Practice Makes Permanent

In the beginning, God created. Everything. He spent six days forming the day and the night, the skies and the seas, the land and the trees and the flowers and the mountains and the fish and the birds and the animals and eventually man.

Then, on the seventh day, God the Father rested. But why? He’s literally God. Scripture even tells us later in Psalm 121 that God neither slumbers or sleeps. So why did He dedicate an entire, God-breathed day to rest?

Day Seven, the Sabbath, Shabbat (Hebrew) wasn’t observed the first time to provide rest to a weary God, but to model for us the need for rest. Upon giving us life, His next intention was to show us how to live it.

Enter God the Son: Jesus Christ. During His time as a man among men, Jesus performed many miracles. He faced many struggles and felt many feelings. He wrestled with temptation, sorrow, grief.

He also prayed.

He entered the waters of baptism.

He fasted.

Why did God the Son feel the need to pray to God the Father?

What did a perfect man have to gain by being baptized?

Maybe, God the Father and God the Son aren’t quite so different . . .

Jesus, though God, lived a human life. As a human, He relied on the Father for wisdom, strength, and power. He sought after those needs through constant prayer with God the Father. He also demonstrated to His disciples, followers, and later the world how to live in an active relationship with God—He modeled for humanity both the need for and the benefits of prayer.

A sinless man had no need for repentance, yet He took on the waters of baptism anyway. Matthew 3:15 offers insight into God the Son’s decision-making process. When John the Baptist was rightfully aware that he was unfit to baptize the Lamb of God, Jesus insisted anyway, stating “It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

He said "us," not "I."

Again, God the Son was modeling for humanity how we ought to live.

The same is true of fasting, no matter how uncomfortable the concept.

In Matthew 4:4, Jesus states that “Man shall not live on bread alone.” This was said after He had fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights—and in direct response to the enemy’s attempt at tempting Him, specifically to turn stones into bread. Jesus’s response asserts the fact that spiritual nourishment is superior to physical food.

By forsaking His human need for food, Jesus relied entirely on God’s strength to sustain Him during those forty days and nights.

Think about it. Jesus’s whole life was to lead by example. It’s up to us to follow that example, and follow it correctly.

You see, practice doesn’t always make perfect, but it will, every time, make permanent. Are you practicing correctly?

Jesus tells us in John 14 that, through belief in Him and the works He has done, we will go on to do even greater works (v.12).

So why aren’t we?

Doors can be opened.

Marriages can be restored.

Bodies can be made new.

Sickness can be rebuked.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. This isn’t to say it’s going to immediately feel like "happily ever after" every time. In fact, verses 13 & 14 are often some of the most misinterpreted verses in the Bible (see also Mark 11:24).

“Ask and you’ll receive.”

“Believe and you’ll receive.”

But so many times, we miss the proverbial fine print.

Jesus’s famous prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39).

Baptism: symbolically dying to a sinful life and rising to a new life in Christ.

“Fasting is where you surrender and sacrifice the physical need to be fed to receive a spiritual response.” (credit: Tony Evans).

It’s renouncing the natural to invoke the supernatural.

God’s will. Not ours.

Sometimes, His will isn’t going to align with ours. That’s okay. His is better. Even if it hurts or offends or scares us up front. (See: Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane).

God the Son knew our walks would be difficult and that sometimes, our will would wrestle with God the Father’s. That didn’t stop Him from granting us the authority to move mountains. Instead, He modeled for us the tools God the Father provided so that we could gain an audience with Him, garner help from Heaven and have intimate fellowship with the Lord.

Prayer and baptism and fasting . . . none are required keys to open the gates of Heaven.

But they are tools our Father expects us to use to get through this life on Earth, to walk according to the purposes He has placed over us all.

Sometimes, the Spiritual intervention we seek can only be obtained through prayer and fasting. (Matthew 17:21, Mark 9:29). God is summoning us to the table, summoning us to seek and reach a place in our walks where nothing else matters except His voice.

“When,” not “if.”

Practice makes permanent, and when we put to practice the tools God the Son modeled for us, there’s a permanency in our faith that aligns our will with God the Father’s, opening the door for wisdom and understanding, peace and acceptance, complete healing, and Biblical authority to lead.