Matthew 6:5-18 Prayer and Fasting

Prayer and Fasting in the Sermon on the Mount, deal with how not to pray and fast. Jesus is showing the disciples by teaching through bad examples on how not to pray and fast. What might help us is to think about how these will further our growth in Jesus Christ. The following are excerpts from a couple commentaries and bible dictionaries all mashed together.

This model prayer is concerned in the first instance with the glory of God. Before we ask anything for ourselves, we look for the hallowing of God’s name, the extending of God’s kingdom and the doing of God’s will. These are the issues that weed out all that is self-centered in our prayer lives. It’s not just a matter of coming with our requests: it is coming with requests for things that will give glory to God, that will be in the interests of his gospel and that will produce more obedience to him in our own lives and in the lives of others.
Then we can start asking. We can ask for our needs to be met in the present, for forgiveness for the past and for protection in the future. By asking God for ‘our daily bread’, we acknowledge that all our material possessions are his to give and his to withhold. This is the language of dependence on the giver of all good gifts. By asking him to ‘forgive us our debts’, we are acknowledging a lifetime of accumulating debts we cannot repay before a God who can forgive. And by asking that he ‘lead us not into temptation’, we are looking forward realistically, knowing that we need to be kept and protected every step of life’s way.

FASTING: Refraining from eating food. The Bible describes three main forms of fasting. The normal fast involves the total abstinence of food. Luke 4:2 reveals that Jesus “ate nothing”; afterwards “He was hungry.” Jesus abstained from food but not from water.
In Acts 9:9 we read of an absolute fast where for three days Paul “did not eat or drink” (HCSB). The abstinence from both food and water seems to have lasted no more than three days (Ezra 10:6; Esther 4:16).
The partial fast in Dan. 10:3 emphasizes the restriction of diet rather than complete abstinence. The context implies that there were physical benefits resulting from this partial fast. However, this verse indicates that there was a revelation given to Daniel as a result of this time of fasting.
Fasting is the laying aside of food for a period of time when the believer is seeking to know God in a deeper experience. It is to be done as an act before God in the privacy of one’s own pursuit of God (Exod. 34:28; 1 Sam. 7:6; 1 Kings 19:8; Matt. 6:17).
Fasting is to be done with the object of seeking to know God in a deeper experience (Isa. 58; Zech. 7:5). Fasting relates to a time of confession (Ps. 69:10). Fasting can be a time of seeking a deeper prayer experience and drawing near to God in prevailing prayer (Ezra 8:23; Joel 2:12). The early church often fasted in seeking God’s will for leadership in the local church (Acts 13:2). When the early church wanted to know the mind of God, there was a time of prayer and fasting.

What Fasting really means, therefore, is abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.

Fasting is not Discipline it is something unusual and exceptional. Discipline is something we should do all the time not something that happens once in a while.