MONDAY, JUNE 4
Daniel 9:3
Jonah 3:5-9

“So the people of Nineveh
believed God …”

PRAYER AND SUPPLICATIONS

“… men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). Daniel sets us the example. Not even the certain death of being thrown to the lions deterred him. He prayed three times a day with windows open, as he always did, in full sight of his enemies (Dan 6:10). Pray for faith and consistency in prayer, like Daniel’s.

FASTING, SACKCLOTH, ASHES

A grave crisis demands a grave spiritual response. Daniel’s contemplation on behalf of his people precipitated an acute awareness of their sad condition. As far as he understood, the seventy-year sentence had practically run out. It was close to seventy years since he arrived in Babylon. Had not the Lord promised to deliver His people? Daniel had waited patiently year after year. Where was the deliverance? How was it to come? And when?

Daniel was deeply stirred as he brooded over the matter. His people’s sin being the cause of the captivity overwhelmed him with grief and contrition of heart. He was moved to intense sorrow. If God was withholding His goodness and mercy from His people, what benefit was there in bodily comforts and enjoyments? Time for food and finery should rather be devoted to prayer and pleading before God. To go on pandering to the body when the soul was starved of God’s favour seemed so utterly ridiculous and absurd.

Daniel prayed in earnest before God. Well into his eighties, he humbled himself, and interceded for his people, “… with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes” (Dan 9:3). And God heard and answered his prayer. What a salutary warning to us who live in luxury and comfort, oozing fat around our waistlines from over-eating. No wonder there is little power in our prayer!

THOUGHT: Should present day believers fast sometimes?
PRAYER: Father, I come to Thee with a broken and contrite heart.