Arthur Wallis > Quotes

“If you have been brought low through personal defeat; if there is a call in your soul to a deeper purifying, to a renewed consecration; if there is the challenge of some new task for which you feel ill-equipped—then it is time to inquire of God whether He would not have you separate yourself unto Him in fasting.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Matthew Henry said, "When God intends great mercy for His people, He sets them apraying." Indeed, when God wants anything accomplished in His Kingdom, He moves men to pray. God is always the initiator. All effectual prayer was moving in the heart of God before ever it began to move in the heart of man. What Kepler said as he unlocked the secrets of the heavens, could well be said by the man who prays in the Spirit: "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“When we fast, how long we fast, the nature of the fast and the spiritual objectives we have before us are all God’s choice, to which the obedient disciple gladly responds.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Behind many of our besetting sins and personal failures, behind the many ills that infect our church fellowships and clog the channels of Christian service—the clash of personalities and temperaments, the strife and division—lies that insidious pride of the human heart.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“What awe must have come to the hearts of that waiting band as they listened to that “sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind”—what a sense of the irresistible power of God! But there was also the appearance of “tongues parting asunder, like as of fire.” Fire typifies the activity of God’s holiness in relation to sin; fire consumes and fire purifies. When the Spirit came upon Christ, it was not as the fire but “as a dove,” for there was no sin in Him, as the Father then declared, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). But here the tongues “like as of fire” sat upon each of them, bringing not only a sense of the infinite holiness of God but of the activity of that holiness in dealing with all that was unholy in themselves.”
― Arthur Wallis, In The Day of Thy Power

“John Wesley’s famous sermon on fasting: First, let it be done unto the Lord, with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven; to express our sorrow and shame for our manifold transgressions of His holy law; to wait for an increase of purifying grace, drawing our affections to things above; to add seriousness and to obtain all the great and precious promises which He hath made to us in Jesus Christ. . . . Let us beware of fancying we merit anything of God by our fasting. We cannot be too often warned of this; inasmuch as a desire to “establish our own righteousness,” to procure salvation of debt and not of grace, is so deeply rooted in all our hearts. Fasting is only a way which God hath ordained, wherein we wait for His unmerited mercy; and wherein, without any desert of ours, He hath promised freely to give us His blessing.1”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“God is not merely concerned with what we do but why we do it. A right act may be robbed of all its value in the sight of God if it is done with a wrong motive.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“... the intercessor is not so much like a lamp in the electric circuit as a radio which is both a receiver and transmitter. The receiving aspect is often quite overlooked in the ministry of intercession. Communion with God should surely be a two-way traffic. We speak of prayer as our ‘coming to the mercy seat’, but when God first spoke about this to Moses He said nothing about it as a place where Moses would speak with Him, but rather as a place where He would speak with Moses (Exod. 2 5 : 22). In other words, the mercy seat was to be first a place of revelation, and then a place of intercession.
This revelation may indeed be given to the intercessor as he prays, but it will often be necessary to tune in and hear what eaven is saying that he may know how to pray. To learn how to talk to God we must first learn how to listen to God.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“There is nothing essentially vile in the human body, for God created it, even with its desires and appetites. There is nothing evil in a hungry man’s desire for a square meal, or a healthy woman’s longing for a husband, children and a home of her own. It is not the way of the Spirit to repress these natural instincts, but to control them and keep them within the bounds prescribed by God. We do not need to extinguish the fire in the grate; only to prevent the coals from falling out and setting the place on fire. The physical is not to be ruthlessly suppressed but firmly disciplined and subordinated to the spiritual. When asceticism becomes a thing of form enforced by man-made rules, it is incapable of dealing effectively with the bodily lusts. Self-control on the other hand is the fruit of the Spirit, springing from divine life within, cultivated by the habit of a disciplined life.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“On our part there must be the recognition of the rightness and need of fasting, the willingness for the self-discipline involved, and the exercise of heart before God; but in the final analysis the initiative is His.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“There is always the hope that spiritual forces will be released which will work toward repentance and recovery.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“The Holy Spirit needs us to accomplish His intercessory ministry, and we certainly need Him to accomplish ours. What a privilege to be invited to join in this heavenly partnership. He wants to be free to think through our minds, feel through our hearts, speak through our lips, and even weep through our eyes and groan through our spirits. When a believer is thus at the disposal of the Holy Spirit, praying in the Spirit will be a reality.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“Now if we are always falling back on these 'if-it-be-Thy-will prayers' we are debasing this most well known prayer promise of the apostle John, and making it a prayer 'let-out', a useful carpet under which we can sweep all our unanswered prayers. We imply that what he is really saying is this: 'And this is the lack of confidence which we have in Him, that unless we happen to ask according to His will, He will not hear us, and we shall not have our petition.' So the promise that was intended to confirm our faith serves only to cover our unbelief and to confirm us in our state of weakness, in seeking to prevail with God.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“The eyes of the Lord are still searching the earth today for the Ezras who will confess the sins of a faithless remnant,”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Then there will be times when we shall forget the matter of our personal gain, when we shall be caught up in wonder, love and praise, as we fast unto God.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“How then are we to reconcile these two facts - we are ignorant of the will of God, and yet, in order to receive, are required to pray according to it? Here is a weakness serious enough to render all our praying ineffectual. But the apostle points us to this wonderful fact that Someone has been sent to help us who has a perfect knowledge of the will of God. 'The Spirit helps us in our weakness . . . the Spirit Himself intercedes for us . . . the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“The cross must work in us if the life is to be centered in God. Only so can our spiritual motivation be radically altered and become Christward instead of selfward. “He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him” (2 Cor. 5:15, RV).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“I proclaimed a fast . . . that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for ourselves, our children, and all our goods” (Ezra 8:21, 23, 31).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“In the fasting for personal sanctity, we must also include the positive aspect of consecration to God.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“In giving us the privilege of fasting as well as praying, God has added a powerful weapon to our spiritual armory. In her folly and ignorance, the church has largely looked upon it as obsolete. She has thrown it down in some dark corner to rust, and there it has lain forgotten for centuries. An hour of impending crisis for the church and the world demands its recovery!”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting.” (Joel 2:12)”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“It is a solemn fact that we may facilitate or frustrate the Spirit's intercession in us, by our co-operation or the lack of it. Though Christ does not require us for His intercession, the Holy Spirit most assuredly does for His. Here we can no longer be spectators, we must be participators. Christ prays for us in the sense that He makes us the object of His praying. The Holy Spirit prays for us in the sense that He makes us the vehicle of His praying. He prays on our behalf by enabling us to pray, helping us in our weakness, who do not know how to pray as we ought.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you” (Jer. 29:13–14). When a man is willing to set aside the legitimate appetites of the body to concentrate on the work of praying, he is demonstrating that he means business, that he is seeking with all his heart, and will not let God go unless He answers.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Though our main emphasis is intercession, a word may not be out of place here on the use of tongues in praise and thanksgiving. ‘If you bless with the Spirit . . . you may give thanks well enough’ (verses 16, 17). Paul’s restricting of the gift here is because of the presence of ‘the other man’ Who is not helped by an utterance he does not understand. In the solitude of one’s own devotions these restrictions no longer apply. Only God is present, and ‘one Who speaks in tongues speaks not to men but to God’ (verse 2).

But is it not better to do it in your mother tongue and understand What you are saying? Not necessarily, or God would never have given this gift, nor would Paul have used it so much. Have we not known times when, in adoration of the Lord, we feel the inadequacy of our own language to express all that we feel in our hearts? The very language which is usually an indispensable channel of communication seems to become a barrier to communication. It is then that this gift comes to our aid, and the human spirit is released in an utterance of praise or thanksgiving that would not have been possible in our native tongue.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“If a man is summoned to the king's palace to receive some decoration, the royal summons is his right to enter the king's presence. It takes him past the sentries and officers of the guard who would otherwise debar him from the palace. But having gained entry he would be at a loss to find his way into the sovereign's presence if left to himself in that labyrinth of corridors. the work of Christ provides us with the royal summons and constitutes our right of entry, but the indwelling Spirit is also needed to conduct us into God's presence. It is His work to make access to God a reality; to bring to us the deep conviction that we are not talking into the air when we pray, but communing face to face with a loving heavenly Father.”
― Arthur Wallis, Pray in the Spirit

“His heart was being prepared for further blessing God had for him.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“God reminds His people that the acceptable fast is the one which He has chosen. Fasting, like prayer, must be God-initiated and God-ordained if it is to be effective.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“If restoration and renewal are to come from the presence of the Lord—and what hope is there without them?—then it is men and women like these whom God will use to turn the tide.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Fasting, then, is a divine corrective to the pride of the human heart. It is a discipline of the body with a tendency to humble the soul. “I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God,” records Ezra (8:21; see also Isa. 58:3).”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast

“Without doubt this is an important aspect of the fasting prayer. Of course, we must not think of fasting as a hunger strike designed to force God’s hand and get our own way! Prayer, however, is much more complex than simply asking a loving father to supply his child’s need. Prayer is warfare! Prayer is wrestling! There are opposing forces. There are spiritual crosscurrents. When we plead our case in the court of heaven, when we cry to the Judge of all the earth, “Vindicate me against my adversary” (Luke 18:3), that adversary is also represented in court (Job 1:6, 2:1 ; Zech. 3:1). It is not enough that the Judge is willing; there is the opposition that must first be overcome.”
― Arthur Wallis, God's Chosen Fast