The Three Disciplines in Secret (2 of 2)

This prayer is not a formula to recite and check off. It is a map of the Kingdom relationship — a description of what the disciple’s interior life looks like when his orientation toward the Father is properly aligned. The disciple who prays this prayer genuinely — not reciting it but living it — is a disciple who has ordered his desires, his security, his agenda, his forgiveness practice, and his battle posture around the Father’s priorities rather than his own.

Fasting in Secret

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.” (Matthew 6:16)

The fast that Jesus commends is invisible. “Wash your face... so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen.” (6:17–18) The discipline that most clearly costs the flesh — the voluntary surrender of food — must be done with such complete disregard for audience that the fasting person looks exactly like someone who is not fasting.

The purpose of fasting in this framework is not primarily the physical benefit or even the spiritual benefit of disciplining the flesh, though both are real. The purpose is the sharpening of the exclusive orientation toward the Father. When the fasting person feels the hunger and turns it into prayer instead of complaint, he is training his desires to seek the Father above comfort. When he does this without anyone knowing, he is establishing the Father as the sole audience of his interior life. Volume I Part Twelve covered the practice of fasting in full. Here, the context adds the Sermon’s specific concern: not the absence of food but the presence of the Father as the only One who needs to know.

The Great Anxiety Command

Matthew 6:19–34 extends the secret discipline theme into the area of material security. The connection is this: the person who gives, prays, and fasts for an earthly audience is the same person who stores up earthly treasure — because both behaviors reflect the same fundamental trust in the visible rather than the invisible. Jesus addresses the root of both in what is arguably the most practically demanding command in the Sermon:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing?”

— Matthew 6:25 (NET)

The Greek word translated “worry” or “be anxious” is μεριμνάω (merimnaō) — to divide the mind, to be pulled in two directions, to be split between trust in the Father and trust in one’s own provision. Anxiety is not primarily an emotion. It is a divided allegiance. It is the heart attempting to serve two masters (6:24) — God and provision, God and security, God and the certainty of a comfortable outcome.

Jesus does not address anxiety with information. He addresses it with two arguments and one command.

First argument: the Father’s care for birds and flowers (6:26–30). If the Father clothes the grass of the field and feeds the ravens — birds of no eternal significance — how much more will He care for you, the crown of His creation, the one He sent His Son to die for. The argument is from the lesser to the greater.

Second argument: the futility of anxiety (6:27). “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” Anxiety does not produce outcomes. It consumes the disciple’s interior resources without changing a single fact in the external world. It is not merely sinful. It is pointless.

The command is the Sermon’s most comprehensive positive directive:

“But above all pursue his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

— Matthew 6:33 (NET)

The cure for anxiety is not the resolution of circumstances. It is the reordering of priorities. The disciple who seeks the Kingdom first — who makes the Father’s purposes and the Father’s righteousness the primary orientation of every decision, every resource allocation, every plan — will find that the things that were fueling the anxiety have been taken up by the Father who promised to provide them. Not eliminate them. Provide them. The promise is not that needs will disappear. It is that the Father who knows about every need (6:32) will meet them in the life of the disciple whose primary business is His Kingdom.