Daniel’s prayer in chapter 9 of his book is one of the most moving accounts of a man intimately seeking God recorded in Scripture. The content of the prayer is a wonderful example of a faith-filled, God-honoring supplication. However, not simply the content, but also the character of the man who comes before God, is instructive. It is that character, as much as anything else, which seems so absent from the prayers of God’s people today. Many corporate prayers, and I suspect most private ones, are generally sound in doctrine; yet, they lack the godliness of character which dominates Daniel’s prayer. Daniel’s devotion to his God and to God’s people are manifest throughout this passage. Here, not only do we see a great model for our prayers today, but we also see a great example of a godly pray-er.
The Source of Godly Prayer
Daniel’s prayer springs from his study of Scripture and his assessment of the world around him. In verse 2 of chapter 9, we find that Daniel, in addition to being a man heavily devoted to prayer (6:10), he is also deeply committed to the study of God’s Word. His pursuit of God led him, not only to prayer and righteous acts, but also to the Scriptures. Daniel’s prayer flows out of his wrestling with the scriptural text and its applicability to his present circumstances. The discord which he sees between the promises of God recorded in the sacred text—that the exile of Israel would only last 70 years—and the seeming unfulfillment of that promise drives Daniel, not to doubt, but to passionately seek God in prayer.
The prayerful response of Daniel to the apparent conflict between Scripture and what is perceived as reality is far different than what is often the response of the contemporary world. All too frequently, believers today choose either to doubt the trustworthiness of the biblical record, or to separate “the reality of the text” from “the reality of the world,” blissfully ignoring the blatant unfaithfulness of living in this dichotomy. Surely, Daniel shows us a better way. A determined pursuit of God in prayer is the only hopeful means of finding a resolution to the dissonance of God’s promises and the world in which we live.
The study of Scripture is often divorced from a prayerful pursuit of God. The contemporary model of discipleship frequently lacks this direct linkage between Bible study and prayer. While the study of Scripture may be emphasized as important, and a devoted prayer-life is encouraged, they are rarely, if at all, seen as dependently living off one another. We are not taught how our prayers should arise from an in-depth study of the Scriptures.
There is a mutuality between God’s Word to us in the Bible and the Spirit’s movement of prayer. Just as one cannot hope to plumb the depths of God’s revelation apart from a persistent reliance upon God in prayer, so too our prayers are shallow if they do not spring from a study of God’s holy Word. The Church must once again learn to ground their prayers in the biblical vision.
May God grant us the joy of learning to pray as we are confronted by the written Word! To the praise of His glory, Henry