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”

My last blog was about ‘un-prayed prayers’. Today I’m bringing that topic into the prayer meeting scenario.  Many intercessors love to participate in prayer meetings, and so does the Holy Spirit (the Ruach HaKodesh). The Ruach never declines invitations to attend prayer meetings. In fact, given the open invitation that true intercessors extend, the Ruach sometimes invites and brings along other guests, and sometimes supplements or re-prioritizes our humanly prepared agendas 🙂

I remember attending prayer meetings where the Ruach had brought me from afar for a specific purpose, and what a joy it was to have that purpose fulfilled!  Sometimes the main purpose was to receive and be blessed by the discernment and prayers of others, but sometimes the main purpose was to give and to bless. Sometimes it was simply to join in the prayers of agreement and to support the prayer agenda of the leaders; but at other times the purpose was to fill a particular role that the Ruach would reveal – sometimes to my delight, and sometimes to my emotional ‘ruin’ (like that of Isaiah in Is. 6:5).

There were some prayer meetings, though, that I thought should really have been called ‘small-talk meetings’, or even feel-good therapy sessions. Don’t get me wrong; small-talk and feel-good therapy are both essential to life, but these activities should not be confused with prayer. Gatherings for general sharing and other fellowship delights need to be scheduled, but to label them ‘prayer-meetings’ is a misnomer.

When a meeting has been called for prayer, the talking should be purposeful – related to topics that are to be addressed by the intercessors present. So, after the praise and WORSHIP by which we corporately enter the presence of the Lord, the talking should be (1) sharing of testimonies or scripture for faith building, prayer-related encouragement, as well as sharing of prayer needs, and then (2) prayer. Talking, then prayer; talking, then prayer. Not talking and talking and talking around matters being raised, until someone realizes that the time available for prayer is almost spent.

I saw a wonderful demonstration of this principle in a prayer meeting led by an African pastor, Samson Dazogbo. He led the meeting into praying for each topic raised before moving on to a new topic. Only when the “Amen” had been declared on the former, was the group’s attention allowed to focus on the latter. In that way, there was no list of prayer requests crammed into the end of the meeting to be dealt with in a hurry.

Leaders should also refrain from making a prayer meeting into a general preaching or teaching meeting. Yes, people need to hear preaching and teaching; but if you are not succeeding in attracting them to the appropriate venue for those ministries, that is a separate issue. Something is wrong that can indeed be a topic of prayer, but general preaching and teaching in a prayer meeting at the expense of prayer is not the answer. Some attendees may have come to that prayer meeting being either themselves IN SERIOUS NEED OF CORPORATE PRAYER, or bearing in their hearts the burdens of others in serious need of corporate prayer. The only reminders they need from the preacher-teacher part of your brain at that time are those directly related to our standing with God, which is the basis on which we pray and expect Him to answer.

Even when we have considered all of the above, the adversary of our souls will still try to subvert the prayer meeting if he can. One of the ways he does this is with distractions, and a common distraction is for one person’s need to become a lasting focus, to the exclusion of other expressed or known needs. Persons leading prayer meetings should be sensitive to this, seeking constantly to be led by the Holy Spirit, prepared to ask for moments of quiet if necessary to seek direction, and prepared to defer personal ministry for an individual to a smaller follow-up session.

The disregard for such considerations can lead to burdens (of believers or of the Ruach) entering a prayer meeting and leaving without having been lifted. They leave as they came – clouds of ‘un-prayed prayers’. Brothers and sisters, for that to happen is a waste of ‘sharing’ time, a squandering of God’s promises, and a succumbing to the devil’s attempts to divert us from actually praying. After all, Satan has so much to gain from that, and we have so much to lose!

Let us highly regard our calling to intercede; let us value the time and orchestration that God invests in gathering us together for prayer. Let’s not underestimate His ongoing intervention in our lives, which has positioned us for such service. He has kept at bay those satanic attacks aimed at hindering us from gathering to pray. He may have allowed recent personal sorrows to tenderize our hearts for bearing the burdens of others. For the purpose of the intercession He desires to lead, He may have highlighted specific scriptures in the hearts of attendees, tightened their grip of the Sword of the Spirit, given them dreams and visions pertaining to prayer needs that will be shared, or prepared for specific gifts of the Spirit to be manifested in addressing those prayer needs.

Brothers and sisters, it’s prayer meeting time. Let’s pray!

As promised, I’m going to share some of what I gleaned from researching the history of fasting in the Bible, with the notable help of Kent Berghuis’ and Jentezen Franklin’s posted writings on the topic.

The words used for fasting occur about 47 times in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).  As we know, a leader would often ‘call’ or ‘proclaim’ or ‘sanctify’ a corporate fast among the Israelites, in semantic terms related to the concepts of weeping, mourning, donning of sackcloth and ashes, doing no work, and most importantly – ‘afflicting’ or humbling one’s soul. Humbling one’s soul is sometimes rendered ‘denying oneself’ (of routine attention and pleasures). So fasting in the Old Testament seems most often associated with grief or mourning, repentance and seeking of God’s forgiveness. In my experience however, among New Covenant believers there is more focus on fasting as an aid to prayer, seeking God for His manifest presence, intervention, direction, or empowerment for ministry.

Did you know that the experience of Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden could be regarded as something of a failed fast? God commanded the first ‘food prohibition’ on the sixth day of creation. He said, in effect, “You may eat from every tree in the Garden except this one. From the food produced by this tree you must abstain – you must fast!”  Never before have I related that command (or our foreparents’ disbedience) to the context of fasting. Wow … God was the One ‘calling’ that partial fast in Eden, just as His Holy Spirit is still the One who motivates us today to embark on personal fasting for various reasons.

Berghuis makes the point that “The first sin in the Bible was a violation of a dietary restriction.” He quotes Nahum Sarna: “Man is called upon by God to exercise restraint and self-discipline in the gratification of his apetite.” Adam and Eve sinned and came short of God’s glorious intention when they yielded to Satan’s temptation and fully indulged their appetite rather than obeying God’s command to abstain from that one fruit. I believe we have all committed similar sins at various times.

Now let your mind go the Matthew 4 and Luke 4 scenario of “The Last Adam” – not in the lush Garden of Eden but in the arid wilderness of Judea. In that fruitless landscape, Yeshua could still have eaten locusts as His cousin John did. Yet, even knowing Yeshua’s power to create food out of nothing as Elohim had at the beginning, God the Father called for a fast (Matt. 4:1). This time, it was The Last Adam who was to be tempted, and He was in all points tempted as the first Adam was, yet He resisted every temptation. He first established that human beings must not try to sustain their lives by physical food alone, but by “every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4 quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).

Food was only one of the ‘words’ that had come from the mouth of God (see Genesis 1:20-25 where He spoke food into existence.) Yeshua was reminding us of the spiritual words as well – those instructions, the do’s and don’ts that pertain to life and Godliness – that God had spoken to mankind, starting with Adam. Yeshua had not forgotten or undervalued even that tiny half-verse from Deuteronomy, but pulled it out as a swift sword against satan’s food-related temptation.

It was after Yeshua had fasted for 40 days and nights (Matt. 4:2) that He could move on from victory over that simple food-related temptation to victory over the greater temptations: the temptation to glorify Himself at God’s expense based on a scripture that satan deviously quoted out of context, and to accept ‘gifts’ from satan, a thief offering stolen goods (Psalm 24:1) in exchange for worship. Again Yeshua resisted with words from the mouth of God – first quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” and then rendering Deuteronomy 6:13 as “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve!”  At Yeshua’s final rebuke on that occasion, “Go away satan!” the devil fled (as promised in James 4:7) and Yeshua’s mortal body received the angelic ministry that was much needed by then.

Have I strayed from my ‘fasting’ topic? Not really. My belief is that Yeshua, in order to accomplish His Redeemer assignment while in His temporary mortal body, had to first complete that long fast (resisting that food temptation for 40 days and nights) which enabled Him to resist the other temptations by which satan tried to subvert the launch of His absolutely crucial mission. That premise brings me to the comparison between fasting as practised in the Old Testament and fasting with New Testament objectives such as Yeshua and His disciples demonstrated.

Yeshua’s 40-day-40-night fast was not connected with mourning, or with repentance since He had nothing of which to repent. Neither was his long fast simply a test that He had to pass. It was instead connected with the activation of divine empowerment (as Luke 4:1 and 4:14 indicate) to fulfill a divine commission (Luke 3:21-23). Later, in Yeshua’s mentoring of His disciples to carry on His ministry, this empowerment objective was evidenced (Matthew 17:21) and in their own commissioning of co-labourers for that ministry, they followed suit (Acts 13:3). In the next post, I will continue to compare Old Testament and New Testament examples of fasting, to share from them all the answers I have found to address my own question, “How then, should we believers fast, and with what expectations?”

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What does the average person normally do three times per day? You guessed it – eat a meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner (or supper). For many people this goes on day in, day out, 365 days per year; and this routine is generally viewed as necessary for good health. Yet many in our world go hungry at these mealtimes, some to the point of starvation. That’s not Godly fasting. When activists press their agendas by playing on public sympathies through ‘hunger strikes’, that’s not Godly fasting either. When Muslims are mandated to abstain from food during the daytime but allowed to eat at night during their month of Ramadan, it is called a fast; yet they have simply inverted the normal schedule of eating in the day and fasting at night, which is what the rest of us routinely do. There is no Biblical precedent for calling that a fast either.

With the best-practice guidance of Isaiah 58 and the dictionary definition of the word ‘fast’, I would describe Godly fasting as the voluntary abstinence from food for periods inclusive of and extending beyond mealtimes, for purposes that align with God’s will, in the context of obedience to God’s greatest commandments – loving him with all the love we can muster (Deut 6:5) and loving our neighbours as much as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18, Matt. 22:39).  In the Artscroll Jewish Bible, Isaiah 58:6-7, 9-10 reads: “Surely this is the fast I (God) chose: to break open the shackles of wickedness, to undo the bonds of injustice, and to let the oppressed go free, and to annul all perversion (and that ye break every yoke – KJV). Surely you should break your bread for the hungry, and bring the moaning poor to your home; when you see a naked person, clothe him; and do not hide yourself from your kin … remove from your midst perversion, finger-pointing and evil speech, and offer your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul.”

Why did God spell out all of that? Verses 2-5 and 13 answer that question – because His people had been fasting in ways that God had not ‘chosen’, and they were grumbling that despite their fasting God was not responding to them as they thought He should. The Omniscient One described their practices thus: “They pretend to seek Me every day and desire to know My ways, like a nation that acts righteously and has not forsaken the justice of its God; they inquire of Me about the laws of justice, as if they desire the nearness of God, asking, ‘Why did we fast and You did not see? Why did we afflict our souls and You did not know?’ Behold, on the day of your fast you seek out personal gain and you extort all your debts. Because you fast for grievance and strife, to strike each other with a wicked fist, you do not fast as befits this day, to make your voice heard above … (you do not) restrain your foot because it is the Sabbath (or) refrain from accomplishing your own needs on My holy day; (you do not) proclaim the Sabbath ‘a delight’ and the holy day of HaShem ‘honoured’; you (dishonour it by) engaging in your own affairs (and by) seeking your own needs or discussing the forbidden (speaking thine own words – KJV).”

As I noted toward the end of my last post, the basic concept of combining prayer with fasting was nothing new to the Israelites, and as we can tell from the testimony above, their attempts to maximize personal benefit from fasting was nothing new to God’s all-seeing eye either. I have reviewed many scriptures since my last post, seeking to understand the Israelites’ motivations to fast, their expectations in fasting, and the effects of their fasting – with a view to comparing that with how we as New Covenant believers should approach fasting and with what expectations. One of the resources that I found very helpful was Kent Berghuis’ Fasting in the Old Testament and Ancient Judaism.  My next post will share with you some gleanings from that.

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Yeshua’s famous fast of 40 days and 40 nights in the desert (Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 4) inaugurated His three-year public ministry of unmatched power. Perhaps the most eternally significant outcome of that fast was Yeshua’s established victory over every level of temptation (or testing) that satan could throw at His humanity. That complete victory could be viewed as the over-arching purpose of the fast; yet I believe there was a vital element to that victory without which the purpose could not have been fulfilled. That element was to optimize the preparation of His mortal body as a conduit through which supernatural power could flow to minister first to His generation, and then to all mankind.

Yeshua’s fasting was a means to that powerful end. The Holy Spirit ensured that at least one Gospel writer would record a very important before-and-after comparison. Luke 4:1 begins the narrative with the ‘before’ picture: “Yeshua, now filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan” (where He had just been baptized) and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Then in verse 14, having narrated the full 40-day fasting test, Luke presents the ‘after’ picture with these loaded words: “Yeshua returned in the power of the Spirit to the Galilee, and news about Him went out through all the surrounding region.”

Well, duh! Of course the news about Him began to spread like wildfire, because the power of God began to be manifested through this Galilean to an extent that it had never before (and has never since) been manifested through a mortal body.

I used to think that 40 days was all the fasting that Yeshua did, but now I know better. From the account in John 4:4-34, I know that Yeshua fasted at other times during His ministry, sometimes even to the consternation of His disciples as in John 4:31-34: “The disciples were pressing Him, ‘Rabbi, eat!’ But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about. So the disciples were saying to each other, ‘No-one brought Him food to eat, did they?’ Yeshua told them, ‘My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me and to accomplish His work.'”

In Luke 4:18-19, Yeshua articulated His divine mandate as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2, supernatural ministry to mankind that would demonstrate the benevolence of God and usher in the Gospel of salvation. In John 5:36 Yeshua said, “The works the Father has given Me to finish – the very works I am doing – testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” The Gospel accounts are replete with examples of His definitive works, and in Matthew 11:5 Yeshua Himself listed some of them: “The blind see and the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news proclaimed to them.”

Not only was Yeshua’s supernatural ministry undergirded with fasting, but it was sustained with prayer as well. That is why He, even while operating through a mortal body, had victory over spiritual entities which He said are not defeated except through the powerful punch of prayer and fasting (see Part 1 of this article, below). Luke 5:16 reveals that Yeshua “would often slip away into the wilderness and pray.” So we know that He sometimes retreated, away from the crowds and their pressing needs, in order to re-charge his power-pack for ministry. He would sometimes even retreat from His disciples, as we read in Luke 6:12: “Yeshua went out to the mountain to pray, and He spent all night in prayer to God. When day came, He called His disciples, choosing from among them twelve whom He also named emissaries” (the apostles).

The daily miraculous works that Yeshua did, sometimes in full view of multitudes and otherwise in the privacy of homes with just a few present, had never been seen before. Prophets and patriarchs of Israel had sometimes demonstrated the miraculous power of God working through them, on accasion to the extent of raising the dead; but even the most faithful among God’s people had ever seen anything like this 24/7 miracle-working Galilean! Yet, the basic concept of combining prayer with fasting was nothing new to the Jews, and that is why Yeshua could encourage His disciples to continue His ministry with prayer and fasting once He was taken away from the earth. As the spiritual Body of their resurrected Messiah, being submitted to Him as their Head, what could they expect to accomplish?                                                                                                                                                        [To be continued]

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If you’re old enough you’ll remember Popeye cartoons. Popeye’s secret ingredient, which pumped up his biceps and powered his punch, was spinach. Now, unless you’ve been terribly disadvantaged you’ll also have heard of Jesus Christ, whose powerful deeds in Israel 2,000 years ago were a lot more historic than Popeye’s, and were not limited to the reach of a physical arm. Every Jew who knew Jesus personally then, called Him by His Hebrew name, Yeshua; and those who became convinced of His divinity by observing the display of His power, added to His name the title Ha Mashiach (The Messiah).

Yeshua, even while He lived in Galilee as a mortal, had the most powerful ‘punch’ recorded in history. Read the Gospels – the story of Yeshua’s incarnation told in the Bible by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and you’ll know about the power of Yeshua’s ‘punch’. It sent diseases packing, leaving their former victims healthy; it sent evil spirits (demons of all sorts) packing, leaving their former victims restored to soundness and self control. It threw curveballs at some secular and religious authorities that they could neither dodge nor hit; it punched down social barriers that no-one else thought to (or dared to) challenge. It left the devil himself speechless and defeated at his own game – death. It brought vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, liberation to captives, elevation to the downtrodden, affirmation to the undervalued, and raised the dead back to life.

Yeshua’s disciples tried to do as He did – to exercise that same ‘punch’ against the devil’s work in their environment, but at first they disappointed themselves and disappointed some others. We read of one such occasion in Matthew 17:14-21 and Mark 9:14-29, where they failed to help a child who was tormented by epilepsy, and whose father had appealed to them for healing ministry. That father aparently concluded that they lacked something, and that He should go directly to the Source of the power that could heal his son. After Yeshua responded to the father’s appeal and healed the child, the disciples also realized that something was missing from their ‘punch’ and asked their Master what it was.

Yeshua said (Matthew 17:21), “This kind does not go out (Mark 9:29 – ‘come out‘) except by prayer and fasting.” Although the inclusion of this fasting reference is under debate by some Christians based on its exclusion from some manuscripts, the fact that Yeshua underpinned His power-packed ministry with an inaugural 40-days-and-40-nights fast is undisputed (Matthew 4:2, Luke 4:2). Besides, the fact that His subsequent ministry was totally effective against the devil’s influence is also undisputed among believers. The only time that the devil may seem (in unenlighted eyes) to have gotten the better of Him was on the days of His betrayal, capture, trial and crucifixion.

Yeshua countered this predictable misperception in advance by promising His fellow Jews, at His most memorable Passover visit to Jerusalem (John 2:19, 21): “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up … He was speaking of the temple of His body.” He later explained, this time specifically to the Pharisees (John 10:17-18), “I lay down my life … no-one takes it from me. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.” Later still, as His persecution approached its climax and Peter cut off an attacker’s ear in defence of his Master, Yeshua said to Peter (Matthew 26:52-53), “Put your sword back… do you suppose that I cannot call on My Father, and at once He will place at my side twelve legions of angels?” Then He assured the crowd of witnesses (Matthew 26:56), “All this (His capture, which He had allowed) was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Three days after His crucified body was consigned to a sealed and guarded tomb, Yeshua did just what He had said he would. He raised His own ‘dead’ body back to life to demonstrate His victory over the devil, death and the grave, and so that He could use the same body (now glorified) on earth for forty more days.

The source of this power that Yeshua had at His disposal to use as He saw fit, was divine. However, this unmatched power could only be exercised through a mortal body because Yeshua had totally submitted that mortal body to the Godhead through prayer and fasting.       [To be continued.]

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There are certain choices that anyone of sound mind can make. God gave us the ability and opportunity to choose. Furthermore, He encourages – even challenges us – to make critical choices. Joshua 24:15 and 1 Kings 18:21 are classic examples where God addresses the most important choice we have to make, challenging us to weigh our options and choose intelligently. Joshua under divine inspiration said, “If it seems bad to you to worship (the LORD), then choose for yourselves today whom you will serve—whether the gods that your fathers worshipped that were beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will worship (the LORD)!”  Later, God’s feisty prophet Elijah posed the same challenge without mincing words: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal is, follow him.”

Not only should we make these critical choices, but they should be informed choices. God said repeartedly that He does not want us to be ignorant – lacking the information necessary to make informed choices. So He gave us Deuteronomy,  describing the benefits of following and worshipping the LORD, contrasted with the disadvantages of choosing alternative options. In the punch-lines at 11:26, 30:15 and 30:19 God said through Moses, “I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse … See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil. … I call the heavens and the earth to witness about you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

Miriam of Bethany had made the right choice, even beyond the letter of the Torah, and it showed in how she prioritized the use of her time (Luke 10:38-42). Yeshua commended her, saying: “Miriam (contrasted with Martha) has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Miriam had discovered and chosen the Living Word. Embodied in Yeshua she had found the Life-giving Spirit from Whom the written Torah had emanated, and she had made her choice.

Even then, Yeshua was opening up more choices to those who had chosen to follow Him. Today, with the benefit of the Gospel accounts, the Apostolic writings and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, even more choices are revealed to us. For example, when the adversary tries to inflict disease on us, instead of first reaching for pharmaceutical symptomatic relief, we can choose to take our stand on God’s written promises which are “yea and amen” in Yeshua (2 Corinthians 1:20) and  in His Name exercise our God-given authority over every power of the adversary. I did that two nights ago, after waking up to the onset of a viral attack. The devil had to back off as promised in James 4:7. Having submitted ourselves to God, we can choose to resist and reject the attack of infirmity rather than accomodating it.

I find it so grievous to see Christians accommodate the devil’s desires, by not making those life-enhancing choices that have been opened to us through Yeshua’s incarnation, sacrificial death, resurrection and the ongoing ministry of His Spirit. Some Christians, after all that God spelled out in black and white between Genesis and Revelation, still believe the devil’s report over the Lord’s report, and live their lives way below God’s spiritual “poverty line”.  It makes me wish I could open some heads and some hearts and just do some kind of common-sense surgery there! But of course I can’t; God didn’t give me the power or authority to make choices for any other able-minded adult. So I just have to prayerfully lay the burden down at Yeshua’s feet and obey His command: “Do not be anxious about anything—but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

That’s enough for this post, but I have only scratched the surface. The take-away is, you can choose!  Please – inform yourself about your options, and then – choose blessings over curses, life over death!

Apostle Paul (called ‘Saul’ before his outreach ministry to the Gentlies) was an orthodox Jew before he became a Messianic Jew. That’s why some refer to him as Rav Shaul (Rabbi Shaul). In addition to his Hebrew name Shaul, this Jew also had a Latin name – Paul – because he had inherited Roman citizenship from his father. So his name was not changed from ‘Saul’ to Paul after his conversion, as I thought before my two years of mingling with Messianic Jews and other believers in the Hebraic context.

I’ve gleaned many inspiring insights into things I didn’t understand before. Some of these insights strike me as profound, some seem simple now that I know more of the historical and linguistic context, and some are even just amusing. In sharing one amusing insight, I will use the term Rav Shaul in keeping with the context.

This insight is a new appreciation for Rav Shaul’s words recorded at 1 Corinthians 11:20 and 22: “When you therefore come together, you eat and drink, not as is becoming on the day of our Master (Yeshua) … What! Don’t you have any houses in which you can eat and drink? Or, do you despise the assembly of Elohim, and shame them who have nothing? What will I say to you? Will I praise you? In this I do not praise you!“(Aramaic English New Testament)

My only prior appreciation of these words was in the context of the Lord’s Supper, as specified at verse 20 in the Greek-based translations. That understanding of course is quite valid. However, in my two years of meeting with Messianic Jews I’ve found myself pushing back against the custom of having food at almost every gathering. Now I’m empathizing with what may have been the apostle’s basic frustration with this food-focus being carried over into Messianic practice, leading to people wanting to eat at too many gatherings of the kehila (the congregation). This food-focus would augur well for idolizing the appetite (Philippians 3:19), rather than for disciplining the body (1 Corinthians 9:27) and seeking the Lord without distraction. And who better to challenge this focus than Rav Shaul, the self-identified Jew of Jews (Philippians 3:5-6) who had found and was leading them toward newness of life in Messiah?

Apparently some Jews only feel called to fast one day per year – on Yom Kippur. Yet in both the Old and New Testaments, God’s people were called to fast on various occasions when there was need for divine intervention, and also to wholeheartedly and single-mindedly seek God’s face. In Joel 1:14 God said, “Sanctify a fast” and in 2:12, “Turn to me with all your heart and with fasting“; in Matthew 6:15 Yeshua said “when you fast” do so and so. Yeshua Himself fasted to lay the groundwork for the ministry He had to accomplish while in the body of a mortal; and the apostles prayed with fasting to commission elders (Acts 14:23) and missionaries (Acts 13:3). In 1 Corinthians 7:5 many Bible scholars understand fasting to accompany the prayer mentioned there – in fact the Aramaic English New Testament renders it as, “devote yourselves to fasting and prayer.”

For me a full stomach has never proven spiritually productive. It may energize me for a focus on manual labour or mental concentration in secular pursuits, but when it comes to spiritual pursuits such as drawing close to God in worship and prayer, for intercession, or even just to resist the devil’s activity, I achieve much more with fasting than with feasting. So I’ve often smiled over the past two years and said to myself, “Now I  get it, Rav Shaul. You may have been ‘fed up’ with all the feasting focus on the Lord’s day.” And now I long for a good old-fashioned ‘fasting retreat’ with like-minded people.  Sister Gloria Gray, where are you?  (Regarding Sister Gloria, see pages 123-125, and 201ff. of my testimony, TGIF: Thank God It’s Friday.)

Because of recent events in our lives, I thank God today for my husband, and that I have learnt to submit to him, under God. Submitting to my husband, under God, has kept me out of a lot of trouble! If the day ever comes when I don’t have a husband to whom I can submit under God, I will seek out a pastor and his wife with proven accountability to higher authorities in the Body of Yeshua / Christ, to fill that role for me.

In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 the scripture warns about the times in which we’re living, listing 20 ungodly character traits that will be prevalent, being summed up in people espousing “an outward form of godliness but denying its power.”  Then the warning continues: “Avoid these people! For among these are those who slip into households and deceive weak women…”

Every household has a head. In a Christian household the ultimate head is God – to whom the whole body of believers should submit – but where there are a husband and a wife in the household, there is a scriptural instruction for submission under God. Ephesians 5:21-23 describes this order for us: “Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Messiah— wives to your OWN husbands as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is head of the wife, as Messiah also is head of His community—Himself the Savior of the body. But as Messiah’s community is submitted to Messiah, so also the wives (should be submitted) to their husbands in everything.”

That highlights one of the perils that specifically targets married women today, which is not spelled out in the 2 Timothy passage: lack of submission to the right spiritual headship for spiritual protection. The spirit of this age tells women that whether they are married or not, they should operate independently of male authority, and that is what makes them vulnerable to those “men of corrupt mind” described in the 2 Timothy passage, who creep into households to deceive and exploit.

I will stop here. Look into these matters ladies. Do not let your household suffer because of you opening the door to such men by doing things behind your husband’s back. Submit to your OWN husbands under God, not someone else’s.