21 Days of Prayer & Fasting
2 times a year, I go ALL IN for 21 days alongside a church in Alabama (I live in FL, so doesn’t matter where you live) called Church of the Highlands. Their pastor, Chris Hodges, is one of the best I’ve found out there in teaching the Word of God in a way that ANYONE can understand it without dumbing it down or bending to culture.
Here is how it works:
For 21 days they have a live service every single day!
SUNDAY’S is their regular church service, so there are 4 different times to catch it live: (9am ET, 10:45am ET, 12:30pm ET, or 5:30pm ET)
To catch that service, you will want to download the Church of the Highlands APP and when they are LIVE you will see a LIVE button in the TOP RIGHT CORNER to join! (you can watch on your phone or ipad, but we will often stream it from a phone to our TV!)
The beginning of the service typically includes about 4 worship songs (15-20 mins in length). You can choose to watch their worship or play your own! Here is my playlist 🙂
The service in it’s entirety is one hour in length and always incredible!
The recording is available on the app the following day under MESSAGES.
Monday – Friday the service takes place at 7am ET. It is also an hour in length, but a different layout.
5 mins: Worship song
15 min: Focus of the day/short message
25 min: Solo prayer time (this is when I will be doing my morning prayer walk)
15 min: Pastor jumps on to end message with prayer.
You will join live the same way as on Sunday’s – Via the Highlands App (LIVE top right corner)
The recording is available ONE HOUR after service ends (9am ET) and is only available until the next day’s message airs live. (approx 23 hours) So it’s important to make time to fit it in that day if you don’t want to miss any messages.
Saturday’s service is a little later so that everyone has one day to sleep in! (10am ET)
Same access point for the live message and recording (available one hour afterward for only 23 hours)
Fasting: This is optional, but I find it to be really important for me to do 2x a year, so I do it during both the January 21 days of prayer AND the August one.
Fasting can mean a lot of things… but for ME it is taking a look at my life and seeing what things I’m CRAVING more and more of instead of craving more and more of Jesus.
Sometimes this is SOCIAL MEDIA & TV consumption, sometimes it’s SUGAR & unhealthy carbs, sometimes it’s CAFFEINE or even just too regularly drinking wine. I typically search my heart for the thing (or things) I would MOST DREAD giving up… and that’s IT! Haha!
Example… this time I was was easily giving up alcohol and crappy, sugary carbs, but I was really trying to convince myself that caffeine wasn’t necessary this time… WOMP WOMP, I knew immediately that was the one that DEFINITELY needed to go! (trust me, I wasn’t happy about it! Haha!)
My nutrition has been lacking this summer, so I personally decided to just go ALL IN and include them ALL — but don’t feel like that is NECESSARY — just give up that one you dread the most and you’ll notice such an amazing difference (once you get past those first few days).
ANOTHER thing that I’ve done in the past is to ADD something into my life throughout the 21 Days! This is a HEALTHY HABIT I’d like to create or stick to in my life.
This looks like: Complete 5 workouts a week, 20 minute morning prayer walk, read one passage in the Bible per day, in bed by 10pm nightly, no screen time after 7pm, daily story time with my kids, etc!
If this is your first time, don’t make it OVERLY COMPLICATED to stick with! My first 21 Days of Prayer I just committed to watching all 21 messages. That was all the commitment I could imagine make at the time… each time I’ve added on and stretched myself more!
Below is my template for the 21 Days — you probably know this by now… but I loveeeee check lists! Haha! The first is my example filled out, the linked downloadable one is BLANK for you to fill out!
PRAYER RESOURCES:
PRAY FIRST APP: Amazingggg guided prayers and written prayer examples for all kinds of situations!
DOWNLOADABLE PRAYER GUIDE: *Same as above, but you can print*
MORE ON FASTING: Learn about the different types of Fasting and what might be right for YOU!
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