Dry Fasting: How to Overcome Temptations During and After Your Dry Fast

What is dry fasting? This is where you abstain from food and water for a set number of hours or even days. However, the length of any dry fast must be guided by the Holy Spirit of God and your health status. Earlier I wrote a post about tips for successful dry fasting. I had many comments and questions arising from that article. By God’s grace, I was able to answer these questions. Then the Lord led me to write this article about overcoming temptations during and after your fast. Let’s begin!

Temptations During Your Dry Fast

Hunger Pangs

The first temptation that you’ll encounter during your dry fast is hunger pangs. Even if you would normally not eat until noon or later, when you decide to fast, you will feel like you’re dying! This is where you have to pray and ask the Lord to give you the strength to go through with your fast. Now, you don’t have to do this, but I also speak to my stomach and command it to behave in Jesus’ name! From a practical perspective, try to stay away from where others are cooking and/or eating. During your break(s) or lunch, try to go off by yourself to pray, read the Bible, and worship. Don’t give up! Persevere!

Feeling Ill

Please make sure that you don’t have any illness that makes dry fasting dangerous to your health. Contact your doctor before going on a dry fast. If you have a clean bill of health, then pray against those feelings of sickness and push through with your fast. However, make sure that you limit any exposure to extreme weather (like extreme heat or cold), and do not do too much activity while you’re dry fasting. Remember, it’s supposed to be a quiet time where you’re sitting in Jesus’ presence and communicating with Him.

Doubts and Discouragement

There are three voices that you need to know, track, and deal with: your voice, Jesus’ voice, and the devil’s voice. You need to be guided by Jesus’ voice and His instructions, and not your emotions or what you think is right. During your fast, the devil will try to distract you with thoughts of doubt: “Will I get my breakthrough after this fast?” and discouragement: “Why bother fasting? Life will never change for me! I should just give up!”

Now the enemy of our souls is a smooth operator. He likes to speak to us in our voice, to make it seem as if the suggestions are coming from us and not him. But, I want you to be vigilant. Practice this:

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

James 4: 7-8, NKJV.

Resist the devil and his suggestions. Strongly resist all doubt and discouragement. Stand strong and continue with your dry fasting.

Distractions from Praying, Bible-Reading, and Worship

If you’re not praying, reading your Bible and worshipping during your fast, then you’re just abstaining from food and water. Your dry fast will not be effective. I want you to think of dry fasting as a powerful way to supercharge your spiritual life and sharpen your spiritual gifts.

There are so many distractions: phone calls, texts, WhatsApp messages, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds, the list goes on. When you’re dry fasting, you need to shut all of that chatter, that noise, those distractions. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He will not yell to get you to hear Him above it all. The Lord often speaks in a still, small voice. ¹ So make room for the Lord during your fast. Set aside time and space to truly commune with Him during your dry fast.

Strange Dreams

Jesus Christ speaks to us in a variety of ways: (a) through His Word, the Bible; (b) through other persons; (c) audibly – meaning we hear His voice in our heads; (d) through dreams; (e) through visions – meaning you’re awake, but you are experiencing a different reality at the same time.

Your dreams are an important channel for God to allow you to discern the truth of your life at a spiritual level. If you are a dreamer, then expect your dreams to get extremely vivid during your fast. You may experience nightmares or intense spiritual warfare in your dreams. Do not be afraid. This is natural and signifies that your dry fasting is having a tremendous impact. Do not give up now. Intensify your warfare prayers: I use Prayer Rain by Dr. Daniel Olukoya for this purpose. I recommend this prayer manual to everyone that I meet because it’s highly effective.

If you often forget your dreams, this is a problem. Why? The enemy is blocking a very important window into your spiritual life. Please, you must pray to Jesus Christ and ask Him to let you remember your dreams. Also, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the meaning of your dreams to you as well. Understanding your dreams may take some time. You will also have to seek godly resources for these interpretations.²

Now, I am not an expert at biblical dream interpretation. Therefore, I follow a YouTube channel by Minister Kevin LA Ewing, who is a committed and Holy-Spirit-filled Christian. The Lord has given him a wealth of knowledge about dream interpretations and spiritual warfare. I also use the dream interpretation website by Evangelist Joshua Orekhie, and his site also has scriptures and prayers to nullify/cancel certain dreams.³ Please check him out as well.

Temptations After Your Dry Fast

Fatigue

Yes, dry fasting does have an impact on your body. But, this should not be prolonged and it definitely should not affect you once you’ve concluded your fast. You should feel energized and empowered to go forth and do what the Lord has instructed you to accomplish.

Therefore, this feeling of extreme tiredness or fatigue is the work of the enemy. He seeks to sap your spiritual strength and make you impotent. You must not give in to this feeling, even as he seeks to make you feel lackadaisical and not take any action to fight it. Do not confess any tiredness. Rebuke it in the name of Jesus and declare that the joy of the Lord is your strength! You must also pray in the Holy Spirit (or pray in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance) when this feeling seeks to overtake you. Counteract this feeling, this atmosphere, because if not eradicated, it then leads to the following, more serious, problem:

Experiencing Depression and/or Suicidal Thoughts

The enemy seeks to take you from feeling fatigued to feeling depressed and then having suicidal thoughts. This is my personal experience; I know this for a fact. The enemy often attacks me with depression. In my youth, this depression was compounded by suicidal thoughts (and planning), from which the Lord Jesus delivered me. I shared my testimony in a video on my YouTube channel.

This is a real battle; one that is not often acknowledged or fully addressed in Christendom. Let me share a vision that the Lord gave me concerning this spirit of heaviness (or depression). I was standing at my kitchen sink doing the dishes one afternoon (it was about 6 pm). As I stood inside my flat, the door was locked for the evening and my back was to the door. The Lord allowed me to see outside my flat, I was looking up at the sky. I then saw a huge, filthy black cloud approaching from the gate of my yard and coming to engulf my flat. Immediately I snapped back to myself inside the flat and I began to pray in tongues and rebuked that satanic cloud.⁴ Then I sensed that fire and light broke that cloud and it disappeared.

People of God, you need the power of the Holy Ghost inside of you. It doesn’t matter which denomination you’re a part of, you must be able to wage warfare in the Holy Ghost. Don’t give in and agree with the enemy. Fight him! Resist him! You are victorious in Jesus Christ!

Sexually Impure Thoughts, Impulses and/or Dreams

Hmmm… now this one is not spoken about in Christendom. Right after your dry fasting (especially if you did a multi-day dry fast), you will likely feel very sexually aroused. These thoughts may also lead to sexual fantasies, masturbation, and even fornication. However, I don’t want you to be ignorant and allow the enemy to take you from one sin to the next sin and the next; until he makes you backslide out of Zion.

First, recognize that although you are a sexual being, sexual temptation doesn’t mean that you have to give in. Second, understand that you are being attacked – especially if you’re single and you have no way to relieve the sexual tension. Third, understand the devil’s motive. He wants to burden you with guilt and shame to stop you from growing in Jesus Christ.

Repent, tell Jesus that you’re sorry about all the sins you’ve committed. Ask the Lord to strengthen you to be able to overcome such sexual thoughts and impulses. Ask Jesus to keep you in purity until you get married. Believe that once you repent, that’s it! You’re forgiven forever! If the devil tries to tell you otherwise, refuse to listen to him – shut him up in Jesus’ name! Then, get some strong worship music and worship right back into Your Daddy Jesus’ presence.

Sexual Dreams

With regards to having sexual dreams, this may not be only a matter of the enemy trying to defile you and block you from advancing in Christ. This may also point to a problem with spirit spouses, which hinders you from getting married if you’re single, or gives you severe marital problems if you’re married.

You must repent of all sins committed in the dream, and nullify/cancel all satanic covenants forged in that sexual dream. I want you to get that book Prayer Rain that I mentioned earlier – you’re going to need it. Please also access Minister Ewing’s YouTube channel, as well as Evangelist Joshua’s website and prayers about spirit spouses. Don’t feel embarrassed by these dreams and try to hide them and/or forget them. Deal with the matter resolutely and decisively for your breakthroughs in Christ Jesus.

Sinful and/or Evil Persons Will Try to Contact You

The enemy of your soul won’t just try to get you to sin by yourself. He’ll also try to bring those old flames back into the picture. But this is where you need to extinguish those strange fires with the Blood of Jesus!

If you were dry fasting to break off an ungodly relationship, then just know that the devil will use that same person (and others too) to let you not want to end that sinful alliance. I previously published a series of articles about Christian purity for singles. One of them deals with breaking ungodly soul ties, so please check out that article for more details on how to do just that.

Even if you weren’t dry fasting to break an ungodly relationship, the devil will still bring persons across your path to cause you to fall into sin. And it’s not just sexual sins: he’ll bring a gossiper across your path, or a person with bad suggestions about how to make more money, etc. So, just be careful: the devil is always on a steal, kill and destroy mission and he will use anyone and anything to complete his missions. Let us:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

1 Peter 5:8-9, NKJV.

 

Nothing Appears to Change and Life Seems to Get Harder

After your dry fasting, it may seem as if the situation that you were fasting about has not changed. The situation may even seem to get worse. Family members, friends, and associates may even start to misbehave; but pray for them and cancel every attempt of the devil to use them against you.

I do not want you to believe that your dry fasting unto the Lord was in vain. Never believe that the revelations that Jesus gave you during that fast are fruitless. Do not allow for any doubt or discouragement to set in. We walk by faith and not by sight. The Word of God concerning your life and that situation is what will prevail. Be encouraged by:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways,

And My thoughts than your thoughts.

“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,

And do not return there,

But water the earth,

And make it bring forth and bud,

That it may give seed to the sower

And bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;

It shall not return to Me void,

But it shall accomplish what I please,

And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

Isaiah 55:8-11, NKJV.

Trouble to Consistently Engage in Dry Fasting

If you are going to be effective in the Kingdom of God, then you must regularly engage in dry fasting, as well as prayer, reading the Word and worship the Lord. Once I received this revelation, I was having my weekly dry fasting session. Then, the business of life caused me to not fast for about three to four weeks. I experienced severe attacks and I had to rush back into spiritual warfare mode. That was when the Spirit of God told me why the attacks were almost successful – I had neglected my weekly dry fasting. Since then, I have been careful to observe my dry fast each week.

We are warriors in the army of God and we need to ensure that we are always battle-ready. We can’t slack off. So, I encourage you to embrace regular dry fasting⁵ as a part of your core spiritual activities as a committed Christian.

Other Articles in This Series

How to Complete 3 Days Dry Fasting: What You Need to Know

Tips for Successful Dry Fasting as a Christian

What is Dry Fasting in Christianity and the Alternatives?

Never Give Up on Dry Fasting: Persevere to Your Breakthroughs!

I pray that your hearts have been enlightened and you are empowered to do your dry fasting and to overcome all temptations. The Lord Jesus Christ is with you. I cover you, your family, and associates under the Blood of Jesus for your protection and preservation.⁶ You will not be overtaken; you will not fall; you will not fail. You will prevail through to your breakthroughs. I declare that you will know your Lord Jesus Christ and you will do great exploits to His glory, the promotion of His kingdom in the earth, and for your good. And it is so in Jesus’ name. Amen.

May Jesus’ blessings, peace and wisdom be upon us all.

Sophia.

 

1. Please read the story of Elijah’s encounter with the Lord on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19.
2. Any online dream interpretation that you use must come from someone who is a committed Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Many dream interpretation websites are run by witches, wizards, and other practitioners of the dark arts. DO NOT visit these websites or take their advice!
3. Every morning when I wake up, I cancel the evil impact of every dream on the lives and destinies of myself and my loved ones in Jesus’ name and through the Blood of Jesus.
4. The Lord revealed that was the spirit of heaviness or depression coming to afflict me in the night season.
5. Let the Holy Spirit guide you about how often you should be dry fasting.
6. Please recall how the Lord instructed the children of Israel to place the blood of the Passover lamb on their lintel posts and they were spared from death. Jesus Christ is our Ultimate Passover Lamb, and so His Blood that was shed on Calvary is more than able to not only save us from our sins, but to protect us all.