admin
Rudo Grace Gwata-Charamba
Correspondent
The Bible, history, plus the experiences of many nations show that proclaiming a national day of prayer and fasting, such as the one led by President Mnangagwa earlier in the week, is one of the best initiatives that our nation has undertaken.
The call for national prayer and fasting, that we just had in Zimbabwe, is not a new or odd phenomenon with records of such calls dating as far back as the year 1623.
Since then, numerous nations, worldwide, have resorted to such prayer and fasting for God’s intervention in socio-economic issues, including during the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Pilgrims to the United States set a pattern of proclaiming public days of prayer and fasting, a practice that governing bodies in subsequent generations have continued to follow up to this day.
Such an appeal to the great authority of God, through united prayer and fasting, depicted the nation’s belief in the unambiguous acknowledgement of God’s supremacy, plus His capacity to overrule the destinies of nations.
Comparably, in Africa, the nation of Liberia called for national prayer for economic hardships in 2019, while South Africa rallied its citizens to pray for rain, at the height of a drought, in Cape Town, in 2018.
In the same context, the Zambian government declared one week of prayer and fasting, seeking God’s intervention in a cholera epidemic, while the Malawian cabinet led in prayers for the protection of a maize crop that was under serious threat.
Fasting and prayer follows a direct teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ when He was addressing a supernatural condition, a demon-possessed boy, which was very much like coronavirus.
In the Gospel of Mark 9:29 (AMP), He said, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything, but prayer and fasting.”
The disciples had failed to cast out the demon possessing the boy and the Jesus chided the people for lack of faith and unbelief before providing the above-mentioned solution.
As Christians who believe that God’s word is the infallible truth, we obeyed the word when faced with Covid-19, a very significant challenge affecting the whole world.
Seeking God through fasting and prayer helps people to focus primarily on God and hear from Him towards strengthening the relationship with the Maker.
This facilitates the submission of the will of mankind to God’s will plus the ensuing consistently answered prayers. Fasting and prayer also drives away doubt from people’s minds, helping them to understand the importance of relying on God’s word as the only truth.
Consequently, the practice is, in fact, a duty of every Christian.
Although calls for prayer ordinarily receive mixed reactions, with critics shooting down the idea, most believers maintain, and rightly so, that prayer is the best strategy for nation building.
For example, many citizens of the United States of America attribute the success of their national programmes to their strong belief in the supremacy of God and His blessings upon the nation.
The most profound acknowledgement regarding such belief was pronounced in the March 30, 1863 National Fast Day proclamation signed by then President Abraham Lincoln, which is preserved in the library of the Congress.
The proclamation followed a resolution initiated by the Senate reads, in part, “And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognise the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord . . .”
In essence, the nation was confessing a strong belief in the divine spiritual laws that guide States in political, economic, and military forces’ endeavours and submission to the same can change the destinies of nation, setting them up for success, as well as protecting them from threatening disasters.
Moreover, the proclamation conceded the exceptional blessings enjoyed by the United States while at the same time, suggested that such blessings created an attitude of pride and self-sufficiency, elements deemed to be the root causes of the then acute national crisis.
There was a strong belief that the nation had vainly imagined that they had accessed the blessings through their superior wisdom and virtue.
That is, they had grown too proud to pray to their Maker, a very common characteristic of many individuals and nations within all generations.
Relatedly, several examples, in both the Old and New Testaments, clearly demonstrate a connection between individual and communal prayer, on the one hand, and fasting and getting answers from God, on the other.
The Old Testament records a number of occasions where collective fasting and prayer brought forth dramatic and powerful intervention by God.
Such records encompass Ezra’s assignment where he writes: “We fasted and entreated our God for this, and He answered our prayer.” (Ezra 8:23).
The nation was seeking guidance in addressing situations like the coronavirus pandemic facing the world today, plus other difficulties unique to Zimbabwe.
Ezra sought God for all cares including protection of their possessions, through prayer and fasting, in the same way Jesus taught (Ezra 8:21).
It is, therefore, worthwhile, for this generation, to also to bring its cares to Him, including pandemics and other issues of life.
The book of Joel records a situation depicting incessant and total desolation, without a ray of hope, where God prescribed united fasting as the remedy (Joel 1:14).
The king and the nobles proclaimed a fast and led by example.
All the human inhabitants of Nineveh, together with their herds and the flocks subsequently joined in, all casting themselves upon the mercy of God, leading to an insightful and universal repentance of a whole community.
In the books of Kings, Jehoshaphat and his people are on record for using only spiritual weapons that included collective fasting, united prayer and praise and worship.
Analogously, chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Acts, in the New Testament, point to the essence of collective prayer and fasting in the growth and development of the early church.
The early Christians in these churches received direction and power from the Holy Spirit for decisions or important tasks through collective fasting and prayer.
In the same manner, God, with His unchanging nature, will answer prayers today.
In fact, He will meet all our needs abundantly and more than we can ever ask for (Ephesians 3:20). Explicitly, as a loving Father, God takes the greatest joy in answering our prayers.
The 1863 United States government proclamation of a national fast includes a counsel that reads,
“All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorised by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”
Arguably, such guidance is worth emulating by every nation, including Zimbabwe, for the common good that can lead to significant changes in the future of the whole world.
God continues to speak through His messengers and by His Spirit to nations, as He did during Bible times, with an invitation to repentance, fasting, praying and self-humbling, with everlasting life granted to those who heed to the call. (John 3:16).
Dr Rudo Grace Gwata-Charamba is an author, development project/programme management consultant and researcher with a special interest in Results-Based Management (RBM), Governance and Leadership. She can be contacted via email: [email protected]
Online Reporter