There’s also the old guilt-producing line that “if God seems far away, He didn’t move, you did.” Of course, that is sometimes true. We have allowed busyness, problems or pleasures to get between us and the face of God, and we need to repent and get back to the intimacy of our relationship with Him. Other times, though, it is simply not true. We desire Him as much as ever, but try as we may we are simply not receiving the answers to our questions.

 Daniel faced this problem, recorded in chapter 10 of his book. When an angel finally arrived with the answer to Daniel’s prayer, he explained that Daniel had been heard as soon as he prayed. However, there was a ruling principality over the area who had a vested interest in keeping Daniel from hearing what God had to say. That spiritual prince had wrestled with the angelic messenger, delaying him in bringing the answer to Daniel.

 We may find this hard to understand. How can demonic forces hinder the message that God wants to give to His people? Sometimes we need to suspend our desire to understand: not that God wants us to be mindless Christians, but some things are simply beyond our human understanding. God’s Word clearly tells us that this is what happened, therefore we need to be able to simply accept it.

 Unfortunately, many Christians live in blissful ignorance of the spiritual forces that surround us, and the constant battle that is being waged over this world. Just as those forces did not want Daniel to receive his answer from God, they also want to prevent us from receiving ours.

 However, there are two things that are very different for us than they were for Daniel. The first is that, if we have been born again, we have the Holy Spirit, who is God, living within us. He has restored our human spirit as the part of our being through which He can communicate with us. As we learn to develop our spirit, we have a means of hearing directly from Him – something with which external forces cannot directly interfere.

 There are times, though, when answers have to be dispatched not from the Spirit within us, but from the Throne Room. That’s where our second difference kicks in. Daniel had no authority over the battles in the spirit realm, but we have been given authority over all the power of the enemy. (Luke 10:19) Jesus said that what we bind on earth will be bound in heaven. In other words, we have the power to enter the battle and fight on the side of God’s angels.

We need to be pro-active. Simply putting our petitions out there and waiting for the answers to come is not enough, particularly when our prayers relate to issues which will bring damage to the kingdom of darkness. We need to be actively standing against any force which would hinder the answers coming to us; we need to be binding (forbidding) the enemy from hindering or delaying those answers; we need to be declaring an open heaven; and we need to be actively expecting to hear.

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This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.

There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)