Preface: The following was posted the day before one of the more recent prayer marches in Washington D. C.:
In March of 1863 when the Senate put a proclamation for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting on the desk of Abraham Lincoln....the words within it were of mortification at what America had become. There is no mortification today....not in the prayers that president's speech writers pen....nor proclamations put out....nor our national prayer days. Yes....genuine prayers seeking mercy will be said throughout the land tomorrow....and God will hear those prayers....but we do not schedule revival.....revivals schedule us. We cannot conjure up God's Holy Spirit.....for something else will appear instead....as did Donald Trump. God doesn't want our stages and our committees and our themes and agendas and press releases....MC'd by mega-church and mega-ministry leaders.....nor does He take pleasure in our contemporary praise music....with the CD that you can purchase through a secure payment system. He wants prayer for clemency...not piously constructed prayers....with a dash of humility....and a pinch of repentance....all seasoned to our own taste....but without even a smidgen of Mortification Salt....and all this prepared more for our taste buds than His anyway.
Maybe you have tried to read in the Old Testament prophets but it was too difficult to comprehend. I'd like to recommend three books to you....that if you read any one of them....it may be the opening that you need to make this part of God's Word easier to understand. The first is by popular author of today David Jeremiah....and the title is The Handwriting On The Wall. This is more of a primer on Daniel but so easy to read and so helpful for the initiate in the book of Daniel. The second book is much more speculative....but surely will open to you the book of Jeremiah. The title is....Decoding The Prophet Jeremiah....and the author Mark Blitz. The third book is not speculative at all....it is very short....and written by a fine biblical scholar in O. Palmer Robertson....and the title is....Prophet Of The Coming Day Of The LORD....The Message Of Joel.
I'd like to add here a post from this past December. It relates to the comments in the first paragraph of this post....for in it is Daniel's prayer of mortification....if only we would approach God today in a similar way!
That Part Of The Book Of Daniel That We May Have Missed
What comes to mind first when you think about the Old Testament book of Daniel....the lion's den.....or Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego in the furnace.....or Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a great image with a head of gold and breast and arms of silver and thighs and middle of bronze and legs of iron with the feet part iron and part clay....or his dream of the great tree that was him and was cut down....or maybe the fingers writing on the wall? If you were making a list you might add Daniel's vision of the four great beasts....and the ten horns with the little horn coming up.....or the cryptic prophesies of the king of the south and the king of the north?
What a book this is! The Christian can and should read through this throughout his or her entire life....and that day will come when....and we most likely are nearing it....when piece by piece those words become even more clear....but there is one part of Daniel that may be the most important to us today.....of which most of us may not even recall.....and if we do we certainly do not dwell upon.
In chapter nine Daniel was given knowledge of Jeremiah's prophesy of the seventy weeks....this as he was nearing the end of his life....but he had first prayed and fasted in sackcloth and ashes....seeking mercy over the desolations that had come upon Jerusalem....and it is his prayer that we in America should contemplate greatly upon as our own country lies desolate. Here is that prayer
"I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession saying, 'O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you, To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the LORD our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity...."
Note: I disagree with a number of the prophetic interpretations in David Jeremiah's book....but I recommend it anyway because we are all in this together....on the same path of seeking God's wisdom for this day and age that we live in. David Jeremiah will be wrong in some things....and certainly I in other things....but God has it all under control.
