Every single year, I notice two distinct groups of people when this season wraps up. Some sisters finish Juicy July and immediately begin counting down to the next one because God met them in a way words cannot fully capture. Their lives have taken a beautiful new turn. Spiritual structures have been put in place to help their walks with God, and you can literally see the weight of glory resting on their shoulders. They don’t just return to regular life; they carry a fire that completely changes everything.
But then, there are others who finish the month and realize that, apart from missing a few meals and losing a few kilograms, not much actually changed inside them. They immediately resume posting weird, shallow memes on their social media pages; they return to talking anyhow online, gossiping, and living carelessly. You can just tell that these people only passed through July as a casual passage on the calendar. They never truly engaged with the season, and because of that, the season never passed through them!
I do not want that for us this year. I truly don’t.
Thirty-one days is entirely too long to spend fasting and crying out before God only to remain the exact same person. If you are giving God a whole month of your life, something ought to happen. Something should break. Something should shift. Something in you should die, and something beautiful should come alive.
You see, God does not have favorites, but He absolutely has intimates!
And who are His intimates? They are the desperate people who refuse to stay on the surface. They are the ones who press deep, who linger near, who look for His face, and who intentionally sit at His feet. These are the exact people Juicy July is meant to help.
There are a number of specific things that these intimates do that I would love to share with us today, because if we do them, oh, I can completely assure you that you cannot leave this season the same. You cannot search the the Lord the way a woman searches for a lost, priceless pearl and not find Him!
Here are the best recommended practices to give our Juicy July teeth:
1. Intentionally Meditate
Read a whole chapter of the scripture, enjoy it, highlight it, underline, check it in different versions, and cross-reference. But let one of those verses remain behind in your mind like a burning coal. Let it be a one verse that you will chew on, roll around, and speak to yourself throughout the day. You will realize how incredibly loaded and heavy a single verse is when the Holy Spirit begins to crack the shell and break it open to your soul.
To meditate is to intentionally masticate the Word until you begin to draw out deep nutrients that are simply not on the surface. It is exactly like the way a master chef would chew on a piece of cake: completely intentionally, slowly, closing her eyes to savor every single hidden flavor. When she spends real, unhurried time with that one bite, she can actually start to map out the exact ingredients used to bake it.
Oh yes! This is exactly how it works with the scriptures. When you refuse to swallow the Word whole and instead choose to linger over a single verse, the Holy Spirit begins to pull back the layers. He will reveal the deep, hidden ingredients of revelation, wisdom, specific direction, and supernatural life baked right into that verse just for you.
Stop and ask: “What does this mean? Why did God choose to say it this exact way? What does this reveal about His heart, and what does it expose about mine?” Stay right there on that single line.
You will be amazed at how the Holy Spirit can feed a hungry soul for hours from just one verse when you take the time to chew on it.
Helpful For This: The How of Meditation by Gbile Akanni
2. Pray in Tongues Fervently
Sisters, if you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, He has not come into you to just sit there like a quiet guest in a living room. No! You need to actively engage Him. If you must see and handle the raw power that the Lord explicitly promised would come after you have received the Holy Ghost, you must allow Him full expression.
Sisters, this is your direct gift from Heaven to generate supernatural power, to stir up your spirit, to make your inner man incredibly strong, and to build your spiritual muscles.
Have you ever stayed on your knees and prayed in tongues until your human mind got completely tired, but your spirit was still bursting to continue? See, that exact point of mental exhaustion is where many people give up, dust off their knees, and walk away. But if you can press past that wall; if you can stay there when your brain tells you to stop; that is usually right where the deeper things of the Spirit begin to unfold.
Do not just sprinkle a few minutes of tongues on top of your prayer life like a light garnish. Dive headfirst into the deep end and generate the power required for your destiny, sis!
3. Knock Till the Holy Spirit Baptism Opens Up
If you are reading this and you know you haven’t yet been baptized in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues, I want you to treat this like an absolute matter of life and death this July.
Do not treat this like just another minor item on a long, casual prayer list. Don’t just check it off between asking for a job and a breakthrough. This is a big deal! This is life!
It is not because God is stingy or withholding His power from you. The problem is that many people seek this gift so casually. They pray for ten minutes, don’t feel a sudden rush of electricity, get discouraged, and move on to something else.
No, sis. Stay right there. Ask. Seek. Knock. Cry out. Wait in His presence. There is no need to panic or get frustrated. Just stay with your Father until whatever hidden barrier or fear is blocking the flow gets completely burnt away by His presence.
That one genuine, unfiltered baptism with the Holy Spirit will permanently alter the entire trajectory of your life. Make this your top priority!
4. Engage in All-Day Praying
Some people declare a fast from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. But then from sunrise all the way until 5:00 PM, they are fully immersed in Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp statuses, neighborhood gossip, work, random comedy videos, and online arguments. Then, at exactly 5:00 PM, they look at the clock, suddenly remember they are fasting, and try to desperately scramble into a spiritual mood.
Haba, no!
Sisters, you can’t donate your entire day to the world and then expect a powerful encounter in the final hour. You are wasting the season if you live that way! Do not just pray when you are officially sat down to pray.
You need to pray all day long. I mean five minutes here, ten minutes there. Speak in tongues while you are washing the plates. Whisper prayers while you are cooking dinner or walking down the street. Engage your spirit while waiting for the bus or folding the laundry. Let God beautifully invade your entire normal day. It should be known to your spirit man, your soul and your body that indeed you are waiting on the Lord!
5. Master the Art of Silence
So many of us are constantly begging God to speak to us. But honestly, if He did, when exactly would He get a word in?
The television is speaking. The phone is buzzing. Instagram is shouting. Your friends are talking. The news is screaming. Everybody and everything has a voice in your ear.
Sometimes, God is simply refusing to compete with the sheer volume of noise in your life.
Turn the devices off. Sit down in a quiet room. After praying in the Spirit for a while and you are charged up, tell Him you want to hear Him talk to you. Be completely still. It would be a struggle for a while, I know. You will have to pull your mind into it over and over, you just be gritty about it! Get it done, sis!
You might be deeply shocked by how much you start hearing once you finally silence the world!
6. Journal Everything
I learned this lesson many years ago, and it completely changed my walk with God.
That profound revelation you receive in the morning that feels so clear you think you could never possibly forget it? Trust me, you will forget it by next week. The intense prayer burden that literally shook your heart to the core? It will fade into a vague memory. The precise, quiet instruction that came so clearly during worship? It will get swallowed up by life’s busyness.
Write it down. Put a pen to paper. Keep a detailed journal of every prayer point, every specific instruction, and every testimony. Many of the deep things God whispered to me years ago are still actively anchoring my soul today, simply because I took the time to preserve them in journals.
7. Commit to Early Morning Study of the Daily Bulletin
Sisters, the daily Juicy July bulletins drop very early each morning. Do not let them sit unread while you sleep off or scroll through notifications. Commit to picking it up first thing and spending a good, completely unrushed time studying it. This early morning study is what gives you the spiritual wheat to chew on and meditate on all through the day.
And hey, early morning study goes hand in hand with early night sleeping. If you are going to wake up with a sharp, alert mind ready to receive from God, you must prioritize getting to bed early. Protect your sleep schedule so you can protect your mornings. And in the mornings, dive powerfully into what the Lord would have for you before rushing into the day’s work.
8. Set an Uncompromising Time for Fervent Evening Prayer
Here is a strategy that will completely transform your daily rhythm this month. In the morning, after you study the bulletin, derive your personal prayers from what you read, engage in a powerful praying in the Spirit session, and then head out to work or school. Your mind will be loaded with truth.
Then, when the evening comes, it is time for serious engagement. Kick directly into praying the specific points outlined in the bulletin and make it so incredibly fervent. Morning is for studying so your soul has fuel; evening is for the heavy, fiery engagement at the altar. This is my recommendation.
9. Enforce a Social Media Shutdown or Major Cutdown
I completely believe that so many sisters would experience deep, life-altering encounters with God this month if they simply reduced their social media consumption by 70%, or shut it down entirely.
Imagine replacing thirty minutes of mindless scrolling with thirty minutes of raw prayer. Imagine swapping one hour of random videos for one hour of pure, undistracted worship. Imagine trading an online argument for quiet meditation on a verse.
The radical difference in your spiritual life at the end of these thirty-one days would be absolutely staggering, dear sis!
10. Exercise Spiritual Violence
The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force! There are situations, patterns, and strongholds in our lives that will absolutely never change through casual, polite, beautifully worded prayers. They just won’t.
This July, you must learn to bring a holy anger to the altar. You need to pray with an aggressive, unrelenting focus against stagnation, ancient patterns of delay, and ancestral blockages that have tried to define your family line. Cry out until your spirit shakes the realms. Put your whole body, your tears, and your entire heart into the battle.
Sis, please be angry! Be desperately hungry. Be holy mad, and refuse to take things easy.
And please, listen to me: the devil has seen your serious desire now. He knows you are standing at the edge of a shift, and because of that, he will try to stop you. He will try to bring sudden pain, unexpected distractions, family drama, physical heaviness, or random emotional storms just to make you drop your guard and lose your focus. Do not give him that satisfaction!
When the friction comes, let it fuel your fire. Double down, stretch your hands to heaven, and take your territory by force.
11. Practice Moderation with Foods When Breaking
Can I say something else that’s a bit funny? Some sisters will fast faithfully all day long, but the moment the clock strikes breaking time, they dive into the kitchen like they are taking physical revenge on the food!
No, sis. Calm down. Haha
Eat a moderate, light meal, thank God with a sincere heart, and move on.
Do not spend your entire day beautifully mortifying the flesh only to spend your entire evening overindulging and entertaining it.
12. Practice Nightly Fasts
We need to learn to close the gates of our senses early. Pick a specific hour in the evening: say 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM; where everything goes on a total fast. No food, no media consumption, no casual chats, no endless scrolling on WhatsApp statuses. Let that time be a holy ground where you transition into pure fellowship with the Lord before you sleep.
When you shut the doors of your senses to the noise of the earth, your spirit becomes highly sensitive to the frequencies of heaven.
You would be deeply amazed at the lovely encounters, the clear instructions, and the deep revelations you will begin to receive in the night seasons. Not only that, you will find yourself actively crushing spiritual battles in your sleep because your altar was loaded with fresh fire right before your head hit the pillow. Protect your nights, sis, and watch God take over your days!
Read more about the power of nightly fasts here
13. Join the Juicy July Bible Study
If this is not going to be too much for you, I heartily recommend it. We are going to be reading through the Scriptures individually and meeting in the evenings on Google Meet to discuss, unpack the word, and pray together. Iron sharpens iron, sisters. Do not try to carry this fire alone while your environment stays cold. Let’s build a corporate shield and keep each other burning through these thirty-one days.
Click Here to register if you are committing to full participation and attendance:
14. Pick a Special Spiritual Practice That Costs You Something
I want to challenge you to pick at least one spiritual practice for this month that scares your flesh just a little bit.
Maybe it’s setting an alarm to pray in tongues for thirty minutes at an odd midnight hour when the rest of the world is asleep.
Maybe it’s going on a solitary prayer walk around your neighborhood, declaring scriptures over your environment.
Maybe it’s a weekend mini-retreat or committing to memorize an entire chapter of Scripture. Let there be something about this particular season that actually costs your flesh something real.
The Choice is Yours This Juicy July
Sisters, as we stand on the threshold of this special season, the lines have been clearly drawn. The tools are in your hands, the blueprint has been laid out, and the cloud of witnesses is waiting. But let me leave you with one final, sobering truth:
July will come and go regardless of what you do.
Thirty-one days from now, the calendar will flip, the fast will end, and you will find yourself in one of those two groups we talked about at the very beginning.
You will either be among the intimates: the women who entered this season desperate, who dug past the surface, who wrestled through the mental exhaustion, locked their gates at night, and took their territories by force. You will see them walking with a visible, heavy weight of glory, their lives permanently shifted, and their homes set ablaze with the fire of the altar.
Or, you will be among the casual passersby. The ones who merely tolerated the hunger, counted down the hours to breaking time, and donated their precious days to mindless scrolling and social media noise. You will see them return seamlessly to the weird memes, the careless talk, and the lukewarm routines; proving that they only passed through the month, but the month never passed through them.
The difference between these two outcomes isn’t talent or background or how long you’ve been in church. The difference is gritty, intentional execution.
Casual seekers rarely have life-changing encounters.
The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and it is only the violent who take it by force. If you want a different result, you must bring a different posture to the altar.
You must hunt for the face of God the way a woman desperately tearing her house apart searches for a lost, priceless pearl. And if you search for Him that way, oh, heaven’s gates must swing open to you!!!
Let’s refuse to just complete another annual program. Let’s seek the Lord until something breaks. Until prayer becomes as natural as breathing. Until holiness becomes sweeter than compromise. Until Jesus becomes dearer than life itself. Let’s press in until Zoe is no longer just a beautiful theological doctrine we talk about on status updates, but a living, breathing, unshakeable Life manifested in everything we do.
Let’s go deep, sisters. Let’s gather together at our Father’s feet powerfully! See you there!
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