Esther sent a message to Mordecai, saying, "Bring together all the Jews in Susa and tell them to go without eating for my sake! Don't eat or drink for three days and nights. My servant girls and I will do the same. Then I will go in to see the king, even if it means I must die." Mordecai did everything Esther told him to do.
(Esther 4:15-17, CEV)
Yes, Esther has been given a seemingly impossible choice. Saving herself or saving her people. There doesn't see to be a way that both will be saved.
But she does make a choice: She will risk her own life to save those of her people.
She doesn’t do it in a vacuum, though. She uses the best weapon in her arsenal: Prayer. When she asks Mordecai to tell the people to fast for three days, she doesn’t mean just to stop eating. Throughout the Bible, fasting is connected with prayer.
For example, when Nehemiah heard of the destruction of Jerusalem’s wall, he “was fasting and praying before the God of heaven" (Neh. 1:4). Daniel also “gave [his] attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes” (Dan. 9:3).
When we fast, we focus on God instead of our hunger. And so Esther asks for her people to focus on Jehovah—the unnamed presence in our story.
She fasts, focuses on God, and prays for His will, even if that will is for her to perish (NKJV).
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