Why does God sometimes wait for years to answer certain prayers? Why does God sometimes leave us are we left with disturbing questions? In this message you will see an answer that almost never addressed.

<p>Why does God sometimes wait for years to answer certain prayers? Why does God sometimes leave us are we left with disturbing questions? In this message you will see an answer that almost never addressed.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Freedom Health Ministries

Gabriel Arruda

Why Did Daniel Fast for 21 Days?

Father in heaven, Lord, I ask, would you please send us your Holy Spirit?

We live in a dark world and we really need your light.

And you've promised on the Sabbath day to give us a special blessing and we're expecting that, Lord.

And so I ask that you please use me as a speaker, help me to speak your words only, and I also ask that you be with the hearts and the ears of everyone here.

If you have a special word for someone, give it to them this morning Lord.

Title of this message is, Why Did Daniel Fast for 21 Days?

Why does God delay answering your prayers?

Why does God delay answering prayers and not just vain prayers for cars and riches or silly things?

Really important prayers, things that God could do and yet does not do.

Why does he sometimes withhold information from us?

Why does he allow us to go through difficult situations and sometimes not even tell us why?

I'm gonna propose that there's not 1 answer to this question, but I'm going to share, I think there's probably like 4 or 5 answers to this question, but I'm gonna share 1 that you have probably never heard before.

I'm just curious, how many of you currently have an unanswered prayer?

By a show of hands, you've been praying for something maybe for years and it has not yet been answered.

Okay, this will be relevant to all of you.

I wanna share with you a Bible character that had a very long unanswered prayer.

There's many of them, but we're gonna go to Daniel.

Please open your Bibles with me to Daniel chapter 10.

We're gonna go to Daniel chapter 10 and we'll start by reading verses 1 through 3.

It says, in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel whose name was called Belteshazzar.

And the thing was true, but the time appointed was long.

And he understood the thing and had understanding of the vision.

In those days I Daniel was mourning, how long?

3 full weeks I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine to my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till 3 whole weeks were fulfilled." And so we see Daniel, chapter 10 opens with Daniel, he gets some understanding, but apparently there's something about his understanding that troubles him, and he goes into a full-on no pleasant food type of fast that ends up lasting 3 weeks.

Notice verse 12, Then said he unto me, so this is the angel Gabriel who had come to him, Fear not Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to chase yourself before thy God, your words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

But notice what happens, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me.

That's a type of Satan, the power behind the prince of Persia.

And withstood me 21 days, But lo, Michael, 1 of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the king of Persia.

Now I am come to make thee to understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days.

And yet for the vision is for many days." So much we could talk about there, but I want to share with you that he was praying 21 days, fasting 21 days.

At the end of the 21 days, Gabriel comes and has a breakthrough.

Gabriel is able to break through the barrier that Satan had been erecting, but only because Michael came, which is a really a battle name for Jesus.

Don't have time to share that study, but it's a battle name for Jesus.

And this scene has always provoked a lot of questions for me.

Did you notice it said when God heard his prayer?

From day 1, from the time you set your heart, God heard.

Did the angels run out of gas along the way or something like that?

You know, the thing that occurs to me is Satan was opposing and it took 21 days and I think to myself, is God God or not?

Why did it take a 21-day wrestle with Satan to break through?

Is it because God had to, you know, rest up and do some training before He could win a battle with Satan?

We're told that He could just as easily destroy Satan as we cast a pebble to the ground.

Why did it take all that time to break through Satan's opposition?

Well, to answer this, let me share some context with you.

Something that I didn't realize, and most people don't realize, until I studied this in depth, is that Daniel's 21-day fast is a culmination of 17 years of confusion.

It's a culmination of 17 years where Daniel is absolutely perplexed.

It starts at the end of his vision in chapter 7.

He'd had that whole vision of Daniel 7, you probably know the contents of that vision.

He says, hitherto is the end of the matter.

As for me, Daniel, my mind or my cognition was what?

And my countenance changed in me but I kept the matter in my heart.

So at the end of Daniel 7 vision, how did he feel?

He's distressed, he's troubled, and it says his mind troubled him.

He didn't understand the information that was told him.

Now this is happening it says in the first year of Belshazzar, if you read the first verse, and based on the best archaeological findings we have that's about 553 BC.

Now Daniel chapter 8 happens 3 years later.

Notice what happens at the end of Daniel chapter 8.

Turn with me to Daniel 8, look at the last verse, verse 27.

Daniel chapter 8, verse 27, it says, and I, Daniel, whoa, what did he do?

I fainted and was sick certain days after I rose up and did the king's business, and I was astonished at the vision, but how much did he understand?

So Daniel chapter 7, he gets that vision of Daniel chapter 7, the 4 beasts, the little horn, all the bad things the little horn does.

He's like, well, this is really disturbing.

Daniel chapter 8, he, you know, it predicts the conquer of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and then it says the kingdom that destroys Greece will destroy the holy people and the little horn in this vision destroys the sanctuary and then there's this 2300 day cleansing of the sanctuary or until the sanctuary is cleansed and he faints.

And you know I've always just kind of glossed over this fact, but do you realize how distressed you have to be to faint?

I saw a video the other day online, it was actually really funny.

You know that the state fairs, they come and they set up these cheesy rides that are not safe for most people to go on, and they have these haunted houses.

Well, they had a camera set up in this haunted house, and they had a guy in the haunted house that was dressed up like some kind of a monster, and he would come out and scare people.

Well, they had a video camera showing all the people going through getting scared.

And this guy comes out, and this 1 older gentleman's walking through, this guy comes out, scares him, the guy passes out.

They kind of, they're looking around like, what do we do now?

This person's laid out on the floor the guy got so overwhelmed with fear he passed out he passed out there are also videos you could see of people passing out when they get life sentence verdicts I know if you've ever seen those They hear it and just they just pass out right in their seat.

I've heard stories of people passing out in hospital waiting rooms when the surgeon informs them that their loved 1 did not survive the surgery.

Back to Menu

Why Did Daniel Fast for 21 Days?

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

The Mystery of God

The Mystery of God- Part 2

35m

The Ascension of Christ

1h 3m

It Happened Because of Prayer

Give Him Not Silence

42m

The Ultimate Match - Knowing God’s Will in Choosing a Medical Specialty and Residency

1h 8m

The Most Popular Lie in the Church

34m

FYI 2009 Seminar by Dwayne Lemon

Now What Do We Do?

1h

The Cross and the Sanctuary

The Cross and The Sanctuary- Part 1

34m

Salvation in Light of the Great Controversy

41m

But, Lord...

32m

WYC 2013 Seminar: Always Ready for Freedom

Overcoming Seminar, Part 6

1h

God With Us

50m

Sound Doctrine