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Friends United Meeting |
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June 2003
Forgotten Weapon in the Battle Against Evil
By Ron Ferguson
Since the "official" start of the war in Iraq on March 19, Americans have been given a steady diet of detailed reports about the vast array of high-tech weapons and innovative techniques being used by the military to dislodge Saddam Hussein's regime from power. News reports have also made much of the internet-based methods being employed by antiwar protest organizers to quickly gather large crowds for demonstrations.
Although both groups claim to be fighting evil with their state-of-the-art electronic methods, they seem to have overlooked an ancient technique that for centuries has produced dramatic results against entrenched evil — a call to combine prayer with fasting. When the disciples of Jesus were unable to exorcise a particularly aggressive evil spirit from a young boy (Mark 9:17ff), Jesus cast it out of the boy and restored his health. The disciples asked Jesus why they had not been able to accomplish the healing, and some early biblical translations report that Jesus replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting."
Jesus knew from personal experience that combining the two spiritual disciplines was exceptionally powerful in confronting the forces of evil. Immediately after his baptism and prior to the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus spent forty days of fasting and prayer in the wilderness. He confronted the most powerful basic temptations humans ever face and emerged victoriously, enabled to announce and reveal the Kingdom of God.
Fasting combined with prayer is a particularly effective tool because it integrates body and spirit in the quest for faithfulness to God. Jesus' employment of fasting and prayer to confront evil was in keeping with the Jews' long history of similar discipline in times of personal and national crisis. King Jehoshaphat called for a nationwide fast when aÊlarge army of enemies laid siege to Judah. The prophet Joel called Israel to fasting in repentance for their unfaithfulness that had brought calamity upon the nation. When jealous Persian officials threatened the Hebrews in exile with extermination, Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai called for a citywide fast by the Jews while she sought an opportunity to ask the king to intervene. Daniel, another famous exiled Jew in Babylon, refrained from consuming "choice foods" for three weeks while he mourned and sought to understand a vision he received from God regarding wars in Mesopotamia and the future of his people. Ezra, the priest, called for prayer and fasting in preparation for the difficult, dangerous journey by a group of Jewish returnees from Babylon to Jerusalem through hostile territory. The first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas for planting churches in Asia and Europe arose out of a group of Jewish Christian leaders in Antioch who gathered to fast and pray.
What could be the impact of prayer and fasting today? Suppose 75 million American Christians (one-half of those who call themselves Christians) would heed a call to fast and pray for just one meal, spending the thirty minutes normally used to eat instead to pray in sorrow over sin's destructive impact on life, in supplication and hope for God's intentions to become reality, in solidarity with those whose suffering is not voluntary, and in sharpened attention to the Spirit's leading for how to respond to the current crisis in Iraq. The result would be 37.5 million person-hours of intercession for God's help.
If these people each set aside $2 representing the skipped food and sent it to one relief agency, an additional $150 million would be available to make God's Kingdom visible to alleviate suffering caused by war, poverty, disease and natural disaster.
And carried through for a year 450 million person-hours of prayer for God's help to those who suffer would be lifted and an additional $1.8 billion would be available to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, clothe the naked, and make God's love known to the world.
But the key is the combination of fasting and prayer. Fasting without prayer too easily becomes a mere social statement, or just a diet. Prayer without fasting is certainly commendable and essential, but it lacks the element of voluntary suffering and physical empathy brought by foregoing food for a time. The money that could be gathered through such donations is substantial, but financial giving alone misses the transformation of the soul that comes through fasting with prayer.
Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline "fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen in any other way. It is a means of God's grace that should not be neglected." One can only wonder how much deeper the world's pain must become before the Church finally rolls out this seemingly forgotten but potent weapon for the battle against the principalities and powers in the heavenly realms.
Ron Ferguson co-pastors Winchester Friends, Indiana, with his wife, Pam.
Copyright (c) 2003 Friends United Meeting
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