What we can learn from Daniel about delayed answers to prayer

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The Lord promises to respond to our prayers, particularly the prayers we prayed in faith. While that may be true, there are time when we feel like God's not responding to us. We've prayed and prayed but the answers just don't come when we want them to. These delays frustrate us.

What do we do when the answers to our prayers see, to come late? How do we respond when God's responses to our cries and prayers seem slow in coming?

We keep praying in faith.

Relentless faith

Many of us tend to point the blame on God when the answers to our prayers seem late. We tend to ask Him "why" the answers don't come, "why" they arrived late, or even "why doesn't He hear us." We are always quick to blame God who actually knows what we will pray for before we pray and responds in the fastest time possible - right at the moment we pray.

Actually, we are the ones who should keep praying when the answers to our prayers seem delayed, not God. Consider Daniel, who experienced such a delay. Here are some things we can learn from his experience:

God's answer is sent immediately

We read in Daniel 10:12 that God sends His reply the moment He hears our prayers.

"Then he said to me, "Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words.""

The enemy, however, seeks to delay or prevent God's response from arriving to us

We then read in the following verse how the enemy prevented Daniel from receiving God's reply in the soonest time possible.

"But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days..."

This means there's a war in the heavenlies for the answers to our prayers. Are we going to stop praying just because the answer is delayed? Are we going to quit on God because "He doesn't seem to respond"? I pray that we don't.

In fact, I pray that we respond like Daniel did when his prayers remain unanswered:

He fasted and kept praying for a time until he received the answers.

"In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled." (Daniel 10:2-3)

Soon enough, the answers did arrive. They arrived because God made them arrive:

"But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia." (Daniel 10:13)

In closing

Friends, God does answer our prayers, but the devil seeks to discourage us from seeking God. The more we pray, the more the enemy tries to hinder our prayers from being answered. We should never ever give up on praying for God's answers to arrive.