PRAYER AND LOVE

Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. Mark 11:25

THESE words follow immediately on the great prayer-promise, `All things whatsoever ye pray, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.’ We have already seen how the words that preceded that promise, `Have faith in God,’ taught us that in prayer all depends upon our relation to God being clear; these words that follow on it remind us that our relation with people must be clear too.

Love to God and love to our neighbor are inseparable: the prayer from a heart, that is either not right with God on the one side, or with men on the other, cannot prevail. Faith and love are essential to each other. We find that this is a thought to which our Lord frequently gave expression. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:23,24), when speaking of the sixth commandment, He taught His disciples how impossible acceptable worship to the Father was if everything were not right with the brother:

`If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.’

And so later, when speaking of prayer to God, after having taught us to pray, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,’ he added at the close of the prayer:

`If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’
At the close of the parable of the unmerciful servant He applies His teaching in the words:

`So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.’

And so here, beside the dried-up fig tree, where He speaks of the wonderful power of faith and the prayer of faith, He all at once, apparently without connection, introduces the thought, ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may forgive you your transgressions.’

The first lesson taught here is that of a forgiving disposition. We pray, ‘Forgive, even as we have forgiven.’ If God dealt with us after our sins, not one prayer could be heard. The deep sure ground of answer to prayer is God’s forgiving love. When it has taken possession of the heart, we pray in faith. But also, when it has taken possession of the heart, we live in love.

God’s forgiving disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a disposition in us; as the power of His forgiving love shed abroad and dwelling within us, we forgive even as He forgives. If there be great and grievous injury or injustice done us, we seek first of all to possess a Godlike disposition; to be kept from a sense of wounded honor, from a desire to maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as he has deserved.

Continue to Part 2 of Prayer and Love

A frequent question about fasting is What does the Bible say?

Here is:

• an audio answer to the question
• a brief article with Scripture links
• an extensive article with Scripture links

One of the books of the Bible does not contain the name of God, yet there is an account of fasting and deliverance that is acknowledged annually by Jewish people:

The Bible Story of Esther

Fasting is an integral aspect of Christian growth. “When we fast, we turn from the things that daily grab our attention, and we focus solely on God.” It can have an effect beyond the personal. Read what author Bill Bright says in

The Importance of Fasting | Worldwide Challenge.

Also the Mennonites share various views in this printer-friendly article .

And let’s end on a ver-r-ry light note with a video skit:

The Skinny On Fasting

Continued from Part 1

There is nothing needs so touch to grow as our faith. ‘Your faith grows exceedingly,’ is said of one Church. When Jesus spoke the words,

According to your faith be it unto you,

He announced the law of the kingdom, which tells us that all have not equal degrees faith, that the same person has not always the same degree, and that the measure of faith must always determine the measure of power and of blessing. If we want to know where and how our faith is to grow, the Master points us to the throne of God. It is in prayer, in the exercise of the faith I have in fellowship with the living God, that faith can increase. Faith can only live by feeding on what is Divine, on God Himself.

It is in the adoring worship of God, the waiting on Him and for Him, the deep silence of soul that yields itself for God to reveal Himself, that the capacity for knowing and trusting God will be developed. It is as we take His word from the Blessed Book, and bring it to Himself, asking Him to speak it to us with His living loving voice, that the power will come fully to believe and receive the word as. God’s own word to us.

It is in prayer, in living contact with God in living faith, that faith, the power to trust God, and in that trust, to accept everything He says, to accept every possibility He has offered to our faith, will become strong in us. Many Christians cannot understand what is meant by the much prayer they sometimes hear spoken of: they can form no conception, nor do they feel the need, of spending hours with God. But what the Master says, the experience of His people has confirmed: men of strong faith are men of much prayer.

This just brings us back gain to the lesson we learned when Jesus, before telling us to believe that we receive what we ask, first said,

Have faith in God.

It is God, the living God, into whom our faith must strike its roots deep and broad; then it will be strong to remove mountains and cast out devils.

If ye have faith, nothing shall be impossible to you.

Oh! if we do but give ourselves up to the work God has for us in the world, coming into contact with the mountains and the devils there are to be cast away and cast out, we should soon comprehend the need there is of much faith, and of much prayer, as the soil in which alone faith can be cultivated. Christ Jesus is our life, the life of our faith too.

It is His life in us that makes us strong, and makes us simple to believe. It is in the dying to self which much prayer implies, in closer union to Jesus, that the spirit of faith will come in power.

Faith needs prayer for its full growth. And prayer needs fasting for its full growth: this is the second lesson. Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible. In nothing is man more closely connected with the world of sense than in his need of food, and his enjoyment of it. It was the fruit, good for food, with which man was tempted and fell in Paradise. It was with bread to be made of stones that Jesus, when hungered, was tempted in the wilderness, and in fasting that He triumphed.

The body has been redeemed to be a temple of the Holy Spirit; it is in body as well as spirit, it is very specially, Scripture says, in eating and drinking, we are to glorify God. It is to be feared that there are many Christians to whom this eating to the glory of God has not yet become a spiritual reality. And the first thought suggested by Jesus’ words in regard to fasting and prayer, is that it is only in a life of moderation and temperance and self-denial that there will be the heart or the strength to pray much.

But then there is also its more literal meaning. Sorrow and anxiety cannot eat: joy celebrates its feasts with eating and drinking. There may come times of intense desire, when it is strongly felt how the body, with its appetites, lawful though they be, still hinder the spirit in its battle with the powers of darkness, and the need is felt of keeping it under.

We are creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God. And He who accepted the fasting and sacrifice of the Son, knows to value and accept and reward with spiritual power the soul that is thus ready to give up all for Christ and His kingdom.

And then follows a still wider application. Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting go of all that is of the seen and temporal. While ordinary Christians imagine that all that is not positively forbidden and sinful is lawful to them, and seek to retain as much as possible of this world, with its property, its literature, its enjoyments, the truly consecrated soul is as the soldier who carries only what he needs for the warfare.

Laying aside every wight, as well as the easily besetting sin, afraid of entangling himself with the affairs of this life, he seeks to lead a Nazarite life, as one specially set apart for the Lord and His service. Without such voluntary separation, even from what is lawful, no one will attain power in prayer: this kind goes out but by fasting and prayer.

Disciples of Jesus! who have asked the Master to teach you to pray, come now and accept his lessons. He tells you that prayer is the path to faith, strong faith, that can cast out devils. He tells you: ‘If you have faith, nothing shall be impossible to you;’

Let this glorious promise encourage you to pray much. Is the prize not worth the price? Shall we not give up all to follow Jesus in the path He opens to us here; shall we not, if need be, fast? Shall we not do anything that neither the body nor the world around hinder us in our great life-work, – having communion with our God in prayer, that we may become people of faith, whom He can use in His work of saving the world.

Next Teaching: Love

PRAYER AND FASTING

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately, and said, “Why weren’t we able to cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your unbelief. For most certainly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. But this kind doesn’t go out except by prayer and fasting.” Matthew 17:19-21

WHEN the disciples saw Jesus cast the evil spirit out of the epileptic ‘whom they could not cure,’ they asked the Master for the cause of their failure. He had given them power and authority over all devils, and to cure all diseases. They had often exercised that power, and joyfully told how the devils were subject to them. And yet now, while he was on the Mount, they had utterly failed.

That there had been nothing in the will of God or in the nature of the case to render deliverance impossible, had been proved: at Christ’s bidding the evil spirit had gone out. From their expression, ‘Why could we not?’ it is evident that they had wished and sought to do so; they had probably used the Master’s name and called upon the evil spirit to go out. Their efforts had been vain, and, in presence of the multitude, they had been put to shame.

Why could we not?

Christ’s answer was direct and plain: `Because of your unbelief.’ The cause of His success and their failure, was not owing to His having a special power to which they had no access. No; the reason was not far to seek. He had so often taught them that there is one power, that of faith, to which, in the kingdom of darkness, as in the kingdom of God, everything must bow; in the spiritual world failure has but one cause, the want of faith.

Faith is the one condition on which all Divine power can enter into man and work through him. It is the susceptibility of the unseen: man’s will yielded up to, and molded by, the will of God. The power they had received to cast out devils, they did not hold in themselves as a permanent gift or possession; the power was in Christ, to be received, and held, and used by faith alone, living faith in Himself.

Had they been full of faith in Him as Lord and Conqueror in the spirit-world, had they been full of faith in Him as having given them authority to cast out in His name, this faith would have given them the victory. ‘Because of your unbelief’ was, for all time, the Master’s explanation and reproof of impotence and failure in His Church.

But such want of faith must have a cause too. Well might the disciples disciples have asked: ‘And why do ye not believe? Our faith has cast out devils before this: why have we now failed in believing?’ ‘The Master proceeds to tell them before they ask: `This kind goes not out but by fasting and prayer.’ As faith is the simplest, so it is the highest exercise of the spiritual life, where our spirit yields itself in perfect receptivity to God’s Spirit, and so is strengthened to its highest activity.

This faith depends entirely upon the state of the spiritual life; only when this is strong and in full health, when the Spirit of God has full sway in our life, is there the power of faith to do its mighty deeds. And therefore Jesus adds:

Howbeit this kind goes not out but by fasting, and prayer.

The faith that can overcome such stubborn resistance as you have just seen in this evil spirit, Jesus tells them, is not possible except to men living in very close fellowship with God, and in very special separation from the world – in prayer and fasting. And so he teaches us two lessons in regard to prayer of deep importance. The one, that faith needs a life of prayer in which to grow and keep strong. The other, that prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development.

Faith needs a life of prayer for its full growth. In all the different parts of the spiritual life, there is such union, such unceasing action and re-action, that each may be both cause and effect. Thus it is with faith. There can be no true prayer without faith; some measure of faith must precede prayer. And yet prayer is also the way to more faith; there can be no higher degrees of faith except through much prayer. This is the lesson Jesus teaches here.

Continue to Part 2 of Fasting