© 2014 Don Pinson / To Download, right-click here: [Download]
Some 600 years before Christ came to earth the nation of Judah was falling apart. Ministers had stopped teaching Biblical morality for fear they’d lose their income. Government leaders had approved the murder of the innocent in their nation. Citizens had oppressed the poor with money loaned by interest, and the bribery of judges. (Ezekiel 22: 25-29) Does all this sound familiar? God warned them that He would judge them and destroy their nation if they didn’t repent. They didn’t. Destruction came by the hand of the King of Babylon, whom God called, His “servant”.
We Americans deserve God’s judgment just as much as Judah did. We have murdered over 55 million of our own children by abortion. We have accepted homo-sexuality, which the Bible calls perversion. And we have given away the civil liberty which God entrusted to us for the purpose of getting the Gospel of Christ to our children and the world. Any one of these is enough to merit judgment on our nation!
And yet, God said to the prophet Ezekiel these amazing words:
“And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it…”
(Ezekiel 22:30)
God looked in Judah—and He is looking today—for someone to step into the gap as He is about to flow through it to judge the land. It seems He wants someone to plead for mercy: Judgment is deserved, yet He longs to give mercy. But HE NEEDS A MAN TO PLEAD FOR THE LAND!! Like Abraham pled for Lot and the city of Sodom, God looks for someone who will ask for mercy- knowing that we deserve judgment. Remember, the text says God “sought for a man” who would “stand in the gap…” God wanted to show them mercy. But He needed a man who would plead with Him for that mercy! Amazingly, God has so set up the natural laws in this earth that He desires for man to work with Him in accomplishing His purpose.
At times in our American history, God has found just such a man. In the 1820’s such a man committed himself to pray for a young lawyer who was calling the nation to repentance. Charles Finney was the young lawyer; Daniel Nash was his prayer warrior, who earnestly prayed for him. The two became a powerful team until 1831, when Nash went to his new work in heaven. Whenever Finney went to a new place to preach, Nash would go 2-3 weeks ahead of him and gathered a few others who had in them a burning desire for revival in that place. They would begin to, not just pray, but to “travail” in prayer for those who were lost and indifferent in that place. Their praying would often include deep groaning, produced by the Holy Spirit praying through them. Once, a boarding house owner asked Finney to check on Nash and his praying friends. She reported that Nash and his prayer partners had not been out of the room for three days, and had not eaten one bite of food the whole time. Once, when she had become so concerned that she peeped in on them, she saw them stretched out on the floor, “groaning” in prayer. Finney told her not to worry; the men just had a spirit of “travail” on them. And God worked a transformation of individual and community life as the result of His Word being proclaimed in such power—because of the praying of these men! (http://hopefaithprayer.com/prayernew/prevailing-prince-prayer-daniel-nash/)
Will we be God’s means of revival coming again to our land? Or will He say of us:
“I sought for a man…but I found none.”
(Ezekiel 22:30)
Think about it. Because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.