Praying With Persistence

“Praying with Persistence”

Daniel 10: 1-14

May 16, 2010

Intro: There was a lady who lived way out in the country in Wales. And she went to a great deal of trouble and expense to have electricity brought to her home. However, after a couple of months, the electric company noticed she didn’t seem to use very much electricity at all.

-A meter reader came out to inspect if something was wrong. He knocked on the door and the lady came to the door. He said, “We just checked your meter and it doesn’t seem that you’re using much electricity. Is there a problem?” She said, “Oh no. We’re quite satisfied. We turn on the lights every night to see how to light our lamps and then switch them off again.”

-Now this lady believed in electricity. She believed the promises of the electric company when they told her @ it. She went to a great deal of trouble to get the electricity. But she didn’t understand the potential of the electricity in her home. The result is she used it sparingly.

-My guess is there are a lot of us who use prayer in the very same way. We believe in prayer. We know some of the promises God has given us @ prayer. We’ve even heard stories of answered prayers. But we still use prayer sparingly.

-Today we’re continuing our series “iPrayer.” And it’s my desire that we’ll begin to utilize the tool of prayer that God has given us! I’ll be honest w/you. I get frustrated at myself for not tapping into prayer more often and fervently than I do. For some reason a lot of us struggle w/prayer. We have a hard time staying awake. We have a hard time staying focused. Or we throw up a few Hail Mary passes as a last ditch effort hoping something will turn our way.

-But what I see in Scripture is prayer involves persistence! God’s not our genie in the bottle that will grant us 3 requests! He desires us to communicate w/Him, to acknowledge Him and to acknowledge our need for Him in prayer.

Sermon Idea: Today in our passage of Scripture we’re going to see a demonstration of the power of prayer that comes w/persistence. And thru a man named Daniel, we’re going to see how we can begin to take steps that will help us pray w/persistence.

-My desire is to see VillageChurch become a church that’s immersed in prayer. We have neighbors and friends that need to be touched by God. And if we PRAY for them, it can happen! Our community can be turned on its head for Jesus if we’ll be fervent in our prayers! And I hope that today’s Scripture we’ll show us the importance of being persistent in our prayer life.

TEXT: DANIEL 10: 1-14

Bckgrd: Daniel was a Jew who’d been taken into captivity in Babylon when he was a young man. You’re probably more familiar w/him as the guy who was thrown into the lion’s den. But even though he’d been taken captive and thrown into a lion’s den for his faith, he remained faithful to living for God. And the result is God greatly blessed his life. Daniel rose to a position of leadership in the Babylonian empire. And at this point he was an older man who was now serving a new king.

-And God gave him a vision @ the future. The vision was one of war and it troubled Daniel b/c he didn’t understand it. So what did he do? He prayed. He looked for wisdom and direction from God. And it’s thru this experience we see thru Daniel some steps we can take to pray w/persistence.

-The 1st step we can take to pray w/persistence is to:

DIV. 1: REMOVE DISTRACTIONS (vv. 1-3)

Exp: Daniel had received a vision from God @ the future. And we’re told that it troubled him so much that he mourned for 3 weeks. We see evidence of this in what he ate and drank. Remember, Daniel was a leading official in the kingdom. He had the power of his office at his discretion. That meant he had the finest foods and the finest drinks available to him. He had all the comforts of life at his disposal that very, very few people would’ve had. And yet he abstained from it all so that he wouldn’t be distracted in seeking the wisdom of God.

A. One of the major obstacles we have in prayer is distractions. It’s so easy to get sidetracked in our prayers b/c we get distracted by the goings on of life around us. We can have good intentions @ prayer but when it comes time to making time for prayer we fall woefully short!