“These men went to pray before the Lord and to ask a question. Their question was about fasting; but fasting has to do with praying—your friend has certainly been in a weeping and fasting spirit. They asked: Should I weep in the fifth month separating myself, as I have done these so many years?
“The Lord’s answer came through the prophet Zechariah. He understood all about that so many years separating themselves and fasting. He told them the fasting was not so much to him as for them to hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets. They might better study his revealed will than seek to find a new answer to this question of fasting. The fasting in itself was all right if they wished to fast. ‘When ye fasted did ye do it to me?’ he asked. ‘When ye did eat and when ye did drink, did ye not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?’ In feasting and fasting they had been selfish. Then he gives them plain words of command, like the plain words the former prophets had spoken. Obedience was better than fasting; better even than coming to him to inquire about fasting. There is a parallel in the history of one of Joshua’s prayers. He could not understand why the people should flee before their enemies. Then he rent his clothes and fell to the earth, the elders, also, all day, with dust on their heads; praying and fasting.
“But the Lord’s answer was: ‘Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?’
“Tell your old man praying and fasting are good, but sometimes God has enough of them. He prefers obedience. The conditions of the covenant had been violated by disobedience in both instances. Praying in faith, and in the name of Christ, are but two conditions; hearing and obeying is a third condition. Your man may be in the midst of a very interesting experience, but I would advise him to stop questioning the Lord, and try what a little obedience would do.”
“But, he’s a good man, Roger,” urged Judith, “only a good man could bear a trial like that.”
“Good men have favorite little ways of disobedience, sometimes; God’s own remedy is more obedience.”
“I wish we could know all about it—the rest of the story, and, if he ever has his prayer,” said Marion, to whom “people” were becoming a real and live interest.
“Joshua had his prayer. The story of Ai is the story of how God answers prayer when he has made way for it; it shows his disciplinary government; it places obedience before all things; obedience makes God’s answers to prayer a natural proceeding.”
“I’m afraid I have depended too much on prayer,” Judith answered, troubled.
“Oh, no,” Mr. King reassured her, “only you have not depended enough on obedience. I will call upon my old man to-morrow and tell him these two stories of disciplinary government.”