Welcome to MBC’s 21 Days of Prayer! Over three weeks, from February 2-22, we’re taking some extra time to dedicate this year to the Lord. We want to begin 2025 by focusing on Jesus and making ourselves available for whatever He wants to do in and through us. If that’s how you want to start your year, here are four next steps: 

1. Sign up to let us know you’re with us!

2. Make a prayer and fasting plan. 

• • Decide on a daily routine for how you’ll spend intentional time with God throughout the 21 days. 
  • Read the “Guidance on Fasting” section below for more details. 
  • When will you fast? Specify the particular days and timeframe (e.g. Thursdays from 9 am – 3 pm)
  • What will you fast from?  
  • How will you be intentional about prayer, reflection and Bible meditation during your fast?

3. Read through the overview and resources below. Each week builds on the previous week, starting with a focus on your own personal prayer life and then broadening to praying in community with other people.  

4. Mark your calendar and join us for our Churchwide Prayer Night on February 22 at 5 pm!

5. We want to hear how God is working in response to your prayers! So send in any encouraging stories by clicking the button below. 

The focus for Week 1 is spending extra time in prayer each day and being more prayerful and aware of God’s presence throughout the day. Pick a time and place to spend time in prayer and honor that commitment every day this week. You can utilize the resources below to help you maximize those times in prayer. You could also consider scheduling a personal prayer retreat (Spanish translation here) for a block of time during this week. It could be a couple of hours at one of your favorite spots or do it up with an overnight getaway! 

In Week 2, we want to continue the daily habit of seeking the Lord in prayer alone, but we also want to be more intentional about praying in community with others on a more regular basis. The early church was “devoted to prayer” (Acts 2:42), not just in formal gatherings but in their homes and close relationships. So, who can you pray with more frequently throughout this week? Maybe it’s your family members or close Christian friends. Maybe it’s your Church Group coming up with a plan to pray with and for each other more intentionally this week. Maybe it’s asking someone to be your prayer partner this week and scheduling a daily time to pray with them. Whether it’s in person or on FaceTime, think through your schedule and the people in your life, and make a plan to pray with others more frequently this week.   

By Week 3, we’ve been stretching ourselves to be more disciplined in our prayer lives, Lord-willing, in ways that set us up to be more intentional all year. As we wrap up this year’s 21 Days, we want to seek the Lord together as a church family and celebrate the various ways He has been at work in our lives. Throughout the week, you’ll have opportunities to gather in prayer with people at your specific location, so make sure to sign up for your location’s e-news and listen out for local announcements with more details. We’ll end our 21 Days with a Churchwide Prayer Night on Saturday, February 22 at 5 pm MBC Tysons. If you’ve never been to one of our prayer nights, trust us—you won’t want to miss it. This will be an opportunity for people from all our locations to come together and celebrate all the Lord has done!

Since prayer reflects our relationship to God, prayer can look many different ways, just as communication in a human relationship can look many different ways. However, we often use an acronym, P.R.A.Y., to help us think through how we come to God in prayer.

• Praise | Worship God for who He is based on how He has revealed Himself in His Word.
• Repent | Confess your sin to God, acknowledging your need for Jesus’ forgiveness and restoration.
• Ask | Petition for specific needs in your life and others’ lives.
• Yield | Surrender your life to following Jesus wherever and however He leads you.

The P.R.A.Y. acronym is especially helpful when combined with reading the Bible. After reading a passage in God’s Word, consider what from the passage encourages you to praise God, what brings up areas of your life which require repentance, what stirs up requests you’d like to ask for, and what challenges you to yield various parts of your life to God.

Even if you’ve never fasted before, we’d encourage you to incorporate fasting into your 21 Days of Prayer, whether once a week or on another rhythm that works well for you. In the Bible, fasting is often used for seeking God in special times—times when there is a special need for closeness to God, for repentance of sins, for discernment of God’s will, or for God’s answer to prayer.

As with prayer, we have an acronym, F.A.S.T., to help us understand biblical fasting.

• Focus | Set apart a special time to focus on God through fasting.
• Abstain | Abstain from food and let your physical longings for food remind you of your deeper longing for God.  Also consider abstaining from anything unnecessary or unhelpful that could distract you from focusing on God.
• Substitute | Substitute a time of prayer and meditation on the Word for the time you would have spent preparing and eating a meal.
• Taste | While you’re not tasting food, take this special opportunity, as it says in Psalm 38:8, to “taste and see that God is good.”

People with certain medical conditions may choose to fast from something besides food, like your phone or social media. If you intend to fast for an extended time, you may want to research nutritional advice for longer fasts.