Why We Might Need to Forget Much of What We’ve Learned about Prayer and Fasting

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you. 

Jesus, We belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Luke 5:33–39 (NIV)

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

CONSIDER THIS

And just like that, I see prayer and fasting completely different than before. 

So what is going on here? Let’s take a closer look. 

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

For starters, I never paid much attention to the question. It just never seemed relevant to my life; not a question I was asking. That’s the problem with reading the Bible for my sake rather than reading it with Jesus for Jesus’ sake. When we read with Jesus everything matters. When we read it with Jesus and for Jesus’ sake it will take more than a lifetime to take it all in. 

This way of Jesus and his disciples bothered people. They liked Jesus, but his approach seemed super unconventional and out of bounds for serious religious people. Were they implying maybe Jesus’s disciples were phoning it in. Maybe his discipleship program was not serious or rigorous enough. 

The Pharisees and their disciples fasted twice a week, rigorously and legalistically, and they wanted everyone to know it. They were keeping the law with as much perfection as they could muster. They believed if the law was obeyed perfectly God would deliver them from their enemies and establish them in the land.

John the Baptist and his disciples likely fasted much more than the Pharisees. I suspect their fasting bordered on a hunger strike. Whereas the Pharisees’ fasting was legalistic, my sense of John’s fasting was activistic. They were storming the gates of heaven, demonstrating their fervor and demanding a divine intervention on their behalf. The long and short of it is both of these groups practiced prayer and fasting from a more instrumental and functional approach. (i.e., if we do these things then God will intervene. We should remember as well that these two groups did not get along!)

Jesus’s response to the question turns centuries of teaching and practice on prayer and fasting on its head. He effectively says, “You obviously don’t understand prayer and fasting.”

Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

This is about fellowship. He is signing us about the bigger story. The bridegroom has come for his bride. The bride is not ready. The bridegroom will be taken away. After a period of time the bridegroom will return. Prayer and fasting are neither about proving one’s devotion to God nor are they formulaic practices whose aim is to move God to do something. Prayer and fasting will be the means of grace reserved for the period between the comings of the bridegroom. Prayer and fasting will be about enjoying the friendship of Jesus through the abiding fellowship of the Holy Spirit in the period between Jesus’s first coming and his second coming. Then he gives us this bit:

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.

This is a new teaching. There is a shifting from an old way to a new way. Though it may seem to be the same prayer and fasting, something entirely new is coming about. The old way will not match up with the new way. The old way of prayer and fasting—the one you see operating in the disciples of the Pharisees and of John the Baptist—is passing away. The new way of prayer and fasting—the one reserved for the time between Jesus’s comings—is of another order of magnitude entirely. To this new order he turns:

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 

The new order of magnitude is the new wine. The new wine, coming in the wake of Jesus leaving, is the Holy Spirit. Jesus will ascend into heaven and ten days later will send the Holy Spirit. This new wine simply will not work with the old wineskins; the forms of religion with no power and the former ways of understanding built on legalism and not love. This new wine will require new wineskins.¹

Jesus is bringing the new wineskins of prayer and fasting fit for the inbreaking kingdom of heaven. The old covenant wineskins of prayer and fasting are over and done. They will not carry the new life and awakening coming with the kingdom of “on earth as it is in heaven.” They cannot hold the new wine of the Spirit. 

This is why I’m so excited about the new course I’m leading in March: How to Pray and Fast for Life and Awakening. This is what it’s all about. And Registration is officially open. 

But be warned. Jesus closes the parable with a sobering and potentially discouraging note. 

And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” 

Now why would they say that? 

Then we remember the brand new wine at the wedding at Cana, the wine that tasted even better than the old. And so it always is with Jesus. 

THE PRAYER

Our Father, open the eyes of my heart to behold this teaching. Though it is so ancient it seems brand new. We marvel at you, Jesus, and how you are making all things new. We marvel at the way you not only want to give us your kingdom but you want to teach us how to receive it. New wine Jesus, we want the new wine of the Spirit. We are more comfortable with the old wine and the old wineskins. Something in us wants to default to them. Awaken us to these new wineskins of prayer and fasting; to this new clothing that must become not just a patch on the old worn clothes but the entirely new wardrobe of Jesus himself. Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord, to see even what angels long to see. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen. 

THE QUESTION

What does today’s teaching evoke in you? Excitement? Fear? Push back? Diving in? What is the Holy Spirit connecting for you now among all these things? How is your thinking and understanding being challenged? Affirmed? 

THE HYMN

Today we will sing another one of the new classics, “Knowing You.” It comes to us from Graham Kendrick. We will stretch it over the next few days, singing a verse and a chorus each time.  I’m so glad to say it is hymn 125 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY AND REFLECTION

1.  And this bit about the old and new wineskins; I must have used this text at least a hundred times when I wanted to do something new in the church. I used it to take shots at the old ways and traditions and to bring Jesus into my corner in support of whatever new it was I wanted to do. It turns out that was a foul. This passage about the new wineskins is not about whatever we want it to be about in Jesus’s name. It’s about one thing—prayer and fasting. This is why reading contextually matters so much. 

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