to hold the fast while praying in tongues for at least 6 hours a day.
I know you may be wondering where that idea came from. Well, it all began with a change in my lifestyle.
I had just moved to a new place that I really loved. The place was quiet and very peaceful. Before moving there, I had asked God to lead me to a quiet and peaceful place so that I could spend more time in prayer.
Because God had done His part, it was my time to honor the promise.
My fasting strategy
Since I had to juggle between praying in tongues and daily activities, I decided to pray at random times during the day, as long as the hours accumulated to 6 hours by the end of the day.
To get more time, I decided to sacrifice breakfast and lunch so that I would only take one meal a day. I was spending about 4 hours combined on breakfast and lunch, so by sacrificing them, I had already gained 4 hours. I only needed to find two more hours to make it 6 hours a day.
Good for me, I had already set aside an hour and a half of prayer every day. I decided to extend it to 2 hours so that, together with the 4 hours, it would make 6 hours of praying in tongues every day.
I knew it was going to be intense, and it would also be very difficult for me to sustain it for long. Initially, I set out to do a 90-day fast, although I was very skeptical if I would manage.
The longest fast I had done before then was a mere seven days. I also didn’t have any specific pressing need I was praying for, and I was unsure if I would have the desire to keep praying with that intensity.
Either way, I began the fast, expecting to make adjustments depending on how it went.
The execution
Immediately I began the fast, I quickly noticed that praying in tongues for 6 hours is not a joke.
In my mind, I had divided my day into four portions: 6 hours of praying in tongues, 6 hours of sleep, 6 hours of working, and 6 hours of handling other activities.
I soon realized that 6 hours of pure praying in tongues would be difficult for me to sustain. As a result, I began praying in tongues while working and doing other activities. That way, the intensity was less, although I would still conclude my prayers with at least 2 hours of pure praying in tongues every day.
Not having a pressing need to pray for was also working against me.
Sometimes I would question why I was putting myself through all that trouble. The only thing that kept me going was convincing myself that I was doing it as an experiment, just to see what would happen.
After the first week, I got accustomed to the routine, although praying in tongues didn’t get any easier. Spiritually, I could not notice any major change, which made me further question whether it was worth all the effort.
Around the second week, I began falling behind schedule. Instead of praying for 6 hours, I would do about 4 hours and push the remaining 2 hours to the following day, with a burden to pray for 8 hours the next day.
I felt even more discouraged. If I managed to do 6 hours the following day, I would still have two more hours that I needed to carry over.
Slowly but surely, the hours I carried over kept increasing, such that by day 30, I had a full 6 hours being carried over. That meant that on day 30, I was busy compensating for the prayers of day 29.
My true intentions
At that point, someone could easily have said I was becoming a Pharisee for counting the hours I prayed so religiously. But in reality, I was only counting the hours to test the limit of my body.
I was never using the hours I prayed as a reason for God to answer me. God had already done so much for me.
To be honest, most of the tongues I was praying during the fast felt very dry and empty. Part of the reason was that I was praying in tongues while doing other activities.
Also, knowing that I had to complete 6 hours quickly made it feel like a job, and it became very boring. But those were just my feelings.
Later on, I came to learn that God actually valued those tongues that seemed dry and empty.
Concluding the fast
When I got to day 40 of the fast, I had lost count of the days I had fasted. By the time I calculated how many days I had fasted and prayed in tongues, it was day 46.
At that point, I decided to stop. I was very exhausted.
Previously, I had been dragging myself to pray, but at that point, I would actually go silent, with no tongues coming out of my mouth. It would take me a few minutes to realize I had stopped praying. That was the level of exhaustion I had reached.
After I ended the fast, I didn’t expect much because there was no specific thing I was praying for. I was just happy that I had pushed myself to pray in tongues for that long, and I was actually laughing at myself for having come up with such a crazy idea.
The unexpected reward
However, God took my crazy idea seriously, even though I didn’t necessarily intend for it to be so.
I say this because ever since I completed the fast, anytime I would pray to God for anything, I would hear a voice tell me, “Why would God not answer a young man who prayed for 40 days?”
Whenever I would hear that voice, I would become so confident in whatever I was asking God to do. And sure enough, every plan I came up with after that fast would work out to perfection.
I kept hearing that voice for about three months before it stopped. During that period, I had a constant feeling that God was pleased with me. I couldn’t explain how I knew it, but I just felt it.
Knowing that God was pleased with me gave me such confidence that I had never felt before.
From the experience, I learned that even when your prayers don’t necessarily ask for anything from God, as long as you do them from a pure heart, God will bless you as He sees fit.
God bless you.