By Michaela Gordoni
PAUL BLART: MALL COP’s Kevin James fasted for 40 days while he prayed for his daughter’s health, and God answered.
“It was a commitment I made to my daughter. My daughter was having a tough time,” James said on Siobahn Fallon Hogan’s podcast. “She’s on the spectrum, and she was struggling, and she was getting these tics, and we didn’t know what to do at the time, my wife and I.”
“So we were like, ‘We just got to pray and fast,’” he recalled. “And, you know, that was one of the things that I wasn’t doing.”
He admitted that he usually overeats, so it didn’t come naturally.
“And it was one of those moments,” he said, “where I said, ‘I’m just going to start fasting for this because there’s nothing else I can do and, please help, God.’”
At the time, he drank only water with salt for 40 days. But he didn’t have a timed goal in mind when he started.
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“I started doing it, and she wasn’t sleeping at all. And I did it for, like, a couple days, and I never meant to go that long,” he said. “I just said, ‘I’m going to go one day at a time and just get me through, God.’”
“And I went through a few days and I was going to quit. I was like, ‘Ah, it’s enough of this. I’m so hungry,’” he recalled.
Then, he asked how his daughter was doing, and she said, “good.” So he kept going.
“This is literally the day I’m going to quit. She goes, ‘Are you still fasting? Because I got, like, really good sleep last night. And I go, ‘Yes, of course I am’…It was one of those things where I just kept going and I was so thankful for it,” James said.
He realized God was at work.
“It was insane. It really was hacky in a way. You know what I’m saying?” he said.
“It’s like it was jokey and not always in the way you expect and not right away,” he said.
Now, James wants to fast regularly.
He wants to “do it so much that it becomes habitual that like, now you know when to say, ‘All right that’s enough and I’m good,’ and you know even if I’m hungry, that’s all right. I’m going to offer it up,’” he said.
On Joe Rogan’s podcast, James added that he had times during the 40 days where he felt awful, but most of the time, he felt good even though he hadn’t eaten in a long time.
Georgia pastor Jentezen Franklin said, “Seeking God through fasting and prayer keeps doubt from your mind and helps us to understand the importance of relying on God’s word as truth. Abstaining from food by fasting brings God into clearer spiritual focus when in prayer.”
James experience is a reminder that faith and perseverance opens the door for God to work.
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