God's Chosen Fast Quotes

“If you have been brought low through personal defeat; if there is a call in your soul to a deeper purifying, to a renewed consecration; if there is the challenge of some new task for which you feel ill-equipped—then it is time to inquire of God whether He would not have you separate yourself unto Him in fasting.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Behind many of our besetting sins and personal failures, behind the many ills that infect our church fellowships and clog the channels of Christian service—the clash of personalities and temperaments, the strife and division—lies that insidious pride of the human heart.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“John Wesley’s famous sermon on fasting: First, let it be done unto the Lord, with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven; to express our sorrow and shame for our manifold transgressions of His holy law; to wait for an increase of purifying grace, drawing our affections to things above; to add seriousness and to obtain all the great and precious promises which He hath made to us in Jesus Christ. . . . Let us beware of fancying we merit anything of God by our fasting. We cannot be too often warned of this; inasmuch as a desire to “establish our own righteousness,” to procure salvation of debt and not of grace, is so deeply rooted in all our hearts. Fasting is only a way which God hath ordained, wherein we wait for His unmerited mercy; and wherein, without any desert of ours, He hath promised freely to give us His blessing.1”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“When we fast, how long we fast, the nature of the fast and the spiritual objectives we have before us are all God’s choice, to which the obedient disciple gladly responds.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“God is not merely concerned with what we do but why we do it. A right act may be robbed of all its value in the sight of God if it is done with a wrong motive.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“There is nothing essentially vile in the human body, for God created it, even with its desires and appetites. There is nothing evil in a hungry man’s desire for a square meal, or a healthy woman’s longing for a husband, children and a home of her own. It is not the way of the Spirit to repress these natural instincts, but to control them and keep them within the bounds prescribed by God. We do not need to extinguish the fire in the grate; only to prevent the coals from falling out and setting the place on fire. The physical is not to be ruthlessly suppressed but firmly disciplined and subordinated to the spiritual. When asceticism becomes a thing of form enforced by man-made rules, it is incapable of dealing effectively with the bodily lusts. Self-control on the other hand is the fruit of the Spirit, springing from divine life within, cultivated by the habit of a disciplined life.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“In giving us the privilege of fasting as well as praying, God has added a powerful weapon to our spiritual armory. In her folly and ignorance, the church has largely looked upon it as obsolete. She has thrown it down in some dark corner to rust, and there it has lain forgotten for centuries. An hour of impending crisis for the church and the world demands its recovery!”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“His heart was being prepared for further blessing God had for him.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“I proclaimed a fast . . . that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for ourselves, our children, and all our goods” (Ezra 8:21, 23, 31).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting.” (Joel 2:12)”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you” (Jer. 29:13–14). When a man is willing to set aside the legitimate appetites of the body to concentrate on the work of praying, he is demonstrating that he means business, that he is seeking with all his heart, and will not let God go unless He answers.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“In the fasting for personal sanctity, we must also include the positive aspect of consecration to God.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“If restoration and renewal are to come from the presence of the Lord—and what hope is there without them?—then it is men and women like these whom God will use to turn the tide.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“The eyes of the Lord are still searching the earth today for the Ezras who will confess the sins of a faithless remnant,”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“There is always the hope that spiritual forces will be released which will work toward repentance and recovery.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Then there will be times when we shall forget the matter of our personal gain, when we shall be caught up in wonder, love and praise, as we fast unto God.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“On our part there must be the recognition of the rightness and need of fasting, the willingness for the self-discipline involved, and the exercise of heart before God; but in the final analysis the initiative is His.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“God reminds His people that the acceptable fast is the one which He has chosen. Fasting, like prayer, must be God-initiated and God-ordained if it is to be effective.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“The cross must work in us if the life is to be centered in God. Only so can our spiritual motivation be radically altered and become Christward instead of selfward. “He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him” (2 Cor. 5:15, RV).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“fasting is an opportunity to push the pause button and slow down for a brief period of time to draw near to God, to come to Him for critical needs, to discover His wisdom, and to get back in touch with our first love and our life purpose.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“they fasted as well as wept before the Lord, and God gave them overwhelming victory (Judg. 20). What power with God to turn the tide has prayer accompanied by fasting!”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Fasting is calculated to bring a note of urgency and importunity into our praying, and to give force to our pleading in the court of heaven.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Without doubt this is an important aspect of the fasting prayer. Of course, we must not think of fasting as a hunger strike designed to force God’s hand and get our own way! Prayer, however, is much more complex than simply asking a loving father to supply his child’s need. Prayer is warfare! Prayer is wrestling! There are opposing forces. There are spiritual crosscurrents. When we plead our case in the court of heaven, when we cry to the Judge of all the earth, “Vindicate me against my adversary” (Luke 18:3), that adversary is also represented in court (Job 1:6, 2:1 ; Zech. 3:1). It is not enough that the Judge is willing; there is the opposition that must first be overcome.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Says Andrew Murray: Fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.1”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Fasting is designed to make prayer mount up as on eagles’ wings. It is intended to usher the suppliant into the audience chamber of the King and to extend to him the golden sceptre. It may be expected to drive back the oppressing powers of darkness and loosen their hold on the prayer objective. It is calculated to give an edge to a man’s intercessions and power to his petitions. Heaven is ready to bend its ear to listen when someone prays with fasting.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“God had to say: “Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high” (58:4). But that is clearly one thing that fasting is intended to do, for, describing the fast that He has chosen, God goes on to say, “Then you shall call and the Lord will answer” (58:9).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“His baptism in the Jordan was His dedication unto death in anticipation of the cross. Though He received the Spirit then in measureless fullness, the power was not operative until He returned from the wilderness testing. By His acceptance of those six weeks of fasting, He was reaffirming His determination to do the will of His Father even to the end. It was His final preparation and consecration for His heavenly mission. As He returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, the works of God were manifested in Him.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Mourning over personal sin and failure is an indispensable stage in the process of sanctification, and it is facilitated by fasting.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Fasting, then, is a divine corrective to the pride of the human heart. It is a discipline of the body with a tendency to humble the soul. “I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God,” records Ezra (8:21; see also Isa. 58:3).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Moses went on to warn them, “Take heed . . . lest, when you have eaten and are full . . . your heart be lifted up” (8:11–14). Hosea tells us that this is exactly what happened (Hos. 13:6), despite the warning.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast