DAY 16, EVENING SESSION OF 2025 #FASTING PRAYER SESSION.

As we further press towards the second phase of our September 2025 fasting period, it is essential that the Word of God to reflect key spiritual values and principles relevant to the significance and dynamics of this fasting. Fasting encompasses several important objectives that should be clearly understood by any follower of Christ who practices it. During this season of fasting, we have outlined specific goals and objectives: pursuing mindset mental transformation, seeking spiritual growth and maturity that broadens our perspective, and preparing the Body of Christ prophetically for spiritual challenges in the days ahead.The future is not one that can be engaged through self-help, motivational preaching orientation as seen today. A deeper sense of spiritual quest, identity and readiness must become the gear we wear to advance the prophetic redemptive counsel of heaven for creation. To put our hope, strength and focus on the arm of the flesh will be translated to absolute failure. I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Ecclesiastes 9:11 According to First Corinthians, we encounter one of the most critical subjects that must be addressed in the sacred place of fasting: the concept of authentic spiritual development through the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit.The Corinthian Christians present us with a sobering case study. These believers had become so proficient in operating spiritual gifts that they achieved a dangerous level of spiritual blindness. Paul writes, "I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God, which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. So that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:4-7). Yet despite this supernatural giftedness, they remained spiritual infants, as Paul later declares: "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:1).This paradox reveals a fundamental truth: the operation of spiritual gifts does not automatically qualify one for spiritual maturity. The Corinthians had mistaken gifting for growth, manifestation for maturity. They believed their supernatural abilities indicated readiness for Christ's return, representing the highest form of spiritual delusion. When believers assume that functioning in spiritual gifts qualifies them for spiritual maturity, they fall into the same trap that ensnared the Corinthian church.