DAY 10 – MONDAY – 10/3/2025

Reflection: Call for prayer and fasting: call for a Solemn Assembly

Bible Reading: Joel 1:14; Joel 2:12-17
12 “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God? 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. 17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, “Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples,‘Where is their God?’Joel 2:12-17

Reflection on the passage:
Joel 1: Joel describes a natural disaster caused by a plague of locusts. He calls for the people to fast and to gather at the temple for a solemn assembly to plead with the Lord for deliverance.
Joel 2: Joel describes the “day of the Lord” and the war and desolation that will accompany it and then asks, “Who can abide it?” (Joel 2:11). The Lord answers by telling the people to turn to Him with all their hearts. Joel prophesies of some of the blessings the Lord will give His people in the latter days.
This call to repentance is for the whole nation of Israel: The elders, the children and nursing babes, the new married couples, the priests who minister in the house of our God (Joel 1:14; Joel 2:16,17). In our modern history during the Second World War, King George VI called for a National Day of Prayer which the whole of Britain responded. So widespread and so deep was their faith in God that literally millions of people flocked into churches to pray. Prime Minister Winston Churchill found himself preparing to announce to the public an unprecedented military catastrophe involving the capture or death of a third of a million soldiers. But it didn’t happen. On 23rd May, King George VI requested that the following Sunday should be observed as a National Day of Prayer. Even Winston Churchill recognized the power of prayer. In May 1940 when France had fallen and the British Army was trapped at Dunkirk where they were to be annihilated, King George VI called for a National Day of Prayer to plead for divine intervention. As a result of that National Day of Prayer over 300,000 soldiers were rescued. Churchill and his advisers had expected that it would be possible to rescue only 20,000 to 30,000 men, but in the end 338,000 soldiers were rescued from Dunkirk, a third of them were French soldiers. This amazing event was later known as the Miracle Of Dunkirk.

Prayer Focus:
1. Pray that this type of prayer and fasting leading up to a national Solemn Assembly as in Joel 1:14 and Joel 2:12-17 will happen in our nation.

2. Pray that the next generation will be part of the prayer movement locally and
globally. Pray that God will raise up good and strong leaders among them to lead the prayer movement to a higher level in the Lord.