Life-Changing Prayer Series

Well, it’s the first of November, and two days from now one of the most contentious Presidential elections in our history will, perhaps, be decided.

I read a newspaper article this week that said that not only Americans but even the people of other nations are anxious about what will be happening in the United States of America in this election—specifically that there was a great deal of angst in Germany as this nation which has been the foundation and anchor of the free world, and the major party in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is experiencing division, tumult and uncertainty like never before.

As our nation, and even the nations of the world, stop to see what happens this week in our nation, what difference can we, as Christians, make for good or for ill? Certainly, many will encourage us to vote to have an influence on the highest office in what we like to call the greatest nation of the world.

But is there a way we can even have a greater influence for a good outcome in these tumultuous times?

Daniel’s example tells us there is a way we can be life-changers, world-changers, and it’s through prayer, the kind of prayer that Daniel the prophet used to change his world--the world of some 2550 years ago.

What kind of prayer was that? It’s a biblically-inspired, humble, holy confession & intercession that’s heard by the Most High.

It was now the first year of King Darius of the Medes and the Persians, 539 B.C. stretching into 538 B.C. It had already been a very tumultuous year. Kingdoms had been in conflict. A great kingdom, the Kingdom of Babylon, had fallen. A new king and kingdom had come to power, the Kings of the Medes and the Persians. It was also likely about the same time that Daniel spent a night in the lion’s den because of his devotion to prayer, praying three times a day at the very risk of his life.

And it was during that time that I believe his prayer was used by God to change the course of his nation and the nations.

Apparently, Daniel had been busy reading the Scriptures, and he was reading the scroll of the prophet Jeremiah. Now Jeremiah was a contemporary of Daniel’s, but probably about 40 years older. Daniel and Jeremiah had both lived in Judah before Nebuchadnezzar had invaded and deported Daniel to Babylon. But they had lived 500 miles apart ever since, and now some 67 years later, the scroll of Jeremiah’s writings, regarded to be the very inspired Word of God, had made it to Babylon, and Daniel was reading it. We need to remember that these Old Testament saints didn’t have Bibles like we do today. The Old Testament consisted of scrolls of various Old Testament books as we call them today, and they were often found in the temple or in synagogues, and so weren’t nearly as available to everyone as they are today. But Daniel had managed to obtain a copy of the scroll of Jeremiah, and as a godly man was studying this revelation of God given within his own generation with the reverence that regarded it as the very Word of God. Daniel, of course, is now an old man, 80 some years old, Jeremiah has likely passed, but God’s Word was still living and active as Daniel read it. And what Daniel read that day was indeed a revelation so extremely relevant to the very circumstances he and the people of Israel now found themselves in. He and the other exiles had been in exile for now 67 years. He wondered if and when they might ever return to their homeland and Promised Land of Israel. And He found the answer in two places in the scroll of Jeremiah, what we now know as Jeremiah 25:11-12 and Jeremiah 29:10-14.

I’d like us to take a moment to look at Jeremiah 29:10-14 this morning, because what it says is so important in motivating Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9. This is what Daniel read, of course, in the Hebrew. “For thus says the Lord, when seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you, to bring you back to this place.” Wow, there it was, the promise that after 70 years God would bring Judah back to its place in the Promised Land. But God goes on, in verse 11, and what He says motivates Daniel to pray as he prayed in Daniel 9: “For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, “and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you; declares the Lord, and I will bring you from the place where I sent you into exile.”