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NASB | Nehemiah 1:4 ¶ When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Nehemiah 1:4 ¶ Now it came about when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying [constantly] before the God of heaven. |
Subject: Role of fasting in a Christian's walk? |
Bible Note: Dear Nolan, Fasting is not easy for me and I have difficulty skipping more than 2 meals, EXCEPT when I'm feeling God's hand on me. When I'm upset then fasting makes sense, because then I can devote all my time to crying out to God. And that has only really happened a couple of times. I pray for a more compassionate and tender heart so that I may get more upset about the lost, for example, and feel more genuinely moved, as Nehemiah did, by situations. I admire Nehemiah's heart so much. He was a highly placed official in the King's court, yet he humbled himself and was genuinely mournful when he heard the news about Jerusalem. How much such a heart is to be admired. The big contrast to Nehemiah's mourning and fasting is the Pharisaical practice of fasting. I have the Online Bible, which I highly recommend BTW, and it includes various commentaries, which are great additions to one's own understanding of a scripture. Luke 18:12, where the Pharisee prays proudly and disdaining the tax collector, has an interesting reference to habitual fasting. Poole's commentary has this to say about it: -- Ver. 12. Twice in the sabbath, saith the Greek, but that is ordinary, to denominate the days of the week from the sabbath; the meaning is, twice between sabbath and sabbath. Those learned in the Jewish Rabbins tell us, that the Jews were wont to fast twice in a week, that is, the Pharisees and the more devout sort of them; once on the second, another time on the fifth day (which are those days which we call Monday and Thursday). From whence some tell us that Wednesday and Friday come to be with us fasting days or fish days. The Christians in former times, thinking it beneath them to be less in these exercises than the Jews, would have also two fasting days each week; and those not the same with the Jews, that they might not be thought to Judaize. If that custom had any true antiquity, I doubt not but they fasted after another rate than the papists or others now do, who pretend a religion to those days. But neither was the Pharisees practice, nor the practice of Christians, in this thing to be much admired or applauded. For fasting was always used in extraordinary cases; and the bringing extraordinary duties into ordinary practice usually ends in a mere formality. It is a good rule, neither to make ordinary duties extraordinary or rare, nor yet extraordinary duties ordinary: the doing of the first ordinarily issues in the loss of them, and quite leaving them off; the latter, in a formal lifeless performance of them. -- SO here we see a possible explanation of eating fish on Fridays practiced among the Catholics. And the lifelessness invoked because of the ordinariness of the practice. Also, it was commanded on the day of atonement back in the Leviticus, and was useful in times of extraordinary need. But I don't believe it was intended for Christians to lower fasting to an ordinary practice. It is a form of worship that is special and called for by distress or extraordinary need. That is my conviction from reading the bible and I'd love to hear what other folks understand about this spiritual discipline. To respond to your sharing about your difficulty praying . . . I go in stages. Most days I am in "continual prayer" but I realize that my faith is built when I pray. I have had some answers to my prayers that have been powerful and it wasn't because I prayed at length. During one difficulty I prayed for God to reveal the truth and all that needed to be revealed in the situation. He revealed the truth of the situation and went further to reveal the sin in my life that I needed desperately to repent of. I wasn't expecting Him to be so faithful and thorough!!! :) But I count it up to joy to received God's discipline through my prayer. Fasting can be like that, too. Sometimes our worship can be more intense than others, and when we're fasting is likely to be so. |