Studies on Prayer: Vol. 1Mostra

Our lives have seasons of faith. God’s purpose after our salvation is our sanctification, the process of being made holy. God wants us to be a holy people and is always at work in our lives to that end. None of us live perfectly, and there are times when we realize we have chosen the wrong road and need God to restore and redeem our lives so that we can once again enjoy His blessings. In this imperfect world, we will make imperfect choices and so will everyone else. All of us will need to pray for God’s forgiveness and restoration.

Daniel, chapter 9, is both historical and apocalyptic. Learned theologians have debated the numerology, the setting, and the purpose of Daniel’s words. Some have even questioned the authorship as belonging to the prophet Daniel, the one who stood in the den of lions. This study will not seek to prove one interpretation over another. The purpose instead, is to look at the power of prayer to restore a nation to God.

Read Daniel 9 (And don’t worry about the parts you can’t understand. Focus instead, on what is made clear). How should we pray when our lives and the direction of our culture drift from God’s priorities? Pray and ask God to provide you with His answers as you study.

1. When and how did God answer Daniel’s prayer (Daniel 9:20–23)? Why do you think Daniel’s prayer was answered so quickly?

2. How should we be praying for the witness of the Church today?

3. How should Christians today be praying for restoration? How will you include a prayer like Daniel’s in your own times of prayer?

“We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self–sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!” —Abraham Lincoln