Fasting and prayer educates us to an experience with God, because they help us to master our impulses
Márcio Mendes invites us to look at our practices of fasting and prayer, because they help us to master our impulses and vanquish evil.
The meditated Word today is in Tobit 12.7 -15:
“For it is good to hide the secret of a king: but honorable to reveal and confess the works of God. Prayer is good with fasting and alms more than to lay up treasures of gold: For alms delivers from death, and the same is that which purges away sins, and makes to find mercy and life everlasting. But they that commit sin and iniquity, are enemies to their own soul.
I discover then the truth unto you, and I will not hide the secret from you. When you did pray with tears, and did bury the dead, and did leave your dinner, and hide the dead by day in your house, and bury them by night, I offered your prayer to the Lord. And because you was acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove you. And now the Lord has sent me to heal you, and to deliver Sara your son’ s wife from the devil. For I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord.“.
To get rid of evil, we have to have goodness in our heart. The Christian should not seek the occult to get rid of evil things. Whoever has Jesus in his life doesn’t have to resort to nefarious practices.
The only effective path that protects us from evil is good. Doing evil is always a temptation. Sin separates us from God. We are from God and evil must not be allowed to dominate us.
When we choose evil, our life is in ruins. Let us educate our body so that it do no harm. But how do we discipline the body? By fasting and prayer. Who is able to say ‘ no ‘ to their will, will be able to say ‘ no ‘ to sin.
Learn to give up things that are not important in our life. It is better to have little with justice than lots with sin andfast empty wishes. Who has the domain of his body has joy, because he can dominate himself. God uses various means to take us on His paths.
When we are united to the Lord, the suffering is converted into joy. He always changes the nature of our sufferings.
Have the courage to stop everything that’s wrong in your life and learn to say ‘ yes ‘ to God. Almsgiving frees us from death and purifies us of all sins. With courage, we strive to overcome the evil in us.
Márcio Mendes
Canção Nova Community mission