Bible Reading: Exodus 32: 11-14
Memory Verse: I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it, but I found no one. Ezekiel 22:30 (HCSB)
Daniel Nash (1775-1831) served as Charles Finney’s personnel intercessor. He was key to the revival that followed Finney’s ministry. His life is a representation of the power of prayer. When God would direct where a meeting was to be held, Daniel Nash would slip quietly into the town and seek to get two or three people to enter into a covenant of prayer with him. Sometimes he had with him a man of similar prayer ministry, Abel Clary. Together they would begin to pray fervently for God to move in the community. He is the seldom-seen partner of the great evangelist Charles Finney during the 2nd Great Awakening. Popularly called Father Nash. He had a lackluster record as a pastor in upstate New York. He finally decided, at the age of 48, to give himself totally to prayer for Finney’s meetings. In one town the best he could find was a dark, damp-cellar; it became his centre for intercession not eating anything for sometimes 3 days. Once the public meetings began, Nash usually did not attend. He kept praying in his hideaway for the conviction of the Holy Spirit to melt the crowd. If opposition arose-as it often did in those ragged days of the 1820’s, Finney would tell him about it and Father Nash would bear down harder in prayer. Shortly before Nash died in the winter of 1831, he wrote in a letter, “I am now convinced, it is my duty and privilege, and the duty of every other Christian, to pray for as much of the Holy Spirit as came down on the day of Pentecost, and a great deal more….My body is in pain, but I am happy in my God…I have only just begun to understand what Jesus meant when He said, ‘All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.’” He was found dead in his room in the attitude of prayer. “He died at his duty post”. Within four months of Nash’s death, Finney left the itinerant field to become the pastor of a Church in New York City. His partner in cracking the gates of hell was gone. If you want to see Father Nash’s grave today, you will have to drive to northern New York, almost to the Canadian border. There, in a neglected cemetery along a dirty road, you will find a tombstone that says it all: DANIEL NASH, Laborer with Finney, Mighty in Prayer, Nov 17, 1775 – Dec 20, 1831. Daniel Nash was a nobody to the elite of his time. They would have found this humble man not worthy of commendation because he lived on a totally different plane. But you can be sure that he was known all too well both in heaven and hell.
uote: The criteria by which God measures the impact of the life lived by a man is far from public speculation.
Prophetic Decree: Though men may not see or appreciate your labour of love, but may it count in eternity, in Jesus name.
Prayer Focus
The God who sees the innermost being of men, hallow be thy name.Though I may not be prominent, O Lord, please help me to be significant to heaven.My ministerial and destiny helpers will not die before I finish my assignment, in Jesus name.O Lord, help me to value Heaven’s record higher than men’s accolades, in Jesus name.Holy Spirit, please strengthen the numerous hands that strengthens me, and help the people that must help me, in Jesus mighty name
.BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: Numbers 31-32