#DailyDevotion Our Prayers To The LORD Are Action and Efficacious
Joel 1 13Fasten your sackcloth and mourn, you priests; wail, you who serve the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who serve my God, because the sacrifices of food and drink are withheld from the temple of your God. 14Set aside a holy fast, call a solemn meeting, gather the elders, all who live in the land, to the temple of the LORD your God, and cry to the LORD.
This part of the proclamation is chunk full of imperatives. It sets forth the urgency of the situation and intensifies our hearing of it. Fasten, wail, come spend, set aside, call, gather, and cry; all these verbs shouting at us of the horror and urgency of the situation.
The priests who were addressed in the previous verses are called to get to action. What were they doing before? Why didn’t they already move into these actions in a time of national calamity? They are called to put on sackcloth to mourn and repent on behalf of the people. As noted before, because of the destruction brought on by the locusts, the daily offerings have ceased. There is nothing to give, to offer, to give thanks for, and to offer up for sins. Why have they not already done this? Well they better do it now.
And they are not to be alone in it. They are to call a holy assembly. There are no individual believers. We are one body in Christ. The Israelites were a body of believers in the LORD as well. They are called to join in the fasting, the mourning, the wailing and the crying to the LORD their God.
It is interesting the LORD who brought this plague of locusts upon the people and all that follows it also is the One who calls them to do something about it to rectify the situation. Perhaps this has come upon them because the people became lackadaisical in their devotion and needed to be awakened. We are ridiculed today for offering up our thoughts and prayers for some situations. Well I don’t believe our thoughts do anything (except prepare us for action). The LORD does certainly use our prayers. Our prayers are joined to His care and providence. In a seeming paradox God will accomplish what He intends to do and our prayers moving God to act, we are called to believe both and act on both. We can pray, plead, request, supplicate and call upon the LORD our God to do something about our situations and we can rest assured the LORD’s good and perfect will will be done by Him.
Our prayers are our participation in the work of the Almighty. We have His assurance through His Son Jesus Christ in Matt. 7, 7“Ask, and it will be given to you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8Anyone who asks receives; anyone who searches finds; and anyone who knocks, the door will be opened for him. 9If your son asks you for bread, will any of you give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish; will you give him a snake? 11Now if you, as wicked as you are, know how to give your children good gifts, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?”
Merciful God and Father, open our lips to pray, and when we pray, listen to us and for us what is necessary for our good and the good of those we are praying for. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.