24/04/2022
RAW FAITH SERIES: PRAYING NASH, CONVICTION DEFINED.
I have been writing about conviction for some days now, let us look at a man who was some convicted about Jesus that he died in the place of prayer.
Daniel Nash born in 1775 served as Charles Finney’s personnel intercessor.
He was key to the revival that followed Finney’s ministry. We can all look at the life of Daniel Nash and see an example of how important prayer is to see the kingdom of God revealed.
If Charles Spurgeon was the prince of preachers, Daniel Nash was also known Prevailing Prince of Prayer.
When God directed where a meeting was to be held, Father Nash would slip quietly into 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(I will talk about him much more later).
Together they would begin to pray fervently for God to move in the community.
One record of such is told by Leonard Ravenhill: “I met an old lady who told me a story about Charles Finney that has challenged me over the years.
Finney went to Bolton to minister, but before he began, two men knocked on the door of her humble cottage, wanting lodging. The poor woman looked amazed, for she had no extra accommodations.
Finally, for about twenty-five cents a week, the two men, none other than Fathers Nash and Clary, rented a dark and damp cellar for the period of the Finney meetings (at least two weeks), and there in that self-chosen cell, those prayer partners battled the forces of darkness.”
Another record tells: “On one occasion when I got to town to start a revival a lady contacted me who ran a boarding house. She said, ‘Brother Finney, do you know a Father Nash? He and two other men have been at my boarding house for the last three days, but they haven’t eaten a bite of food. I opened the door and peeped in at them because I could hear them groaning, and I saw them down on their faces. They have been this way for three days, lying prostrate on the floor and groaning. I thought something awful must have happened to them. I was afraid to go in and I didn’t know what to do.
Would you please come see about them?’ “‘No, it isn’t necessary,’ Finney replied. ‘They just have a spirit of TRAVAIL in PRAYER.'”
Another states: “Charles Finney so realized the need of God’s working in all his service that he was wont to send godly Father Nash on in advance to pray down the power of God into the meetings which he was about to hold.”
Not only did Nash prepare the communities for preaching, but he also continued in prayer during the meetings. “Often Nash would not attend meetings, and while Finney was preaching Nash was praying for the Spirit’s outpouring upon him.
Finney stated, ‘I did the preaching altogether, and brother Nash gave himself up almost continually to prayer.’ Often while the evangelist preached to the multitudes, Nash in some adjoining house would be upon his face in an agony of prayer, and God answered in the marvels of His grace. With all due credit to Mr. Finney for what was done, it was the praying men who held the ropes. The tears they shed, the groans they uttered are written in the book of the chronicles of the things of God.
Finney and Nash traveled thousands of miles together, in prayer and proclamation of the Gospel.
Then in the winter of 1831, Nash took ill.
On December 20 of that year, while he was on his knees in prayer, he died at age 56.
Charles Finney said this of his dear friend and partner in ministry: "Said a good man to me: 'Oh, I am dying for the want of strength to pray! My body is crushed, the world is on me, and how can I forbear praying?'
I have known that man to go to bed absolutely sick, for weakness and faintness, under the pressure. And I have known him to pray as if he would do violence to Heaven, and then have seen the blessing come as plainly in answer to his prayer as if it were revealed, so that no person could doubt it any more than if God had spoken from heaven.
Revival is coming, men with conviction must arise, there is need for convicted intercessors.
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Blessings
A.T Joel
