ASH WEDNESDAY 2011

Joel 2:12-13
"...it's not too late---God's personal Message---'Come back to Me and really mean it! Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!' Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to GOD, your GOD."

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I will observe for the first time in my Christian walk the next forty days of Lent. I've been praying and asking God to reveal to me what He would desire that I do to observe these days, and I really hadn't heard a definite answer. That is, until this morning.

I am beginning each day of Lent with a devotional Ashes To Fire, and this morning I began my day by reading the book of Joel. I had finished Chapter 2 when my body tensed, my eyes began to burn and I thought my nose was going to explode. These are sure signs that I am about to cry. But it was more than that. I knew in my heart exactly what I was to do over the next forty days of Lent. He was telling me what He desires of me, and I heard it loud and clear, as if He were here speaking to me.

These are the words of my heart:
"You have become lazy in praying for the salvation of your sons. You have almost given up on believing what I can do in their lives. You have prayed often and have seen no changes, and you are on the verge of despair. You don't need to see the changes. All you need to do is pray for them. That is what I want from you now. Each day during your devotional time I want you to think of them, as if you are doing it for them. Stand in the gap. Pray for them. Weep for their sins. Repent to Me for what they have done. And I will hear you, and you must begin again to believe what I will do. When you are eating, pray for them. When you are working around the house, pray for them."

He is asking me to change my pattern of prayer for the salvation of my sons and to actually mourn their present state of spiritual death for them, as if I were them. He has been preparing me for the last few weeks to be strong in Him to save my children.

Psalm 27:13-14 NASB "I would have despaired if I had not believed that I would see the loving hand of the LORD in the land of the living."