There is a reason we fast for twenty-one days in January and not for thirty, or for a week, or for however long feels right. The number comes from a single conversation in the book of Daniel, and it answers a question almost everyone who prays for very long eventually has to ask.
Why does it sometimes take so long?
Two years of nothing
Daniel was burdened for his people. Two years had passed since the first group of Jews returned to Jerusalem, and he must have known they were being harassed. He wanted to understand what was going to happen to them. So he prayed, and he fasted, and he kept at it for three weeks.
Understand who this is. Daniel was a man of prayer who was accustomed to results. God had answered him before, repeatedly, with wisdom and direction and protection. This was not a beginner wondering whether prayer works. This was someone with a track record, hitting silence.
By the end he was asking the question out loud. How long, Lord.
And here is the detail that changes everything about this story. He did not stop.
Then behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. Then he said to me, Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard.
Daniel 10:10, 12
From the first day. Not the twenty-first. The answer left on day one.
What was happening in the meantime
The messenger explains the delay himself, and the explanation is not one most of us would have guessed.
I have come in response to your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then, behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.
Daniel 10:12-13
There was resistance. Not from God. Between God's answer and Daniel's ears, something stood in the way, and it took three weeks and reinforcements to get through.
Sit with what that means for your own waiting. The silence you are experiencing may not be God's silence. There are powers of darkness in this world, and they can delay an answer. What they cannot do is cancel one, and what they cannot do is outlast someone who refuses to quit.
That is the first thing the twenty-one days teach. Delay is not denial. Those are two different words and only one of them is in the passage.
The two who did not earn it
Now set Daniel beside two other people in Scripture who got what they asked for, because together they close a door that a lot of sincere believers keep walking through.
The Canaanite woman came to Jesus about her daughter and was met first with silence, then with a discouraging word about children and dogs. She did not leave. She took the discouraging word and turned it into her argument. Even the dogs get the crumbs. Jesus called that great faith.
Blind Bartimaeus sat by the road in Jericho and shouted. The crowd told him to be quiet. He shouted louder. He would not stop, and he received his sight.
Here is what both stories have in common, and it is the part people miss. Neither of them tried to earn the right to their request. Neither one said, Lord, You have to do this for me because I have been good. Look carefully at what they actually asked for first.
Both of them asked for mercy.
They were saying, I cannot earn this. I cannot pay for it. The only way my prayer gets answered is through Your mercy, Your forgiveness, Your love.
This matters enormously when you are three weeks into a fast and nothing has moved, because the natural instinct at that point is to try harder. To be better. To clean something up so that God will finally respond. That instinct is exactly backwards, and it will exhaust you.
There is one more detail in the Bartimaeus story that is easy to skip. As soon as he received his sight, he followed Jesus out of Jericho. He did not take the miracle and go home. God is glad to answer prayer, and He is especially glad when the answer produces someone who follows.
Check your seed
Persistence is not the same as ignoring the possibility that something is in the way on our end. When you have asked and asked, stop and ask yourself four honest questions. Not to earn the answer, which we have already established you cannot do, but because faith travels through certain channels and blocked channels are worth clearing.
First, am I walking in love? Faith works through love. If your faith is not working, check your love level before you check anything else.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.
Galatians 5:6
Check your conversation. Are your words to and about other people loving. Check your prayers, honestly. Are they only about you and what you want. And take a particular look at how you treat your own family, because it is possible to pour effort into helping strangers while forgetting to show mercy to the people in your house.
Second, am I holding unforgiveness? Jesus connected these two directly.
Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your transgressions.
Mark 11:25
If you truly want to know why your faith does not seem to be working, ask God to expose any remnant of unforgiveness. He will, and it is usually a name you were not expecting.
Third, is there jealousy or strife? Do you resent someone with more than you have. Are you competing with someone in your family, your church, your workplace. Approach this one prayerfully, because envy is the sin we are least able to see in ourselves. Faith does not flourish in an atmosphere of rivalry.
Fourth, am I operating in fear? Fear is the opposite of faith. It is possible to pray for something for twenty-one days while quietly expecting the worst, and that is not persistence. That is fear wearing persistence as a costume.
Mercy is the whole relationship
Mercy is not a side theme in this. Mercy defines the relationship. God wants relationship with sinful people, and mercy is the only way that is possible. Our salvation was achieved by it. Paul calls those who are saved vessels of mercy. The life, death and resurrection of Christ are God's ultimate display of it.
Which means that when you are living in Christ, you end up overwhelmed by a gift you did nothing to deserve, and the natural result is wanting to hand it to somebody else. That is how mercy moves. It arrives free and it leaves through you.
If your twenty-one days produce nothing but that, they were not wasted.
So what do you do on day twelve
You keep going. Not because persistence twists God's arm, but because Daniel's answer was already on its way and he had no possible way of knowing it.
You ask for mercy rather than making your case. You check your seed honestly and clear what needs clearing. You keep your love level up, especially toward the people closest to you, and you refuse to let fear do your praying for you.
And you remember the thing the messenger said first, before anything about princes or delays. He said, do not be afraid, your words were heard.
They were heard on the first day. They are being heard now.
A prayer
Father, I am not asking because I have earned it. I am asking for mercy, the way the woman at Tyre asked and the way the blind man on the Jericho road asked. Show me anything in me that is in the way, and I will deal with it. Where I have been afraid while pretending to be faithful, forgive me. I am not quitting. My words were heard on the first day, and I am going to keep speaking them until I hear back.
Miracle Word Ministries fasts and prays together for twenty-one days each January, and everyone is welcome. His Word. His Power. Your Miracle.