21 Days of Fasting and Prayer Devotional: Send RevivalSample

Day 19: The Spirit and the Wilderness 

If you want to learn a specific skill, it is important who you talk to and learn from. If you want to become a better communicator, talk to great communicators and study their habits. If you want to lead more effectively, read the books of leaders you admire and listen to their wisdom. If you want to become a better father or mother, look to others who have parented well for years. Who we look to for our example is a critical component to what we can learn and who we become. This is true spiritually as well. When it comes to walking close to the Lord, Jesus’ life on earth sets the perfect model for us. 

Following Jesus’ baptism, Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. This leading was not just a gentle suggestion of where He should go next. Mark’s gospel says the Spirit compelled Him to go. The Greek word for compel means "to send out with force." What was so urgent that Jesus would need to spend the next forty days praying and fasting in the wilderness? We often flee places that look like the wilderness, but what we see in this story is that the wilderness is part of God’s plan and part of His preparation for Jesus for the season to come. 

It was in the wilderness that Jesus was able to escape the distractions and set His attention fully on His Father. It was in the wilderness that He found Himself completely dependent upon God. And although God the Father was with Him, the enemy showed up too. Satan began testing Jesus, attempting to once again subvert worship from the Father to himself. Jesus responded quickly and strategically with the Scripture that He had hidden in His heart.

After the account of the forty days of praying and fasting in the wilderness, Luke includes a critical piece of information: “Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power.”

Prior to entering the wilderness, Luke says Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, but after the wilderness, he says Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Jesus left the wilderness different than when He walked in. The Spirit’s power would be essential for the ministry Jesus would engage in. Therefore, even when it did not feel like it, the wilderness was a time of blessing as it prepared Jesus for what He came to accomplish.

The beauty found in a wilderness season and times of prayer and fasting is that we leave differently than when we came. We leave with more of the Holy Spirit’s power.

God’s desire for every person is that through this time of fasting, we leave with more of His presence and more of His power, not for ourselves, but for the people He wants us to reach. 

The power Jesus gained from that wilderness experience led to teaching God’s Word with boldness, healing the sick, setting captives free, giving hope to the hopeless, making the lame walk, restoring the sight of the blind, and so much more. God’s will is that we, too, would walk in boldness that comes from being in His presence, and that out of this time of prayer and fasting we would be filled with the Holy Spirit’s power!