God’s Word: “On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their heads. 2 Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers. 3 They stood where they were and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for a quarter of the day, and spent another quarter in confession and in worshiping the LORD their God.”
Inspiration: President Abraham Lincoln called for a day of fasting and prayer. His declaration for a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer begins with this thought. And in so much as we know that, by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subject to the punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be, but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? He went on to say.
We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God made us It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for the clemency and forgiveness.
He then set aside April 30, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer, and asked people in our nation to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at there several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of their religious duties, proper to that solemn occasion. You can see the prayer can give you the power to change things than ordinarily can’t be changed. I’m sure, Abraham Lincoln would turn over in his grave today if he could see how far our
Quotes: James Duncan, preaching with great unction and power, was asked what was the secret of such powerful preaching. "The secret," he said, was "thirteen hours of consecutive prayer." When asked the secret of his spiritual power, Charles Spurgeon said: "Knee work! Knee work!" Livingston of Shotts, on two different occasions, preached with such power that in each service 500 were converted. Both sermons were preceded by a night of prayer. Charles Finney, after spending a day in the woods in prayer and fasting, preached that night in a phenomenally irreligious congregation. The sermon was accompanied by such divine power that the whole congregation, except one man, fell prostrate upon the floor, and voiced their agony under conviction of sin, in such loud outcries that the preacher was forced to stop. - Christ Life Newsletter.
Pray: Jesus says, “However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:21) NKJV
Be blessed!
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