Promises, prophecies and prayer

Daniel chapters 9 and 10 have long been favourites of mine because they give us such rich insights into the process and purpose of prayer. Over the next few days, I plan to reflect on some of the principles we learn from Daniel's experiences in those chapters.

The setting is Babylon, around 550 BC. Several decades have passed since we first met Daniel as a teenage boy in chapter one of the book. In his "quiet time" one day, Daniel was reading in the Word of God, in the prophecies that had been revealed to Jeremiah, and he came across the part which foretold that Jerusalem would be desolate for seventy years. (In fact, he and others had already been in exile in Babylon for more than sixty of those years.)

So what did Daniel do on reading this? He didn't start crossing off the days on his calendar while doing nothing else about it. He didn't sit back and think, "I'm getting on in years now: I hope I'm still alive when the exile comes to an end." No, it says that he immediately turned to the Lord and committed himself to prayer and fasting. He knew that just because something is God's will doesn't mean that we can afford to be lazy or passive and not partner with God to see that prophecy or promise come about. Daniel began to pray fervently for the exile to come to an end and for Jerusalem to be rebuilt and resettled again.

If Daniel did this in a situation where a rough idea of God's timeframe was already known, how much more important is it for us to partner with God in the things where a timeframe hasn't been specified and we can do our part in making it come about more quickly.

For example, the Bible tells us that Jesus will one day come again to take us to be with Himself, and to wrap up world history once and for all. But Jesus Himself said that the end would only come once the gospel had been preached to every nation on earth. (Matthew 24:14 - the Greek word "ethnos" actually means every people group on earth.)

So what do we do about that? We can keep looking on the internet to find out how many unreached people groups still exist this year. Or we can start to pray: praying for workers to go out to the tribes who have never heard the gospel; praying for the Bible to be translated into the hundreds of languages that still don't have any portion of scripture; praying for people's hearts to be softened and their eyes to be opened to the truth of the gospel...

Perhaps we can even go: going to a people group on the other side of the world, or sharing with someone right in our own town who might later be the one to go to the ends of the earth.

The bottom line is: when we know a bit about what God's will is, we'd be foolish and negligent not to put at least some time into praying for those things to happen.

The same is true of any promises or prophecies that we might have received personally. If God has promised that He's going to use us in a particular way, that He's going to provide financially for something, that we're going to be healed of an illness, that He's going to give us that new job, or that a family member is going to be saved... it would be a pity just to wait around and not do anything about it. 

The problem perhaps lies in the fact that we sometimes treat God more like an acquaintance than like a Dad who really cares for us. If we're in conversation with an acquaintance and they say, "I'd love you to come over and see our new house. I'll have you round for a meal sometime," we usually leave the ball in their court. We don't go rushing up to them every time we see them, asking, "When can I come for that meal you mentioned? Please, can I come this week?" No, we wait politely, hoping that they really meant it and that they won't forget what they said.

But it's a completely different scenario if a Mum or Dad tells their kid, "I'm going to take you to the beach (or the circus, the football match, the ice cream shop...) sometime." There's no way that child is going to wait around in silence; they're going to keep going to that parent, pleading, "You said you'd take me for an ice cream. Can we go today?" or, "You promised I could get an iPad when I'm older. Can I have it for my next birthday?"

Unless they're in a difficult or abusive situation, children don't hesitate or feel embarrassed to keep asking their parent for the thing that was promised. They don't get tongue tied and hold back because they don't know what to say.  They simply keep on asking for the thing they're waiting for... until they finally see it happen.

We need to learn to "plead the promises of God" in that same way. That's what Daniel did after reading in the book of Jeremiah. That's what we need to do if God has spoken something personally or if our Bible reading brings us across something that is God's will for our life or for our world today.

It's not complicated; we just need to do it in the same way that child keeps on asking for an ice cream. That's what it means to partner with God and, like Daniel, to be a world changer in our own generation.