B a r b a r a M c I n t y r e
Daniel 9:3
Then I turned my face
to the Lord God, seeking
him by prayer and pleas
for mercy with fasting and
sackcloth and ashes.
In his youth, Daniel studied Jeremiah the Prophet’s warnings and teachings.
It was foretold that God would banish the people of Jerusalem from their beloved holy city and exile them to Babylon an unholy city for a period of seventy years. “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him in prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.”
Daniel’s time in Babylon was drawing to a close. He knew his people had not been faithful to God. They willingly and openly worship man-made idols, kings and other false gods. Reflectively, Daniel was compelled to seek God and pray for mercy.
In this, Daniel left us with a model for intentional prayer.
We all pray. I consider myself a prayer warrior. I strive to be in constant prayer.
I pray for my personal wants and needs (truth be known generally more wants than needs)
I often pray for my family.
I pray for sick babies and I pray for loved ones with cancer.
I pray with my Tuesday Night Ladies Bible Study Group.
I pray alone while driving down the road. You get the idea.
During this Lenten season, I intend to pause and reflect on Daniels example for prayer.
My goal is to turn from life in Babylon with all the chaos by “Turning my face” to a more focused life in Christ through prayer. Daniel 9:3 encourages me to press beyond my normal, ordinary prayer life and to seek God in a more earnest and intentional way.
How?
Daniel set aside a specific and distinct time to seek God and Pray.
The idea is to be alone with God, “one on one” or more clearly to be “face to face” with no distractions. To accomplish this, I must know God. And to know God I must spend time with Him in conversation, reading and meditating on His word.
Daniel also pleaded with God for answers and mercy by fasting (and donning) sackcloth and ashes)
Daniel used fasting as an inward commitment to his prayer life.
Luckily for me, fasting does not necessarily mean food.
My commitment should include those distractions that are keeping me from “Face-Timing with God.
I can immediately identify: Facebook, Twitter, anything on my phone and even mindless hours of television. Each of these personal vises is fodder for negativity, falsehoods, divisiveness and the like. I enjoy them but they do “eat-up” a great deal of my idle time that could intentionally be spent seeking God.
How can I use “Sackcloth and Ashes.” in the year 2018 to seek God?
The biblical concept of covering oneself with sackcloth was used as an outward expression of total humility and absolute willingness to submit to God’s will.
In Daniels time, the reason people wore sackcloth and ashes because they were mourning; A sign of their broken heartedness. Daniel’s heart was breaking for his countrymen, their unfaithfulness to God and for their need of great mercy from our God.
You should know, I don’t intent to dress in sackcloth and powder my head with ashes for my next trip to the Harris Teeter. But I can use this principle to identify any life circumstance that is truly breaking my heart and thus in mourning for an answer as a plea before God.
My Lenten challenge for all of us:
1. Be intentional with your time to seek God.
2. Commit to one or two items from our endless prayer lists. (What are you heartbroken about?)
3. Expect an answer: “Not because of our righteousness, but because of God’s great mercy” Daniel 9:18
May God’s great love
and mercy light your path,
Barbara McIntyre
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