Hello oh GodTHE PRAYER LIFE OF DANIEL
Annual Sermons: Vol. 6 No. 20 Text: Daniel 6:10
Concord Baptist Church: 1992 (Father’s Day) Bob Marcaurelle: Pastor
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In 539 B.C., Belshazzar ruled Babylon and the world. But God had had enough of his wickedness, and was sending Darius and his armies to topple him. At a wild, drunken party, the hand of God appeared and sobered the whole crowd up by writing strange words on the wall. Daniel the prophet, a Jewish slave who grew up in Babylon, now in his nineties, was called in. Fearless before his captors he read the words, "You are weighed in the scales and found wanting." Then he told the King God would take his kingdom from him. For this interpretation Belshazzar had offered him the rank of third in command with all its wealth. Daniel's reply? "Keep your gifts, give them to someone else." (Daniel 5). That very night Darius and his storm troopers put Belshazzar to death. Daniel could not be bribed or bought.
And Daniel couldn't be bullied either. When Darius took over, he liked what he saw in Daniel and made him and two others, the governors of the land. Daniel's ability angered the other two officials so they looked for a way to discredit him before the King. Finding no flaw in him and no mark on his record, what a com¬pliment it was when they said, "We will never be able to make a charge against this man Daniel unless it is connection with the laws of his God" (Dan. 6:5).
They knew Daniel would obey God no matter what. Knowing Daniel prayed to God three times every day, they had Darius issue a decree that no one pray to anyone but him for 30 days and anyone who did would be fed to the lions. They made him "God For A Month" and he liked it. And what did Daniel do? Our text tells us, "When Daniel learned that the decree had been signed, he went home. He went upstairs where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, as he always did" (Dan. 6:10). He did this openly, for all to see. What a man! What a model for fathers and all men. In his nineties, as he had always done, he stood like a giant oak surrounded by scrubs. He could not be bought by the King's threats. With convictions deeper than life itself he would face a den of lions rather than give in to a godless man.
The secret of such a man is always to be found in his God. And the God of such a man is never a theological abstraction but a living Person in whom he lives and moves and has his very being. And the living relationship to God of such a man is always the fruit of much prayer. Show me a man of much faith, with his soul abandoned to the will of God, who can neither be bribed nor bullied and I will show you a man who has paid the price to learn how to get hold of God in prayer.
Weakness and wickedness in the Christian can always be traced back to prayerlessness. We may pray in emergencies; we may pray when we feel like it; and we may have fleeting moments when we think of God; but if we don't give time and energy and thought and "blood-sweat-and-tears" to spend quality time with God, we will be weak and wicked and worth very little to God. So today, let's look through those three windows into the soul of a true man of God and see the prayer life that made him strong. And let us do more than look. Let's put what he had and did into our lives. First, like Daniel, we need. . .
I. A PLACE OF PRAYER
Jesus tells us to have a "closet," a private, spe¬cial place for prayer (Mt. 6:6). Daniel's upper room, with windows toward the West, toward the holy city where all God's promises would one day come true, was Daniel's holy of holies, his special place of prayer. I know we can pray any place and any time. I know that every inch of ground can be praying ground. In the factory, in the furrow and in the front room we can call upon the Lord. But if we are to become masters in the art of prayer, if we are to make prayer a regular habit, if every day we seek to get our souls in contact with the Lord, then we need a special place, a private place, a holy place of prayer.
A layman I know has a certain lonely stretch of road on his way to work that is his "praying ground." Coming there he invariably draws near to God Who draws near to him. Dr. Criswell told his congregation he had a rug beside his bed that no money could buy. Why? It is his holy special place of prayer. For me it is a chair in my study. There, away from distraction, looking out at the forest, I can pray better than anywhere else on earth.
There is one exception. When my soul is deeply troubled or some crisis seems it will crush me or hurt this dear church, my chair just won't do. I come to our chapel and sit alone in the dark with the small light on over our cross and crown of thorns. There, with no thought of time, I try to thoroughly cleanse my soul and "take my burdens to the Lord and leave them there." When I leave, my goal is to leave my sins at the foot of the cross and my burdens on the strong shoulders of the One who bore that cross for me. I like to close by singing this hymn:
What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
Oh what peace we often forfeit
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer
II. A PERIOD FOR PRAYER
Three times every day Daniel went to his place of prayer and talked with God. This does not tell us how often he prayed but how often he was in the position of prayer. No doubt he prayed many times every day. There were long periods of meditation when he let the Word of God simmer in his mind. There were flashes of truth from on high when God revealed Himself to him in the frenzy of his busy schedule. There were times when he saw people in need and lifted them up to God. There were those moments of decision and need when Daniel hurled short, sharp prayers heavenward. There were those times without end when he just talked to Jesus while busy at his work. The Bible says, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Th. 5:17). Never stop praying! Pray all day! The obedient Christian does this and yet he is not always in the position or special place of prayer.
But remember this - to have the life of prayer, to have this ability to commune with God all through the day - one must, like Daniel, have definite periods set aside to turn aside to the act of prayer. The spirit of prayer is produced and strengthened by the habit of prayer. When should this time be? That's between you and your God. In seminary I always felt guilty because I didn't have the discipline to get up early and have my quiet time with God before I met the day.
I was taught and programmed to believe you HAD to have your prayer time in the morning. I never could win the "battle of the blankets" because that battle cannot be won from underneath the covers. I lived under deep guilt as the devil whispered to me, "Jesus loved you enough to die for you and you don't love Him enough to get up early for Him." What freedom and joy came when I realized it is not WHEN you pray but THAT you pray. As a pastor for 31 years, my best time has been the morning because I am in charge of my schedule. I agree with a dear layman who said, "I pray
The morning is the best time for me, but it was not the best time for me as a seminary student and it may not be the best time for you. You pick your best time, when you can concentrate on God with the least fear of distraction or interruption. Few of us have the marvelous habit of praying three times every day, but we could all benefit from it. What a precious thought to feed our souls like we feed our bodies - three times a day. We would have strength for the new day; inspiration for the midday and clean-sing and instructions concerning the day that was past.
III. A PROCEDURE IN PRAYER
We are not told what Daniel did in his prayer times, but anyone who maintains the habit of prayer, once a day (much more, three times a day) must have some kind of procedure. In Psalm 5:3, David said, "At sunrise I lay my prayer like a sacrifice before you." When we set aside a place and a period for prayer, the real battle begins. "Satan trembles when he sees/ The weakest saint upon his knees" and he assaults us in our prayer closet like nowhere else. Once we set ourselves to the habit of daily prayer we encounter a host of obstacles that soon defeat us and make prayer well nigh impossible. The time we set aside never seems right. When we do pray, our minds wander. Dry periods come when we have nothing to say and this makes us feel guilty. We cover the same ground over and over, boring God as much as we bore ourselves.
It is a sad fact of Christian experience that daily prayer times and Bible study periods can turn into tyrants. Far from strengthening our inner man they can drive a wedge between us and God. They can become mechanical as we peel off so many Bible verses or so many minutes in prayer. Bible study and prayer often become ends in themselves and as such simply become burdens to bear. Our one object in Bible study and prayer must be to come into the presence of the living God.
Through the Bible He must speak to us in our situation, in our time. We must leave our place of prayer believing (and most of the time feeling) that we have had a conversation with God. Nothing helps this like having some kind of procedure or plan. Now lost of the books on prayer, with lists of things to do, leave me as dry as a bone buried in the desert. If they help you, use them, but for me two elements are needed to maintain prayer.
1. Bible Study.
Read a portion of God's Word and let Him speak to you before you speak to Him. There are all kinds of programs but don't get hung up on programs and make this more of a study time than a devotional time. If you like variety, read a Psalm one day, a chapter from Proverbs one day, an incident from the life of Jesus one day, a paragraph from the Epistles one day and a great Old Testament story one day. Don't forget your Sunday School scriptures.
Do this, a few minutes each day, and in ten years you will have a grasp of the scriptures few people enjoy. And above all - MAKE THIS PERSONAL! Don't mechani¬cally crank off your verses. Make what you read the substance of your prayers. Talk with God about them. Apply them to your life. Think about them all through the day. If one truth or one verse speaks to you - mark it, write it, meditate on it, claim it - it's YOUR Word from God.
2. Needs.
We also need to be sincere and genuine and real when it comes to prayer. If you pray for people (and you should), put it at the end of your prayer, Start your prayers with the scripture you read and where you are right now - your sins, your fears, your challenges, your needs, your joys, etc. This isn't being selfish, it's being genuine. It's inviting and bringing God down to the "nitty gritty" of your life.
If you feel like crying, cry! If you feel like singing, sing. If you feel like complaining, complain! If you feel like praising, praise! (Now, our Spirit-filled brothers will tell you never to complain, but the Psalms, though filled with praises, have some Psalms of complaint - Ps. 22:1-2, etc.). The important thing is to be honest and real, not saying what we are SUPPOSED to say, but what we WANT to say. "We might as well kneel down/And wor¬ship gods of stone/As offer to the living God/A prayer of words alone."
Every Christian prays a little. But this is more of a vice than a virtue. E. M. Bounds, perhaps the greatest modern writer on prayer, said, "Little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion."
What I need, what you need and what God needs, is for us to have God with us all through the day as a living Presence and Person giving guidance, power and forgiveness to us as we rub elbows with people whose greatest need is to know Him. And the sad truth is that most people will never see God or know God or trust God or love God unless they see Him daily in us. And nothing - not even going to church and living an ethical life - will accomplish this like regular, meaningful, life changing periods of time alone with God. Why not start today?
General Stonewall Jackson was a modern day Daniel with rugged courage and humor mixed with deep godliness. When General Pope took over the Union Army of Virginia he said,
"My headquarters is my saddle." Jackson responded, "We have nothing to fear from a man who doesn't know his headquarters from his hind-quarters." When Jackson became a teacher this was his marvelous "Daniel-like" testimony: "I have so fixed the habit in my mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without asking God's blessing, never seal a letter without putting a word of prayer under the seal, never take a letter from the post without a brief sending of my thoughts heavenward, never change my classes in the lecture room without a minute's petition for the cadets who go out and for those who come in."
