The Fight for Every Inch of Advance: A Prayer Backstage Pass
Daniel 10:1-21
What would God tell us about prayer, if He was interviewed?
When you find yourself at the epicentre of very dirty conflicts…
- There is a great cost to commitment to receiving, delivering and living out the words of God
- going to war with wickedness is painfully brutal…
- in verse 2, “mourn” = “lamenting about death in family”
- Daniel refrained from anointing himself with oil…
- anointing was for celebration; he was refraining during the month of Passover
- 2 Cor 1:8-11; “…but this happened so that we don’t rely on ourselves…”
- The Scriptural action of choice is urgent (fasting) prayer; God entrusts his richest and best stuff to the most willing and obedient heart
- prevailing and persistent prayer; we know the Lord’s Prayer but there’s more to just the prayer alone
- Jesus furthers in Luke 11’s parable of the neighbour and bread (ie.persist, persist, persist in prayer)
- urgent prayer = how you dial into Divine Frequency (Daniel 10:6-9; cf Lev 6:10; Ezek 1:27; Ezek 9:2; Rev 1:7)
- we see that Daniel 10:4-9 is similar to Acts 9’s Paul/Saul experience with Jesus
- action that precedes divine help (Daniel 10:12-14; Heb 1:4)
- the action required to win the conflict in the heavenly (dan 10:13; cf Eph 6:12)
- Human conflict is earthly fallout of cosmic warfare
- God is at war with evil
- “Jesus wins the battle not by killing but by dying” (Longman, p218)
- Angels and humans are at war with wickedness together
- God uses the persistent prayer of His people to send angels to win the cosmic skirmish needed to free up victory in the earthly setting
- do not faint, but persist in prayer