Daniel: Does God Reign? Does God Care? - Reading PlanSample

Start with prayer, then watch the video and read Daniel 6.

Daniel 6 is probably the most famous part of the whole book. The thing that really hits me though is not the drama, the miracles, or the lions – but the prayer. Daniel must have been one of the busiest and under-pressure people in the world. He was Prime Minister of the greatest empire there was – and yet he found the time to pray three times every day. Prayer was clearly the bedrock and foundation that his life was built upon.

His prayer life was so important that he wasn’t willing to compromise it, even if his life depended on doing so. He knew that his prayer and relationship with God was more important than anything else.

I used to pastor a church in the City of London, which is the heart of the UK finance industry. It’s a stressful and high-intensity culture in which long hours are the norm. Time and again I would talk to people who thought they were too busy and stressed to pray or spend time with God. I always wanted to say that that was OK, and to be a pastor who didn’t place more burdens on my people. But then I began to spot passages like this, and realise that prayer is so much more important to us than we realise. God will be fine if we don’t pray – but we won’t be.

And I think we see that in this passage. It begins with Daniel flourishing in life and work, as he is appointed to the top job in the Empire. Alongside that he is clearly a man of enormous and obvious integrity, something even his enemies recognise (and get annoyed by!). That flourishing seems to be rooted in his faith and commitment to God.

Clearly though faith doesn’t always mean ease and success – as Daniel is about to find out! But when he does face opposition, ruin, and death, he is not thrown by it. He faces it all with huge courage, carrying on as before. He has the depth and resources in God to face whatever life throws at him. It seems clear here that it is his prayer life that is at the heart of that.

Do you want the sort of faith that Daniel had? Then invest your time in having the sort of prayer life Daniel had too.