Converting Me and Ninevah

This Lent I’m continuing a prayer that I’ve had all year: wanting to stand in my identity as God imagined and then crafted when I came into existence. I think Lent is an especially good time for this prayer. It calls for a decluttering from what isn’t essential.

Today we hear in the first reading that Jonah delivered the message God had for the Ninevites: "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed (Jonah 3:4).” And from the king down, the people put on sackcloth, proclaimed a fast and prayed for repentance. 

I heard this proclaimed today and received the story a little differently. The story has God seeking to carry out “an evil (Jonah 3:10).” But God is 100-percent good and zero-percent evil. I don’t really know why the story is written that way. However, sin is really evil. And it destroys. I heard today in my heart God giving a warning with great love and concern for me and His people: “You are on a bad path and it’s can destroy you.”

There are sins and vices and habits we’ve taken on for pleasure. And there are others we’ve taken as coping mechanisms. Either way, they can hurt us. The people of Ninevah seemed not to be aware of their sins. How many things do we do that we aren’t aware of? Lent is the perfect time to ask God to expose them. 

Maybe we didn’t notice how much we drink, how often we lie or how often we are critical or negative. Maybe we spend too much time away from our families or didn’t realize how little we pray or how we won’t let anyone get close to us. Maybe it’s holding a grudge or cutting a person out of our lives or something else entirely. Jesus set the bar high when He said, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” So, I am eagerly pursuing improvement. 

Jesus said some evil needs more effort to be cast out than just our own willpower. In Mark 9:29, He said, “This kind is cast out by prayer.” There are some translations that say “by prayer and fasting.” In the book of Tobit, the Archangel Raphael says almsgiving is a way to show God special effort in seeking the answer to a prayer.  So Lent - the season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving - is the perfect time to ask freedom from things like these. 

Today, I sensed the Lord saying less, “I will destroy you,” and more “Your bad habits are destroying you.” He wants us to be freed from destructive tendencies even more than we do. 

I heard the Lord’s warning, “I love you too much to leave you like this. I made you for more.” So as I pray to stand in my identity and you in yours, I pray that we will be set free from the things we tried to graft onto ourselves. I pray sins, vices, bad habits and unholy defenses will be brought down so we will shine with the protection of the Heavenly Father.

Tobit, 12:8-9 Prayer with fasting is good. Almsgiving with righteousness is better than wealth with wickedness. It is better to give alms than to store up gold, for almsgiving saves from death, and purges all sin. Those who give alms will enjoy a full life