The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [40]
Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. We do not have to create good, for it already exists eternally in the fact of the Omnipresence of God. Nevertheless, we have to bring it into manifestation through our own personal realization of Truth. This text does not mean that we are not to pray concerning particular needs or particular problems. Some people have interpreted it in the sense that we should work only for general harmony, but this is incorrect. If you treat only for general harmony, the results of your work will be spread over every department of your life, and the improvement in any particular detail may be so small as to be negligible. The proper course is to concentrate your prayers upon whatever you wish to demonstrate at the moment.
We do not pray for a thing as an object in itself, it is true; but when we experience a lack, whether, let us say, it be money, or a position, or a house, or a friend, we treat ourselves—the soul—concerning that sense of lack, and, when we have prayed enough to correct our understanding upon that point, the thing we are needing will appear as a proof that the work has been done. Satisfy the sense of lack within yourself with a sense of Divine Love, and the missing thing will appear in your life of its own accord. When you say your prayers, never be afraid of being too definite, precise, and businesslike. Jesus himself was all these things. No one was ever less vague or indefinite than he was.
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you:
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
(Matthew VI)
This, greatest of all prayers, which we commonly call the Lord’s Prayer, is, in fact, a superb summing up of the whole Jesus Christ teaching, in a form unequaled for brevity and completeness. It is really nothing less than a complete outline of Christian metaphysics, and, as the author of this book has already dealt with it at considerable length in a brochure entitled “The Lord’s Prayer,” there is no need to cover the same ground again here.
Suffice it to say that in these few verses it defines the nature of God and of man, and explains the true relationship between them, tells us what the universe really is, and provides a method of rapid spiritual development for those who use it intelligently every day.
Note particularly how strongly Jesus insists upon the need for forgiveness if we are to make any spiritual progress at all.
Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
(Matthew VI)
Fasting was the general custom among the people in those days, and Jesus takes the practice for granted.
Fasting, as we understand it in Scientific Christianity, is the abstention from certain thoughts, chiefly negative or error thoughts, of course; but in some cases it is necessary, if you want a demonstration, to abstain for a time from thinking about a particular problem at all. There are certain problems, usually those that you have been mulling over too much, that go out or are overcome “only by prayer and fasting.” In such a case it is best to give the problem