“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!
1. Why? I’m afraid it’s b/c we’re not willing to make sacrifices necessary to talk to God. We’d rather be DOING things in our own power instead of taking things to God and relying upon HIS power. And when we do that we’re actually putting more faith and trust in ourselves instead of God. The short of it is we put ourselves in the position of being master and relegate God to being OUR SERVANT.
a. I promise you the results of that kind of life aren’t going to produce things of eternal value. Why? B/c we’re weak! We’re screwed up people. It’s in my nature that when I see a problem or I see an opportunity, I want to get after it and try to handle it myself. Now there’s nothing wrong w/taking initiative. But when we take it w/o the power of God behind us, we’re just setting ourselves up for failure. Or at best we’re settling for much less than what God can do.
b. Prov. 19: 21, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Satan is going to do whatever he can to get our attention directed away from the leadership of God. We have to remember that Satan is a deceiver. 2 Cor. 11: 14, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
2. Satan will distract us w/good things to keep us from the best things. He’s the leader of darkness in our world, but he covers it up and makes it look good to us so that we’re deceived. And one area where he’ll do this is in our prayer life. Satan will distract us w/the good thing of getting something done at the expense of calling out to God for His help and leadership in prayer.
a. What are the distractions that are keeping your from calling out to God in prayer? It could be putting your prayers on hold until the end of the day when you’re worn out and tired. It could be television. It could be hopping in there at work and getting things done w/o ever taking time to interact w/God. It could be sports or a host of a lot of others things.
b. I look at Daniel and see that he was willing to lay aside his distractions so that he could place his full attention on seeking God’s leadership! He was willing to lay aside the comforts of this life, the entertainments of this life so his full attention could be devoted to seeking God.
ILLUS: I love baseball. And one of my favorite stories is from Yogi Berra, the famed catcher for the NY Yankees. During a game Hank Aaron came up to bat. He was the #1 hitter for the Milwaukee Braves and the teams were playing for the World Series. Yogi wanted to distract Aaron from what he was doing so he said, “Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.”
-Aaron just stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything. Berra kept talking, but when the next pitch came, Aaron hit it into the left-field bleachers for a home run. After rounding the bases and tagging home plate, Aaron looked at Berra and said, “I didn’t come up here to read.”
B. Isn’t that a great story? Aaron realized what he was at the plate for. He was there to drive in a run. He was there to get on base and he wasn’t going to allow anything to take his attention away from that.
1. What are we here for? In a sense, we’re here to drive in runs! We’re here to play the game of life for God! And when we begin to have that kind of single-minded devotion, it’s much easier for us to see the ball that’s coming our way! But when we become distracted we don’t see the pitch that comes from life and before we know it the ball’s in the catcher’s mitt and we have a strike against us.
Reit: The 1st step we can take to pray w/persistence is to remove distractions. The 2nd step we can take to pray w/persistence is to:
DIV. 2: UNDERSTAND SUPPORT COMES W/PRAYER (vv. 4-11)
Exp: As Daniel prayed and sought after God’s direction and insight concerning the vision he had, something unusual happened to him. As he was standing on the bank of the Tigris River he saw a man standing there who obviously was not just some regular person. I mean look at the description: he had a belt of gold, his body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his voice like the sound of a multitude!
A. What was that all @? I find this interesting, but there’s another description similar to this one in the Bible. It’s found in Rev. 1: 12-16. Who was it? It was Jesus Christ! I believe in our text the vision Daniel’s describing is Christ. What was He doing there?
1. I think it’s really cool to see that He came there to support Daniel in response to the prayers he’d been offering up to God. V. 12 says, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the 1st day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.”
a. A couple of things I want to pull from this verse. 1st of all the Lord responds to Daniel by saying, “Don’t be afraid.” There are a lot of different things in our world that are pretty scary. We have health issues we deal with, we’re living in a very uncertain time concerning our economy, and a lot of us feel alone and abandoned. Sometimes we wonder if God even knows or cares @ what’s going on. But for those of us who are believers we’re commanded to not be afraid!
b. Why? B/c as we humble ourselves before God, the Lord comes to our side. It’s important we notice that Daniel had humbled himself before God. It was then that his prayers were heard.
2. If your prayers don’t seem to be getting any higher than the ceiling it could be b/c you have sin in your life that you need to confess to God and turn away from. Ps. 66: 18, “If I have sin in my heart God will not hear me.” Sin is like static and it creates a barrier in communication between you and God.
a. But here’s the really neat thing. When the line is open and you talk to God, He not only hears you but He sends support. I think it’s important for us to see this b/c a lot of times we feel as though we’re all alone. And our prayer life can actually become an act of desperation as we try to get God’s attention. And when we don’t feel like anything’s happening, it makes it very easy to quit praying.
b. What can really encourage you is to know that support is on its way when you pray! And if you pray believing that God’s sending support, it makes it much easier to hang in there in your prayer life!
ILLUS: In 1957, at Johns Hopkins, Curt P. Richter experimented with drowning rats. He put rats in a dish of water, with sides too high for climbing, and water too deep for standing. All the rats could do was swim. After a few minutes, the rats would stop swimming and drown. But if Richter removed a rat from the dish when it stopped swimming (but before it actually drowned), and later subjected it to the same experiment, he found that the rat could swim for more than 24 hours.
-The rats that drowned after a few minutes could swim for much longer. They simply gave up because they saw no hope. People need hope, too, for the same reason that rats do. Even the best lives have hard times, and the worst lives can be almost unbearably painful. Hope keeps us going when times are hard.
-But when we know the cavalry is coming it makes it easier for us to hang in there. I want you to know that when you pray, support is coming!
Reit: The 1st step we can take to pray w/persistence is to remove distractions. The 2nd step is to understand support comes w/prayer. And the final step we can take to pray w/persistence is to:
DIV. 3: TRUST GOD WILL ANSWER YOUR PRAYERS (vv. 12-14)
Exp: Trust is a very difficult thing for a lot of people. And sometimes we lose our trust, our faith in God when we feel like our prayers aren’t being answered. Ted Turner, the media magnate and I WISH still the owner of the Braves, is a man who does not have a relationship w/Christ. He turned away from God when his mother died b/c he said he prayed for her but she died anyway. And that was the last straw for him. Some of you may have some similar experiences and it’s caused you to doubt and even NOT believe that theirs is a God who is there for you.
A. Now we can get into why bad things happen to people. But we’ll save that one for another day. The quick answer is b/c we live in a world that’s marred by sin (which we willfully commit). And it was never God’s intention for us to live in separation from Him. But we chose to do so and now we live w/the consequences.
1. So the big question for today is “If I pray, will God not only hear me, but will He answer my prayers?” The answer to that question is “Yes.” I look at Daniel and I see that he called out to God for answers. And what I notice is that the answer was delayed! It didn’t come immediately. Do you remember how long Daniel had been praying before he received an answer? 21 days!
a. I’d have to say that it’s my tendency to give up on something after just a few days if I don’t get any results! But Daniel hung in there and continued to seek after God. Why? B/c he believed God was going to answer him! He was persistent in his prayers and God rewarded him for it!
b. Do we need to be persistent in our prayers b/c God’s hard of hearing? Is it b/c God has to be pestered before He’ll provide an answer? No! Jesus taught us to pray w/persistence b/c each time we pray our prayers carry weight!
2. I believe that when you pray for someone to become a follower of Jesus you’re putting more and more pressure on that person to listen to God. When you pray for your friends in their daily struggles every prayer imparts to them more and more power from God.
a. When you pray for God to help you w/someone who’s difficult at work or at school, every prayer you lift up to God brings His power to bear on difficult people and situations.
b. As Daniel prayed, his prayers carried more and more weight until finally the door from heaven opened and his prayer was answered. In v. 14 it says, “Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future.”
B. What would’ve happened had Daniel quit praying on day 5? What would’ve happened had he quit praying on day 20? My guess is he would’ve missed out on seeing his prayer answered. But b/c he trusted God would respond, he pressed on!
ILLUS: George Mueller was an English pastor in the 1800s who was known for his powerful prayer life. He was on a ship to Canada to speak when the captain told him they wouldn’t make it in time for his speaking engagement b/c of the fog. Mueller refused to accept it and told him to keep going on. The captain told him it was impossible b/c of how dense the fog was.
-Mueller said, “I’ve never broken an engagement in my 57 years of ministry; let’s go down to the chart room and pray.” He knelt down and prayed. When he was finished, the captain was going to pray but Mueller told him not to. He said, “As you do not believe He will answer, and I believe He already has, there is no need for you whatever for you to pray @ it.”
-He then said, “I’ve known my Lord for 57 years and there’s never been a single day when I have failed to get an audience w/the King. Get up, captain, and open the door and you will find that the fog has gone.”
-When the captain opened the door the fog was gone and George Mueller kept his engagement.
1. I desire for us to approach prayer like George Mueller. I desire for us to approach God expecting Him to answer. And when He doesn’t answer immediately, I desire for VillageChurch to press on in our prayers trusting that He will!
Conclusion: I’ve often wondered why we haven’t seen a massive move of God in years. And I’ve come to the conclusion part of the reason why is b/c so many Xians simply give up on prayer! We try to take matters into our own hands. And when that happens we miss out on seeing the power of God move in our midst.
-What we need to see if praying w/persistence. And we can pray w/persistence when we remove distractions, when we understand support comes w/prayer, and when we trust God will answer our prayers.
-Small group leaders, teachers, children workers, youth workers, I want to challenge you to pray for the people you serve. Make it a part of your weekly prayer life to lift them up to God and to ask Him to change their lives.
-I challenge others of you to become a part of our prayer team that lifts up the ministry of this church. Adele Little and Peggy Hood will be at the Welcome Table after the service to sign you up for the prayer team. We’re in desperate need of prayer warriors b/c we’re planning on God using us to bring the good news of Jesus to people.
-Others of you are simply struggling w/getting your prayers out of the room! And it could be b/c you have some sins in your life that you need to bring before God and confess and ask Him to root them out of your life.
