There is a second, more general lesson: My drawing nigh to God is of one piece with my intercourse with men and earth: failure here will cause failure there. And that not only when there is the distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbor and myself; but the ordinary current of my thinking and judging, the unloving thoughts and words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer. The effectual prayer of faith comes out from a life given up to the will and the love of God. Not according to what I try to be when praying, but when I am not praying, is my prayer dealt with by God.

We may gather those thoughts into a third lesson: In our life with people the one thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of forgiveness is the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives: it is only when we are dwelling in love that we can forgive as God forgives. In love to the brethren we have the evidence of love to the Father, the ground of confidence before God, and the assurance that our prayer will be heard (1 John 4: 20, 3:18-21, 23.) `Let us love in deed and truth; hereby shall we assure our heart before Him. If our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God, and whatever we ask, we receive of Him.’

Neither faith nor work will profit if we have not love; it is love that unites with God, it is love that proves the reality of faith. As essential as in the word that precedes the great prayer-promise in Mark 4:24, ‘Have faith in God,’ is this one that follows it, ‘Have love to men.’ The right relations to the living God above me, and the living people around me, are the conditions of effectual prayer.

Jesus, in speaking of forgiveness, speaks of love as its root. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount He connected His teaching and promises about prayer with the call to be merciful, as the Father in heaven is merciful (Matthew 5:7, 8, 22, 38–48), so we see it here: a loving life is the condition of believing prayer.

Love is the only soil in which faith can strike its roots and thrive. It is he who gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in the practice of daily life to love as God loves, who will have the power to believe in the Love that hears his every prayer.

Next teaching: Unity

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

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

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

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

The Divine life within us comes from God, and is entirely dependent upon Him.

The great object of fellowship with God, that we may have more of God in our lives, and that God may see Christ formed in us.

1. Begin each day by tarrying before God, and letting Him touch you. Take time to meet God.

2. To this end, let your first act in your devotion be a setting yourself still before God. Take time, till you know God is very near.

3. When you have given God His place of honour, glory, and power, take your place of deepest lowliness, and seek to be filled with the Spirit of humility.

4. Then accept and value your place in Christ Jesus.

5. Look into His face with trust, till His love really shines into your heart. Make His heart glad by telling Him that you do love Him.

6. The God who revealed Jesus in the flesh and perfected Him, will reveal Him in you and perfect you in Him. Count upon it that this blessed work will be done in you as you wait on God, and hold fellowship with Him.

7. As we sink down in humility and dependence and entire surrender to God, the power of His [Christ's] death works in us, and we are made conformable to His death. And so we know Him in the power of His resurrection, in the victory over sin, and all the joy and power of the risen life.

8. As you wait before God to realize His presence, remember that the Spirit is in you to reveal the things of God.

9. Seek grace to know what it means to live as wholly for God as Christ did.

10. Just yield yourself in the faith of a perfect trust to the Ever Blessed Holy Trinity to work out all God’s purpose in you. Begin each day thus in fellowship with God, and God will be all in all to you.

– Excerpted from Andrew Murray’s The Deeper Christian Life –

…Continued from Part 2

Though we have God’s promises in the Bible, with full liberty to take them, the spiritual power is wanting, except as God Himself speaks them to us. And He speaks to those who walk and live with Him. Therefore, HAVE FAITH IN GOD: let faith be all eye and ear, the surrender to let God make His full impression, and reveal Himself fully in the soul.

Count it one of the chief blessings of prayer to exercise faith in God, as the Living Mighty God who waits to fulfill in us all the good pleasure of His will, and the work of faith with power. See in Him the God of Love, whose delight it is to bless and impart Himself. In such worship of faith in God the power will speedily come to believe the promise too: ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER YE ASK, BELIEVE THAT YE RECEIVE.

Yes, see that you do in faith make God your own; the promise will be yours too. Precious lesson that Jesus has to teach us this day. We seek God’s gifts: God wants to give us HIMSELF first. We think of prayer as the power to draw down good gifts from heaven; Jesus as the means to draw ourselves up to God. We want to stand at the door and cry; Jesus would have us first enter in and realize that we are friends and children.

Let us accept the teaching. Let every experience of the littleness of our faith in prayer urge us first to have and exercise more faith in the living God, and in such faith to yield ourselves to Him. A heart full of God has power for the prayer of faith. Faith in God begets faith in the promise, in the promise too of an answer to prayer.

Therefore, child of God, take time, take time, to bow before Him, to wait on Him to reveal Himself. Take time, and let your soul in holy awe and worship exercise and express its faith in the Infinite One, and as He imparts Himself and takes possession of you, the prayer of faith will crown your faith in God.

Review the Prayer for Faith now.

…Continued from Part 1

When faith now is in full exercise as eye and ear, as the faculty of the soul by which we see and hear God, then it will be able to exercise its full power as hand and mouth, by which we appropriate God and His blessings. The power of reception will depend entirely on the power of spiritual perception. This is why Jesus said, before He gave the promise that God would answer believing prayer:

HAVE FAITH IN GOD.

Faith is simply surrender: I yield myself to the impression that the tidings I hear make on me. By faith I yield myself to the living God. His glory and love fill my heart, and have the mastery over my life.

Faith is fellowship; I give myself up to the influence of the friend who makes me a promise, and become linked to him by it. And it is when we enter into this living fellowship with God Himself, in a faith that always sees and hears Him, that it becomes easy and natural to believe His promise as to prayer.

Faith in the promise is the fruit of faith in the Promiser: the prayer of faith is rooted in the life of faith. And in this way the faith that prays effectually is indeed a gift of God. Not as something that He bestows or infuses at once, but in a far deeper and truer sense, as the blessed disposition or habit of soul which is wrought and grows up in us in a life of communion with Him. Surely for one who knows his Father well, and lives in constant close fellowship with Him, it is a simple thing to believe the promise that he will do the will of His child who lives in union with Himself.

It is because very many of God’s children do not understand this connection between the life of faith and the prayer of faith that their experience of the power of prayer is so limited. When they desire earnestly to obtain an answer from God, they fix their whole heart upon the promise, and try their utmost to grasp that promise in faith. When they do not succeed, they are ready to give up hope; the promise is true, but it is beyond their power to take hold of it in faith.

Listen to the lesson Jesus teaches us this day. HAVE FAITH IN GOD, the Living God: let faith look to God more than the thing promised: it is His love, His power, His living presence that will waken and work the faith. A physician would say, to one asking for some means to get more strength in his arms and hands to seize and hold, that his whole constitution must be built up and strengthened. So the cure of a feeble faith is alone to be found in the invigoration of our whole spiritual life by fellowship with God.

Learn to believe in God, to take hold of God, to let God take possession of your life, and it will be easy to take hold of the promise. He that knows and trusts God finds it easy to trust the promise too. Just note how distinctly this comes out in the saints of old. Every special exhibition of the power of faith was the fruit of a special revelation of God. See it in Abraham: ‘And the word of the Lord came unto Abram, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield. And He brought him forth abroad, and said . . . AND HE BELIEVED the Lord.’

And later again: ‘The Lord appeared unto him and said unto him, I am God Almighty. And Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my covenant is with thee.’ It was the revelation of God Himself that gave the promise its living power to enter the heart and work the faith. Because they knew God, these men of faith could not do anything but trust His promise. God’s promise will be to us what God Himself is. It is the man who walks before the Lord, and falls upon his face to listen while the living God speaks to him, who will really receive the promise.

Continue to Part 3 of …Believing Prayer

Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. For most certainly I tell you, whoever may tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’and doesn’t doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening; he shall have whatever he says.

Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them.  Mark 11:22-24

THE promise of answer to prayer is one of the most  wonderful in all Scripture. In how many hearts it has raised the question: How ever can I attain the faith that knows that it receives all it asks?
It is this question our Lord would answer today. Before he gave that wonderful promise to His disciples, he spoke another word in which he points out where the faith in the answer to prayer takes its rise and ever finds its strength.

HAVE FAITH IN GOD.

This word precedes ‘Have faith in the promise of an answer to prayer.’ The power to believe a promise  depends entirely, and only, on faith in the promiser.  Trust in the person begets trust in his word.

It is only where we live and associate with God in personal, loving intercourse, where GOD Himself is all to us, where our whole being is continually opened up and exposed to the mighty influences that are at work, where His Holy Presence is revealed, that the capacity will be developed for believing that He gives whatsoever we ask.

- – -

The value of the promise depends on the promiser: it is on my knowledge of what the promiser is that faith in the promise depends. It is for this reason that Jesus, before He gives that  wonderful prayer-promise, first says, ‘HAVE FAITH IN GOD.’ That is, let thine eye be open to the Living God, and gaze on Him, seeing Him who is Invisible.

…I yield myself to the influence of what is before me; I just allow it to enter, to  exert its influence, to leave its impression upon my  mind. So believing God is just looking to God and what He is, allowing Him to reveal His presence, giving him time and yielding the whole being to take in the full impression of what He is as God, the soul opened up to receive and rejoice in the overshadowing of His love.

Yes, faith is the eye to which God shows what He is and does: through faith the light of His presence and the workings of His mighty power stream into the soul. As that which I see lives in me, so by faith God lives in me too. And even so faith is also the ear through which the voice of God is always heard and intercourse with Him kept up.

It is through the Holy Spirit the Father speaks to us; the Son is the Word, the substance of what God says; the Spirit is the living voice. This the child of God needs to lead and guide him; the secret voice from heaven must teach him, as it taught Jesus, what to say and what to do. An ear opened towards God, that is, a believing heart waiting on Him, to hear what He says, will hear Him speak.

The words of God will not only be the words of a Book, but, proceeding from the month of God, they will be spirit and truth, life and power. They will bring in deed and living experience what are otherwise only thoughts. Through this opened ear the soul tarries under the influence of the life and power of God Himself. As the words I hear enter the mind and dwell and work there, so through faith God enters the heart, and dwells and works there.

Continue to Part 2 of …Believing Prayer