There are three great Christian duties, each one stemming from one of our three principal interests, by which

we pay homage and service to God: 1) prayer with our souls, 2) fasting with our bodies, and 3) alms-giving with our estates. Through these disciplines, we not only depart from evil, but devote ourselves to good.

“As we must do better than the scribes and Pharisees in avoiding heart-sins, heart-adultery, and heart-murder, so likewise in maintaining and keeping up heart-religion, doing what we do from an inward, vital principle, that we may be approved of God, not that we may be applauded of men; that is, we must watch against hypocrisy, which was the leaven of the Pharisees…” -Matthew Henry