There are times in life when we are crying out to the Lord and we feel like He doesn’t hear us.  Sometimes the Lord “feels” distant because He is stretching and deepening our faith to trust Him.  Sometimes there are supernatural things at work that we don’t see like in the book of Daniel. Consider Daniel 10:12:

12 Then he said to me, “Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words. 

In the context of Daniel 10 we see Daniel has been given visions from the Lord about hardship and difficulty that was coming for Israel.  In response, we see Daniel turn to fasting and lamenting through prayer as he imagines how difficult this is going to be for him and his people.

But, while Daniel is praying the Lord speaks to Daniel through a vision of an angel and the angels says to Daniel, “Do not be afraid.”  This isn’t a rebuke for Daniel about being afraid.  This is an encouragement from the Lord so as to say, “Daniel, you don’t have to be afraid.”  This is the Lord lifting Daniel’s eyes to look to Him and trust in Him.  

In addition, the angel says to Daniel, “From the first day that you set your heart and humbled yourself before God, your words were heard?”  Take that in for a second.  When you read the rest of the passage on your own you will see Daniel has been praying for 21-days, so that in those 21-days of prayer Daniel must have had moments where he was thinking, “Lord, are you listening?”  Lord, do you care?  Lord, can you hear me?  And in verse 12 the Lord reminds Daniel, “From the first day you started praying, I heard you.”  Isn’t that good?  Look at the next verse:

13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was standing in my way for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.

I want to go slow here, because this might be new for some of us, but verse 13 is teaching us the reason for the delay is demonic activity.  Do you see it in verse 13?  The Lord heard Daniel’s prayers on the first day (vs. 12) but He was delayed because “the prince of the kingdom of Persia was standing in my way for 21-days.”  That’s demons!

In verse 13, Gabriel the angel says, “Those demons were giving me some trouble until Michael, the arc angel, comes to help him.”  Isn’t that wild to think about?  There are a couple things to consider when we think about angels and demons.  

First, the angelic / demonic realm can be very exciting for some of us today because of movies and television shows but we must remember that angels are simply messengers.  

Angels are powerful.  Angels are beautiful in appearance, but God’s Word actually teaches us that angels are in awe of humanity as the gospel works in humanity and through humanity, so let us not get too distracted by angels.  

It is the same with the demonic.  People will ask, “How do we know there isn’t a demon behind every rock?”  There is!  There is a spiritual realm all around us, so that everywhere we go there is spiritual activity at work.  

In Christ, we don’t need to be afraid of demons, but we do need to be aware.  In Christ, we can’t be possessed, but we can be oppressed / discouraged / distracted by demonic activity, so we don’t need to be afraid, but God’s Word is pulling back the curtain of the heavens so that we see there is spiritual activity at work in our marriages, parenting, church, thoughts, and world at every level at all times.

So the next time the Lord doesn’t answer our prayers the way that we want or as fast as we want it’s possible it’s because there is a spiritual war taking place in our lives, so that we can trust the possible delay isn’t because He didn’t hear or doesn’t care, because we know from Daniel 10 He hears every word of every prayer.