Ezra 8:21 – “Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions. 22 For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, “The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him.” 23 So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty.”
Nehemiah 9:1 – “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in sackcloth and with dirt upon them.”
Daniel 9:3 – “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.”
Luke 2:37 – “a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.”
Matthew 4:2 – “And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ 4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'”
“All these are but the outward shell of these duties; the internal and substantial part of them lies in the following exercises. 1. Serious meditation, and consideration of our ways…2. Deep humiliation of soul before the Lord; the which was signified by the sackcloth and ashes used, under the Law, on such occasions. The consideration of our ways is to be pursued, till our soul be humbled within us; our heart rent, not with remorse for sin only, but with regret and kindly sorrow for it, as an offence to a “gracious and merciful God,” Joel 2:12, 13; our face filled with shame and blushing before him, in view of our spiritual nakedness, pollution, and defilement, Ezra 9:6; and we loathe ourselves as most vile in our own eyes, Ezek 36:31; Job 40:4. 3. Free and open confession of sin before God, without reserve. This is a very material part of the duty incumbent on us in religious fasting; and the due consideration and deep humiliation just now mentioned, do natively issue in it; producing, of course, extraordinary confession of sin, an exercise most suitable on such an occasion. Hence the Jews spent “one fourth part of the day in confessing and worshipping,” Neh 9:3; and the angel, who brought Daniel’s supplications about the time of the evening oblation, found him praying and confessing his sin, Dan 9:20-21. For here the sinner duly humbled has much ado, acting against himself the part of an accuser, recounting before the Lord his transgressions of the holy law, so far as he is able to reach them; the part of an advocate opening up the particulars, in their nature, and aggravating circumstances; and the part of a judge, justifying God in all the evil he has brought upon him, and condemning himself as unworthy of the least of all his mercies, and deserving to perish under eternal wrath” (Thomas Boston).
Prayer without the heart is no better than a recording of words or of teaching a parrot to speak for us. Parroting words in prayer is not true prayer at all. True prayer requires a humbled and broken heart. To obtain a humbled and broken heart it is often necessary to fast and pray. Fasting is not something we do to earn something before God, but in the practice of it we are enabled to focus on what is truly needed. The purpose in fasting is to be humbled before the Lord and to seek His face. We must not imagine that we can truly seek the Lord in the words of prayer without our hearts being humbled and broken before Him. We must not imagine that our personal or corporate prayers are anything but the outward shell (from Boston) unless we are deeply humbled before the Lord. Until we are broken from self-seeking (even in religious things) and our own self-sufficiency we are doing little more than offering words to God instead of our hearts. Fasting can also be nothing more than an outward shell when it is used as a way of merit to gain things from God. We must learn to fast in order to seek humbled hearts before God. We must learn to fast without a thought of gaining things from God, but instead to seek a broken and humbled heart before Him. Until we are taught of the inward teaching of the Lord to seek a true emptiness of self in our fasting so that we may approach Him with nothing in our hands but shame, we will not seek true revival from Him by grace. Oh how our hearts must be conformed to Christ in His humility in order to fast and pray as He fasted and prayed.
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