Pray for your country (Part 3)
The third step of prayer
After having spent time in worship, Daniel finally spoke of his people but not to boast of their accomplishments, but rather in confessing their sins to God (Daniel 9:5-16). He quoted a list of horrible things that his people have committed including rebellion, iniquity, refusing to listen to the prophets, etc… The interesting thing is the fact that Daniel does not say, “my people have done this and that” instead he says: “We have done this and that”. In reading about the life of Daniel, the Word shows us clearly that he was a man of integrity who feared the Lord. Yet, in praying for his people to be forgiven, he had to identify himself with them, like a priest. People who do not know the Lord need us (the church) to intercede on their behalf. On the day of judgment we won’t be judged by other people’s sins, but right now we are victims of the consequences of others’ sins (whether we like it or not). This is why we must confess and ask God for forgiveness from the sins committed in our nation. This is the responsibility of the church in the nation.
The fourth step of prayer
Having discovered the promise of God and spending sufficient time in crying out to God for the forgiveness of his people, Daniel reaches the final step in his prayer: he asks the Lord to restore Jerusalem (Daniel 9:17-19) that is to say the deliverance of his people. In many prayer times for nations, the Church has the habit of starting directly with the fourth step of prayer when it is supposed to be the last step of prayer. In summary, for every prayer, we must first know and understand the promises of God, approach him with worship, humble ourselves, confess, and ask God for forgiveness for the people and ask for deliverance.
B. King Cyrus
The prayer recorded in Chapter 9 of Daniel is different from the one we find in chapter 10. In chapter 9, Daniel was under the reign of Darius the Mede and he prayed for the restoration of Jerusalem while in chapter 10 he was under the reign of Cyrus the king of Persia. In Daniel 10:1 he prays against a great calamity (or a great war) revealed to him.
We need to understand that when God promises something to us there will always be opposition arising from the enemy who is the devil. The more intensive the opposition is, the closer we get to the moment of deliverance. When the devil discovered that the moment for the birth of a liberator for the people of God had arrived, he used pharaoh to kill all the Hebrew children who were male. The same scenario occurred when the devil learned about the birth of the Messiah and Savior of this world (Jesus) had arrived. All this to say that we can never merely be content to contemplate the promises of God, but on the contrary we must engage in prayer in order to allow the fulfilment of God’s purpose. We must especially confront resistance in the spiritual realm. It is never enough to wait; rather we must wait in prayer.
To be continued in the fourth part
Chris Ndikumana
