Do you have a brother or sister in Messiah/Christ who needs a miraculous healing and has requested prayer? Please, testify to me if your congregation is exemplary, because it seems that too often the response which floats around in the air is just verbal, like: “Yes, we’re praying for you” or “We’ll be praying for you”, without much having changed in the respondents’ daily routine of eating, drinking and focusing on their own affairs.

When the human solutions available to the sick are unsuccessful, doctors having declared their time on earth to be expiring fast, or their subnormal quality of life to be beyond medical enhancement, our response to their prayer needs must go beyond the mild, routine exercise of our vocal chords.

When people in such dire need of miracles actually request prayer from Bible believers, the Holy Spirit calls for more dynamic response than platitudes quickly mouthed between the schedules of our own ‘joie de vivre’. There are also people needing deliverance from situations requiring huge miracles, yet for one reason or another they have not come forward to request ministry. God is expecting us to carry them to the throne of grace (at least in fervent prayer) just as those four friends physically brought  the man to Yeshua in the Mark 2 account. Yeshua is expecting us to not even settle for ‘virtual results’ but to persist in prayerful ministry for fully manifested results, just as in the Mark 8:23-25 example where He persisted until the previously blind man could see others in sharp focus and not just ‘as trees’.

It seems that figures prominent in the Body are sometimes able to draw an adequate response from their praying public, but the average member of the Body who has a life-threatening or soul-threatening condition often continues to suffer the limitations of what science can offer. Why? Because the response of the average local church stops at the threshold of their ‘comfort zone’.

We must remember that intercession for the mortal or spiritual life of a person is often a battle, not a comfortable walk in the park. Ephesians 6:18 (TLV[1]) reminds us how to approach prayer in the context of a battle. It says, “Pray in the Ruach (Spirit) on every occasion, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, keep alert with perseverance and supplication for all the kedoshim  (brothers and sisters in Messiah).”

What does praying with “all kinds of prayers” entail?  I submit that it first requires deep compassion, arising from the ability to identify with the conditions of those for whom we pray. We must be ‘moved with’ (motivated by) compassion just like Yeshua was, as evidenced in the following scriptures: Matthew 14:14, “He was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick;” Matthew 9:36 – “He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd;” John 11:33 – “When Yeshua saw her weeping, and the Judeans who came with her weeping, He was deeply troubled in spirit and Himself agitated;”  Matthew 20:33-34 – “Moved with compassion, Yeshua touched their eyes;”  Mark 1:41 – “Moved with compassion, Yeshua stretched out His hand and touched (the leper).”

We can see that Yeshua was able to identify with the dire conditions of the people before Him. He automatically did this throughout His ministry. Hebrews 4:15 says (CJB[2]), “We do not have a cohen gadol (High Priest) unable to empathize with our weaknesses; since in every respect He (Yeshua) was tempted just as we are, the only difference being that He did not sin.”  Strong’s definition of the word translated ‘weaknesses’ is: “(1) feebleness of body or mind, by implication ‘malady’ or moral frailty; (2) disease, infirmity, sickness, weakness.”

I have come to believe that through the operation of His deep compassion, Yeshua was fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah 53 long before His sacrificial death. The AET[3] portrays Him as “a man of pains and accustomed to illness” (verse 3a), but makes the point that “in truth it was our ills that He bore and our pains that He carried” (verse 4a). After Yeshua’s sacrifice and resurrection, the apostolic writer of Hebrews 2:17 says of Him, “He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so He might become a merciful and faithful Kohen Gadol (High Priest)…”  Even now, so long after He completed the prophecy of Isaiah 53:5b by accepting the cutting lashes (the ‘stripes’) by which we are healed, Yeshua still desires to minister by his Spirit through believers who are willing to embrace the same capacity for compassion.

How can we become that compassionate, since concern for others does not come as naturally as concern for ourselves? I stumbled across a clue in my KJV[4] days, which led me to regard fasting as a means to that end. This clue was the phrase “bowels of compassion” (1 John 3:17) or “bowels of mercy” (Colossians 3:12) which led me to contrast that with the regular operation of our bowels (mouth to you-know-where). Those bowels deal with our frequent consumption of food and the processing of that food to benefit our own bodies. I was blessed to be discipled in a church fellowship where fasting and prayer were taught, practised and corporately utilized. Gradually I began to notice that both individual and congregational fasting could bring, among other benefits, the deepening of compassion for others and increased fervency of response to their prayer needs.[5]

Isaiah 58 crystallizes for us some purposes and expected benefits of fasting, which relate to healing and deliverance. Verse 6 lists the following frequently quoted purposes: “To release the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to tear off every yoke.”  At verse 8 we read among the benefits, “your healing will spring up speedily” and verse 9 – “then you will call, and Adonai will answer. You will cry and He will say, ‘Here I am.’”

Yet, there is another aspect to fasting – the aspect of mercy and compassion. A less commonly cited part of Isaiah 58 is verse 7, which talks about sharing our food with the hungry (rather than just consuming it on ourselves), bringing the homeless poor into our houses, clothing those in need of clothing, and not hiding ourselves from our own needy relatives.

We often acknowledge the powerful benefits of fasting, but I believe the worthiness of what we attempt to do with that power is based on first tapping into God’s depth of love and compassion – which we can relate to the Isaiah 58:7 ideals. When believers in Yeshua fast, we put our own body ‘under’ and subject our desire for physical food to the same Spiritual re-direction that led Yeshua to assert (John 4:34), “My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” He said this to the disciples who were urging Him to eat, apparently worried about His fasting focus on the souls in the nearby Samaritan village – a focus that precluded the immediate gratification of his own hunger.

I believe that the “all kinds of prayer” mentioned in Ephesians 6:18, with which we are to pray for all the saints, includes not only fasting but also what is called travailing prayer[6]. It is hard to imagine one travailing in prayer for another person’s benefit, without that unction of the Holy Spirit which comes from incorporating fasting into one’s devotional life. Yeshua prefaced His entire ministry with a 40-day fast, and still He fasted on further occasions such as the one mentioned above (John 4:31-34).

The fasting in which I was discipled many years ago was not an annual observance like the Jews’ fasting on Yom Kippur, and it was not a diabolical observance like the one described in Isaiah 58:4 as fasting “for strife and contention and to strike with a wicked fist” (which we know still happens in some satanic and other religious practice.) Instead, we had pre-planned corporate fasts based on the leaders’ objectives for spiritual growth in the fellowship, and also occasional fasts called to intercede for serious matters when they arose, including members’ needs for God’s miraculous intervention.

If such is the current practice in your congregation, then I know your members are experiencing a lot more victory than some others are. Those who can only reminisce on such times in their lives need to get back there; and those who have never experienced these benefits of fasting need to go forward to that place. Then our brothers and sisters, as well as others whom the Holy Spirit lays on our hearts, will surely have ‘the report of the Lord’ superseding and erasing unfavourable reports from other sources. They will experience the power of His ‘arm’ being extended toward them, through the Body that Yeshua left here on earth to do just that.

[1] Tree of Life Version

[2] Complete Jewish Bible

[3] Artscroll English Tanach

[4] King James Version

[5] For a fuller discussion of ‘bowels of compassion’ see Bowels of Mercy/The King’s English

[6] See “What is Travailing Prayer?”, and “Travail: the Prayer that Brings Birth”