PRAYER AND FASTING -- Devotional for October 3, from "Good Seeds"

So I gave my attention to the Lord God, to seek Him by prayer and fasting (Daniel 9:3). But such things come not but by prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21).

Of all the Christian disciplines, surely the two most difficult and least favored are prayer and fasting. We give plenty of lip-service to prayer, Though we don’t do it very much or very well, we sure like to talk about it: “Please put me on the prayer chain; I’ll remember you in prayer; let’s all pray about that!” Oh the good intentions we Christians have, and the promises we make, concerning storming the gates of heaven with our supplications and petitions. But how much praying do we actually do? And how well do we do it? Someone once said, “Everything in the Christian life is easier than prayer.” He might be right – if it weren’t for fasting, which has got to be the toughest one of all. But these two are really very much alike – and it’s what they have in common that makes them so difficult. They’re both so hard to do because they’re all about what you can’t do, and still say you’re doing them. For fasting, you don’t eat; once you start, your fast is over. When praying you don’t work or figure or do or fix or try or build, but rather you just come to God hungry, thirsty, weak, helpless – like a man who fasts – and you lay it all out before Him. “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling” – that’s real prayer! In both cases you don’t do anything, but rather you turn everything over to God. “The hardest thing in the world to do,” said someone, “is to do nothing, for it is impossible to stop and take a rest.” That’s the difficulty of prayer and fasting: in doing them you’re doing nothing, and you are desperate to stop doing nothing so you can get back to doing something (or eating something!). Just as there are two kinds of sins: commission and omission, so there are two kinds of disciplines: doing, and not doing. Prayer and fasting fall into the latter category. Why do we fold our hands when we pray? Because there’s nothing for them to do. Real prayer is setting aside OUR work, in favor of GOD’S. And why do we close our eyes? Because we’ve stopped looking at what man can do in order to see what God can do. Praying – and fasting – are all about shutting down our human machine for awhile, to give place to God, to let Him do His will and work in us. Fasting is painful, to be sure, but we are not made perfect by the pain, but rather our attention is diverted by it, from self to God. Every time we feel a hunger pang, it drives us to God, to say with Job: “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). Both prayer and fasting are all about re-focusing, from the physical to the spiritual. Both are important, but the latter is greater. When we die, our soul lives on. So which should receive our best attention?