Lent: forty days and forty nights
You are warmly welcome!
“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). It is time to seek the Lord; it is time to return to the Lord with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. We are in a season of Lent which began on Ash Wednesday 13 Feb 2013, and lasts forty days and culminates in the Passion Week and subsequently Easter. In this season of Lent we earnestly seek to be reconciled to God, to be prepared for faithful ministry, and to possess our promised inheritance. Seven Biblical instances involving 40 days and 40 nights are helpful in this matter:
Reconciliation with God: When he finally arrived in Nineveh, Prophet Jonah announced doom – ‘forty days more and Nineveh will be overturned.’ The people of Nineveh led by their king turned to God wholeheartedly in fasting and prayer immediately. By the end of the forty days, ‘When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.’ They were reconciled to God. We too can take this season to turn from whatever evil you may have strayed into and be reconciled to God.
Promised Inheritance: The great flood came as a result of rain falling upon the earth for forty days; Noah and his people were hiding in an ark designed and instructed by God himself. For forty days the Philistine Goliath came forward and took his stand, morning and evening, to defy, torment and belittle Israel. But after the forty days, David appeared and worn for Israel a great victory in the name of the Lord. It took Moses’ spies forty days to survey the Promised Land and bring a report. A season of forty days is significant in waiting upon the Lord to escape from danger or calamity and to receive victory and possess a promised inheritance.
Preparing for Ministry: Three great prophets spent forty days of fasting and seeking God before entering the high points of their Ministry; after forty days of fasting and prayer, Moses received the Ten Commandments and many other instructions, Elijah received instructions on how his ministry would carried on by a God-appointed successor, and Jesus defeated Satan and thereafter launched his ministry. A higher level of ministry requires thorough prep by seeking God. This message will be continued next Sunday.
God bless you as you observe Lent.