Introduction
The church choir director was being driven out of his mind at the rehearsals for the Christmas choral concert. It seemed that at least one or more members of the choir was absent at every rehearsal. Finally they reached the last rehearsal and he announced: "I want to personally thank the pianist for being the only person in this entire church choir to attend each and every rehearsal during the past two months." At this, the pianist rose, bowed, and said, "It was the least I could do, considering I won’t be able to be at the concert tonight."
Faithfulness. If there is one word which can be used to summarise Daniel’s life it would be bizarre but if we could use two then faithfulness would be right up there. It was the end of his life. By this time Daniel was in his late 80s or early 90s. Even today not many live to be that age. But Daniel was still hard at work as one of three deputies to Darius in running Babylon. In fact Daniel was so good at his job that Darius wanted to make him second in charge. He had remained faithful to God all his life, in the face of all sorts of pressure from various Kings, he has remained faithful to God. Not compromising on matters of faith. Now when he is almost at the end of his life, he faces one more challenge. The decree has gone out that no-one may pray to anyone or anything other than the King for a period of 30 days or they would be thrown to the lions. He had served his time, he had been faithful for nearly 90 years. Surely no-one would complain if he simply stopped praying for 30 days. He didn’t have to pray to the King, all he had to do was stop praying for 30 days then he could start again. Surely after a lifetime of devoted service to God, of following God and being God’s mouth-piece to the King, God would understand if he simply stopped praying for 30 days. But Daniel did not. He was faithful to the end. He would not compromise on prayer.
For his faithfulness he was thrown to the lions. He survived. Maybe he opened his cloak like a cape. But probably not. For those who didn’t understand one word of what I just said, you either weren’t here a couple of weeks ago when we looked at Daniel chapter 3 or you were asleep or you can’t remember. Anyway God saved Daniel from the lions. But there was no prior guarantee. Darius appeared to have a little faith, he says to Daniel that he hopes his God can save him from the lions. However, he spends a restless night without sleeping so it seems he didn’t have that much faith. For Daniel we know that Daniel knew God could save him, whether Daniel thought God would save him or not we don’t know. What we do know is that Daniel still prayed and didn’t give up. He was faithful, when it was much easier not to be. He did not compromise on prayer.
The importance of prayer
Daniel valued prayer so much that even in the face of death at lions hands, he would not stop even for 30 days. Daniel saw the importance of prayer. There are all kinds of catch phrases, bumper sticker ideas and platitudes that people use about prayer. One of them that just happens to be true is perhaps something that Daniel would have agreed with. 7 days with prayer make one weak. We need to pray.
“Prayer,” someone once observed, “has already divided seas and rolled up flowing rivers, it has made flinty rocks gush into fountains, it has quenched flames of fire, it has muzzled lions, disarmed vipers and poisons, it has marshalled the stars against the wicked, it has stopped the course of the moon and arrested the sun in its race, it has burst open iron gates and recalled souls from eternity, it has conquered the strongest devils and commanded legions of angels down from heaven. Prayer has bridled and chained the raging passions of men and destroyed vast armies of proud, daring, blustering atheists. Prayer has brought one man from the bottom of the sea and carried another in a chariot of fire to heaven.”
We might not be needing those sort of things to happen, sometimes we might. But the need for prayer is just as great. While it can go all those spectacular things, it can also keep us going. Or rather God’s response to our prayers can keep us going. Daniel obviously regarded prayer as important but why should we. I’m sure you must have heard the argument that if God knows what we want before we ask, then why do we have to ask. If God knows everything then why do we need to pray. Well I want to suggest three reasons why we should pray.
Commanded
The first of these ideas is that God has commanded us to pray. In 1 Samuel 12:23, Samuel says he would be sinning if he did not continue to pray for Saul. Here Samuel clearly regards it as his divinely appointed duty to pray for the King. But if you are looking for a more clearly look at 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” We are not only commanded to pray but we are told theat it is the will of God that we should pray. Jesus prayed all the time. You can be sure that if Jesus had to pray then we should too. So the first thing we learn is that we are commanded to pray.
Relationship
It may have escaped some peoples notice but I don’t think so. It certainly hasn’t escaped my notice, that I’m getting married next year. But anyway, we have just finished going through our pre-marital counselling and one of things that we cover is communication. In any relationship it is important to communicate with the other person in the relationship. Sometimes it is even important to say things that the other person already knows, like I love you, to build the relationship. To be a Christian is to be in a relationship with God. Part of that relationship is communication. We need to listen to God, by reading and studying his word and listening to the Holy Spirit. But we also need to talk. We also need to express ourselves to God.
Also when you are in love, you enjoy spending time with the other person. Sometimes, it’s not doing anything much just being with that person. The same is true when we are talking about our relationship with God. We are supposed to love God. That means that we want to spend time with God. One of the crucial ways we do that is through prayer. It is a means of taking time to be with God. To be in his presences and to focus completely on him. It is through prayer that our relationship with God deepens. This may come as a surprise to some people who seem to think that getting closer to God is a process of going along quite happily till we get hit by a sermon, or a holiday seminar, or something that suddenly clicks and we realise something and we respond. Then we wait for the next thing to hit us to grow again. This is not the way it is supposed to be. We are supposed to be growing closer to God all the time and one of the primary ways of doing this is through prayer. Through bringing our request and innermost thoughts to God and listening to his repsonse, is the way we are supposed to grow as Christian. Yes, we will learn from sermons and things will be pointed out to us that we need to take on board, but prayer is one of the best ways to grow closer to God.
It works
Finally, the last reason to pray is that it works. It saved Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from the great fish and Peter from jail. God answers. He doesn’t always answer in the way we expect and not always when we hope, but he listens, he answers and he makes a difference.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if God had an answering machine? Imagine praying and hearing this: “Thank you for calling Heaven. Please select one of the following four options: Press 1 for requests. Press 2 for thanksgiving. Press 3 for complaints. For all other inquiries, press 4.” What if God used the familiar excuse: “All of the angels are helping other customers right now. Your prayer is important to us. Please stay on the line. You prayer will be answered in the order it was received.” Can you imagine getting these kinds of responses as you call on God in prayer? “If you’d like to speak with Gabriel, press 1.” “For Michael, press 2.” “For any other angel, press 3.” “If you want King David to sing you a psalm, press 6.” “To find out if your relative is here, enter his or her date of death and listen for the list that follows.” “For reservations at My Father’s House, simply press the letters J-O-H-N on the key pad, followed by the numbers 3-1-6.” “For answers to nagging questions about dinosaurs, the age of the earth, and where Noah’s ark is, wait until you get here!” or “Our computers show that you have called once today already. Please hang up immediately.” or even “This office is closed for the weekend. Please call again Monday.”
We can’t pray too often! And we don’t need to wait, God hears us. We will never get a busy signal. God hears and God answers. This week has just been one of those weeks. You know, one of those weeks, that you wish would just disappear, that you long for a life fast forward button, so you could just skip to the end of the week and begin a new one. At the end of the week, it was all crowned off when my car which I thought just needed some new leads to help it start when it’s damp or raining, but it turns out it needs a whole new gear box and the leads and a new exhaust. Then someone tells me it would cost more than the price of the car to repair it all. Do I just despair, give up. Well, to be honest I did feel like doing that. But I prayed. Now, that prayer has not received a complete answer yet, although there are possibilities there and over time we’ll see how God has answered that prayer. But I know with absolute certainty that God has heard and God will answer.
Others will have heard answers for jobs, cars, health and all sorts of issues. Others will have been told no by God for all sorts of similar requests. Prayer works. Not always in the way we would like. But it connects us to God and allows us to present our requests to God. And God answers.
And so we know that we God commands us to pray, it develops and sustains our relationship with God and that it works. The question remains, how and when should we pray? Now I’m not preaching on the Lord’s prayer so I’m not going to go into patterns for prayer. However, if you are looking for patterns for prayer there’s one that doesn’t get a lot of attention from evangelicals later in Daniel, in Daniel chapter 9 in fact, that concerns repentance and confession. But for now I’d like to point out a few things from Daniel’s prayer life that we can learn from beyond the fact that he was faithful.
Regular
The first is that Daniel was regular in prayer. We are told he prayed 3 times a day. But the key idea is that Daniel was regular in his prayer. He made time for prayer. He cleared his schedule and made time to pray. How often do we do this? How often do we actually make time in our day, just to pray to be with God. Or should that be how often in a week, month, year? We need to follow Daniel’s example in making time to pray. Do you have set times that you can pray? It is a good idea. Now we can take this to extremes and get legalistic about it, but that is not the idea. The idea is not to regiment exactly how many times we pray a day and if we miss one that’s it. Or if we’re late for the scheduled time, we’re doomed. Or even that we can’t reschedule them if something else comes up. But unfortunately, if we don’t plan something, often it never happens. Most busy people have a schedule to run their lives by. They have a diary or an organiser or a planner. Something to remind them of important things and to make sure they have time to do them. Pray is important. For some people if they don’t schedule it, it won’t happen. Besides does the attitude that says I’ll fit it in when I have some free time tell us about our attitude to prayer. It is not important, it is not vital.
The other advantage with scheduling time for prayer is that humans are creatures of habit. No matter how much we like to think otherwise we get into habits. Johnny often comments on her regulars at work. People who arrive each morning into Starbucks at the same time and order the same drink. Every day. OK, so not everyone can afford Starbucks every day but we all have our routines. If don’t make prayer part of that routine then it will be forgotten and not happen. But if we do make it part of our regular routine, then it becomes a habit and its harder not to. Not that we slavishly follow a rigid schedule that says we can never have cornflakes because we always have shredded wheat. But that it is always there in our schedule and we make time for it and we remember. We get into the habit of prayer.
On a side note start small. If you are not in the habit of praying, then blocking our 3 half hour slots each day is going to not only kill us but probably all the desire we ever had for prayer as well. Start small, by allocating 5 or 10 minutes and then build it up a bit as you are able. Some people like to pray in the morning, some at night. It doesn’t really matter when as long as you take time to pray.
Private
The second thing we notice about Daniel’s prayer was that it was private. He went home and prayed. Now I would never say anything against public prayer, because that is important too. It is important to pray together both in our services in our prayer meetings. But it is not enough. There is a place for private prayer as well. Firstly, how would your husband or wife, or girl friend or boy friend, react if the only time you talked with them was when you were with other people. You’re not going to develop a very deep relationship that way. There are certain things you can say in private that you would never say in a group or even when there are other people around. In a group you cannot give your complete attention to that person, but you are divided trying to interact with others as well. The same is true of prayer. There are things that we feel that we would never share with others and never pray with others, but we need to share those things we God. In a prayer group we are not only praying to God and trying to listen to him but we are listening to all the other people praying as well. Sometimes we just need to give God our undivided attention.
There is a place for public prayer and prayer meetings, where the group presents there common requests to God but there is also a place for private prayer where we develop our relationship with God.
Towards Jerusalem
The last thing I want to look at is that Daniel prayed facing towards Jerusalem. Now I’m not going to suggest that you have to face a certain direction to pray. We can pray, any time, anywhere, anyhow. But I am going to ask why Daniel prayed facing towards Jerusalem. Now obviously we cannot know the exact reasons because the Bible does say. But lets ask what Jerusalem stood for. It was the capital of Judah, it was Daniel’s home. But it was more than that. It was the location of the temple, the place where God dwelled, the one place where the Jews were to make sacrifices to God. It was the place where the sacrifices had stopped and the place where prophecy said the temple was to be rebuilt and the sacrifices restarted. It was the seat of the monarchy, where they believed the anointed one, the promised one, the Messiah would come to reign. It was the place where all nations would stream to worship God in the future. As far as the Jews were concerned it was central to God’s purposes on earth. It spoke of God’s work in the past and his greatest king David. It spoke of God’s work in the future, of a return from exile and a restablishment of the Kingdom of God. It summed up the purposes of God. Could it have provided a reminder to Daniel that his prayer was to focus on God not on man.
This idea should be central to our prayers. Now that’s not to say we shouldn’t bring our needs, our concerns or even others needs to God. We should. But we should also focus on God and on his plans and purposes. Prayer is about talking with God and we should not loose sight of God as we do it. Perhaps to Daniel facing Jerusalem was his way of reminding himself to keep God at the front of his prayers. Prayer is not just about asking, it is about praising and worshipping God, thanking him for what he has done for us. The focus of prayer is not us, it is God. There will of course be times where the content of our prayers will change. I remember one sketch we did on Daniel in the lions den when I was at Erskine and we got to the bit where Daniel prayed when he was thrown into the den, the person playing Daniel said, “HELP!!”. I think there is times when we need to pray like that, but that should not be our only prayers. We should remember to keep God as the primary focus of our prayer.
Conclusions
So in summary what have said about prayer. Prayer is important because it God commanded it, because it builds our relationship with God and because it works. We can follow Daniel’s pattern in prayer by praying regularly, praying in private and keeping God as the focus of our players
