What if the breakthrough you have been praying for is on the other side of something you have never tried? This week on the It’s Life Podcast, Jenny sits down with Pastor Daniel Ethridge, our Hampton Campus Pastor, for a rich and practical conversation about one of the most misunderstood spiritual disciplines in the church today: fasting.
Pastor Daniel starts with the basics because the basics matter. Fasting, in its biblical root, is abstaining from food for a spiritual purpose. Not a diet. Not intermittent fasting for your waistline. The distinction is the spiritual component: you are not just emptying yourself of food, you are emptying yourself of your flesh, your distractions, your wrong pursuits, in order to be filled with something greater. As one of his mentors used to say, you only have so much capacity. As much as you are filled with the wrong things, you can never be fully filled with the right things.
From there, the conversation goes deeper. Pastor Daniel shares a remarkable story from his own health journey where a doctor asked if he had been fasting, after his numbers changed dramatically between two visits. What the doctor described happening at the cellular level during a fast, specifically that the first three days bad things die off and then the body begins generating good cells, immediately reminded him of something. Three days. A turn. New life. God designed this. The physical is a picture of the spiritual.
Pastor Daniel also opens up about doing his first 40-day fast last year, not out of spiritual confidence but out of desperation. He shares how a close friend committed to do it alongside him, and how without that accountability he does not think he would have made it. During those 40 days he began receiving dreams, visions, and clarity from God about his calling and direction in a way that had not happened before. His conviction is clear: there are certain kinds of spiritual breakthrough that simply will not come any other way.
The episode is full of practical wisdom too. What counts as a fast and what does not. How to prepare rhythms of time with God to replace the meals you are skipping. What to do if you fail in the middle of a fast. How to talk about fasting with your kids. And why the only real failure in fasting is not seeking God at all.
As a church, Liberty is heading into 21 Days of Prayer from August 2nd through 22nd, with services Monday through Friday at 6 a.m. and Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. at all physical campuses and online. If you have never been part of 21 Days of Prayer, this episode is the best possible introduction to why it matters and what God can do in a season like that.