“Consecrate a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord, your God, and cry out to the Lord.”
– Joel 1:14
What a picture here from the very beginning of Joel, as the people of God are being called to come together, all the inhabitants of the land and all the elders, all the leaders for a solemn assembly, for a fast, for one purpose, to cry out to God. You keep reading on in this chapter and you see the desperate situation that God’s people are in summarized in Joel 1:19, “To you, oh Lord, I call.”
Joel 1:14 Reminds Us of the Benefit of Being Desperate for God
As I read this, I’m reminded that it’s good to find ourselves in a place of desperation for God. I think about things in my own life right now where I am totally desperate for God, I don’t know what to do. I need God’s help. I need God’s wisdom. I need God’s strength. I’m guessing I’m not alone. I’m guessing others of you are at a point where you are desperate for God’s help, God’s strength, God’s peace, God’s wisdom.
In a very real sense, this is the Christian life. We live day-by-day in desperation on God for grace, for help, for mercy, for strength. Remember John 15, the passage from Jesus around which even this whole podcast is based when He talks about praying according to His Word, but He says in verse 5 of that chapter, “I’m the vine, you are the branches. The man remains in me and I in Him. He will bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing.”
So it’s good to live day-to-day in desperation upon God. God is honored, pleased, glorified when we humbly realize our dependence on Him, and He will prove faithful to all who trust in Him, who look to Him, who cry out to Him.
This Verse Calls Us to Set Aside Time to Fast
And it’s good, Joel 1:14, to periodically set aside time, even not just individually, but with others to fast and to come aside before God and to cry out to Him for help. Oh God, I cry out to you for help in my life. I cry out to you for help in others’ lives who are listening to this right now. Together in our hearts right now we say we can do nothing without you. We need your wisdom today, your strength and our weakness. We need your peace that passes all understanding. God, we need your comfort. We need your help. We need your leadership. We need your guidance. We need you to do so many things that we can’t do.
God, the things that you’re calling us to do, we need your power and wisdom and help to do them. God, we are totally dependent on you, and we praise you as our Father, for your love for us, for your gracious merciful willingness to hear us when we call and to help us with all that we need.
Joel 1:14 Encourages Us to Pray
We praise you for Philippians 4:19, that you will supply all of our needs according to the glorious riches that are ours in Christ Jesus. God, I pray that over my life. I pray that over others’ lives right now. We seek you. We cry out to you, and we pray you help us to live like this all day long. Help us to pray continually.
God, teach us, especially when we face particular challenges, to come aside and to fast, to put aside food and to say God, we need you more than we need anything else in this world.
Praying for the Shaikia People of Sudan
God, we cry out to you on behalf of others in need and specifically today, on behalf of the Shaikia people of Sudan, over a million of them. We pray for the few individuals within the Shaikia tribe who identify themselves as followers of Jesus. God, we pray that you would strengthen them, help them, uphold them in every way they need.
God, we pray for the spread of your grace and your love, and your mercy and your glory among the Shaikia people, among this tribe in Sudan. God, we pray for your provision for them when it comes to medical care, rainfall for their crops, livestock. God, we pray for physical harvest and for spiritual harvest among the Shaikia people. We cry out to you on their behalf, even as we cry out to you on our behalf. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
