"Think Long"
Daniel 9:1-6, 20-23
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Series: "The Circle Maker" by Mark Batterson

Introduction: In the last two weeks we have talked about dreaming big, and praying hard. We learned about how Honi the sage, who in a time of drought decided to draw a circle, kneel down in it, and pray for rain. He did not stop praying for rain until God brought them rain! We have talked about how when we pray within God’s will, God will answer. When we understand God’s promises, and pray for these in our lives, then God will respond. But we must not give up hope when we pray.

There is another story of Honi, who near the end of his life was walking down a dirt road, when he saw a man planting a carob tree. Curious of why the man was planting the tree he asked, “How long will it take this tree to bear fruit?” The man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi then asked, “Are you quite sure you will live another seventy years to eat its fruit?” The man responded, “Perhaps not. However, when I was born into this world I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren…”

This encounter changed how Honi prayed. He realized that praying is like planting. Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It will eventually bear fruit, if not for him, then for future generations. Our prayers will outlive us. That is what it means to “Think Long,” which is what we will be talking about today.

I. Thinking Ahead- (Daniel 9; Psalm 5:1-2)

Example- On the Swedish island Visingso, there is a mysterious forest of oak trees; mysterious because oak trees aren’t indigenous to the island. The origin of these oak trees was unknown for more than a century. Then in 1980, the Swedish Navy received a letter from the Forestry Department reporting that their requested ship lumber was ready. The Navy didn’t even know it had ordered lumber. It turns out that in 1829, the Swedish Parliament, recognizing that it takes oak trees 150 years to mature, and anticipating a shortage of lumber at the turn of the twenty-first century, ordered 20,000 oak trees planted on Visingso and protected for the Navy! THAT IS THINKING LONG.

a. The change of prayer- When it comes to prayer, we need to

understand that prayer doesn’t just change circumstances; more important it changes us. It alters both our external realities and our internal realities. It enables us to see beyond our circumstances, beyond ourselves, and beyond time!

Think about the prophet Daniel. Daniel was someone who was committed to prayer. In fact, even when prayer was outlawed, Daniel continued to pray. Three times a day Daniel would pray. Daniel even prayed with his windows open so that everyone could see him praying. Few people have prayed with more consistency or intensity than Daniel.

When we talk about thinking long, we see that Daniel was one who did just this. Daniel had a big dream of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Daniel understood that this dream would probably not be fulfilled during his lifetime. But he prayed for it just the same. When he prayed, he would make sure he was facing the city of Jerusalem, knowing that even though he wouldn’t see it with his physical eyes, yet he saw it with his spiritual eyes. Daniel knew all this because God had given him a prophecy that it would take “seventy years” for the desolation of Jerusalem to come to an end.

Daniel never stopped dreaming this dream, and never stopped praying this prayer. Daniel gives us a great example of thinking long. That is what prophets do, because the nature of their prophecies is that they will not happen until far into the future. Yet, Daniel had an even greater dream, and that was the second coming of Christ. Understand that I am not saying/ the first coming of Christ/ that we already know about, and talk about at Advent season. I am talking about the second coming of Christ, when Christ will come down from heaven and appear AGAIN! Daniel’s prayers and prophecies were about the blessings we will reap when Christ returns.

Hear the answer to Daniel’s prayer in Daniel, chapter 9. In verse 25 Daniel is told: “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’” In this verse Daniel is told about both the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the coming again of Christ, which will happen long into the future.

When we try and pray like Daniel, it can be seen as long and boring. You draw a prayer circle, you circle the promise of God, and you start to pray. But what if you are praying for something that won’t happen in your lifetime. How do you get excited about that? You get excited, because you know that God is a God of eternity, to whom time has a much different meaning. God hears our prayers now, and will answer them in the future. We get excited knowing that our prayer will change us inside, and will change the external reality in the future. It is simply about praying with faithfulness.

b. Praying on your knees- Daniel was one of the most brilliant

men of all time. Daniel was able to explain riddles and solve problems unlike anyone in his generation. Daniel had the most amazing dreams from God, and God gave him the gift to interpret dreams as well. But what really set Daniel apart was the fact that he would regularly humble himself before his God by getting down on his knees and praying! With his prayers he brought kings and kingdoms to their knees.

Daniel was not one to pray just when he needed God’s help. Daniel was one who prayed every day. I’m sure Daniel was praying when he was in the lion’s den, face to face with a hungry lion, but he approached every day and every prayer with the same intensity. Yet, it was his prayer posture, of getting down on his knees, that was the true power of his prayer.

Daniel was a person who in essence was a prisoner of war. Babylon came and besieged Jerusalem, and in doing so took many of the people back to Babylon; Daniel being one such person. But Daniel ultimately was placed in the position of Prime Minister. How does one move from captive, to Prime Minister? Only by God, and only through prayer.

Prayer invites God into the equation like no other act that we do. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do. If you will humble yourself and get down on your knees to pray to God, then you never know what God will do in and through your life, or what you will do, or who you will meet.

While you can pray standing up, lying down, or walking, our posture sets the tone for our prayers. If your words are what you say in your prayer, your posture is how you say it. There is a reason that one of the postures the Bible talks about in prayer is kneeling. When we kneel, we help our heart and mind to understand the seriousness of prayer, and our status to God.

When I extend my hands in worship, it symbolizes my surrender to God. When we kneel down in prayer, we show that we desire to be humble before God, and that the only reason we can even come to God in prayer is because of the great work that Christ did for us on the cross!

Now don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing magical about kneeling in prayer. When you kneel it doesn’t make your prayers more powerful. But it is biblical, and it is helpful for our mental state. When we practice this prescribed posture, we are saying something to God about our hearts, and we are saying something to God about our faith.

The Bible is very clear that Daniel prayed three times a day, upstairs in his room, down on his knees. He opened the window to Jerusalem. He did this because Daniel was facing towards his dream. His physical posture matched his mental posture. It was his way of staying focused. And when we get on our knees, it helps us to stay focused.

It is also about developing a daily rhythm with God. As King David said in Psalm 5:1-2, “Give ear to my words O Lord. Consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help, my king and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, You hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before You and wait in expectation.” Every morning we should pray to God. During the day we should find time to pray to God. Before we end our day we should pray to God. Develop this daily rhythm, and like Daniel, you might try kneeling when you pray.

II. Our Goal List- (Mark 9:29)

a. The faith barrier- On October 14, 1947 a four-engine B-29

plane took off in the California desert. Attached to its belly was a Bell X-1 experimental plane piloted by Chuck Yeager. At 25,000 feet the X-1 dropped from the fuselage and its rocket engine fired up. It then ascended to 42,000 feet… As the plane approached Mach 1, it began to shake violently. As Yeager’s plane hit Mach .965 the speed indicator went haywire. At Mach .995 the g-force blurred his vision and turned his stomach. Then, just as it seemed the plane would disintegrate, there was a loud sonic boom followed by an almost instantaneous and eerie silence. As the plane crossed the sound barrier, 761 miles per hour, the air pressure shifted from the front of the plane to the back. Yeager reached Mach 1.07 before cutting his engines and coming back down to land the plane. The unbreakable sound barrier had been broken!

Just as there is a sound barrier, so there is a faith barrier. The only way to break the faith barrier is through prayer. You must “pray through”. As you get close to a breakthrough things might start to seem as if they are coming apart. If you allow your disappointments to create a drag, your doubts will nosedive your dreams. To break the faith barrier at these challenging times you must pray through!

Similar to that sonic boom that Chuck Yeager heard when he broke the sound barrier, we will experience a boom in our spirits when that moment comes, where we know God has answered our prayer. In that moment, frustration and confusion give way to quiet confidence. You are at peace and experiencing calm, because you know it is out of your hands and in the almighty hands of God.

There are times when we need something more than prayer to get past the faith barrier. This something is fasting. Jesus told His disciples, in Mark 9:29, in referring to how evil spirits can be cast out: “He replied, ‘This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting.’” Some miracles are only accessible by prayer AND fasting. It takes the combination of the two to unlock the spiritual power we need to accomplish the work of God in and through our lives. If you have never fasted, I encourage you to combine your prayer times with a time of fasting. It is wonderful to see how God works through the combination of these disciplines.

b. Life list- Have you ever made a life list? In 1940, a fifteen-

year-old named John Goddard did. He listed 127 life goals. This was no ordinary list. By the time he was 50 he had achieved 108 of his 127. Listen to some of what he accomplished: milk a poisonous snake; skin-dive to forty feet and hold breath two and a half minutes underwater; study primitive culture in Borneo; land on and take off from an aircraft carrier; light a match with a .22 rifle; circumnavigate the globe; and on and on his list goes!

The truth is, goal setting is a great way of doing what we have talked about thus far in our series: dreaming big, praying hard, and thinking long. Goals are the cause and effect of praying hard. The more you pray, the more God-sized goals you’ll be inspired to go after. But prayer doesn’t just inspire godly goals, it also ensures that you keep praying hard because the only way you’ll accomplish a God-sized goal is to pray! Prayers naturally turn into goals, and goals naturally turn into prayers. Goals give you a prayer target. As I have talked much about dreaming big, praying hard, and thinking long, let’s take the rest of our time to get practical…

1. Start with prayer. Your goals should come from your prayer time.

The reason for this is that through your prayer time God will direct you to the goals He wants you to have. And as we talked about before, it is when our goals are in line with God’s will that God will say “yes” to our dreams.

The other night I was praying and I felt God give me two dreams: grow the church with those who need Jesus; and that God would bring a family to the church that would be healed and strengthened through Him. I am now circling these goals and praying for them to happen!

2. Check your motives. If you set selfish goals, God is not going to give

them to you. You need to take a long, honest look in the mirror and make sure you’re going after your goals for the right reasons.

At the last Session meeting someone mentioned how we need more people in our church. I asked them why? They then said that we need to be fulfilling our mission statement of bringing people to know Jesus Christ. God will honor this goal. God doesn’t want us just to bring lots of people to church. God wants people to come to know Him and have their lives changed because of knowing Him!

3. Think in categories. This will help make sure your goals are balanced.

You might divide your goals into the categories of: family, those who you can influence; your physical well being; and your spiritual well being. Then have God lead you into what He wants for you in each of these categories.

4. Be specific. If a goal isn’t measurable, then there is no way of knowing

if you have accomplished it. For example, losing weight isn’t a goal, unless you will be satisfied with losing just one pound. List the specific amount you want to lose. Going back to my goal of growing the church with people who need Jesus, that should become more specific for me as I pray more about it so I know what God desires. Should it be 2 people, or 200 people? I need God to guide me in this.

5. Write it down. There is a good saying, which goes like this: “The

shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.” What this means is, that when you just try and remember it, it will easily leave your thoughts. But if you write it down and put it in a place where you see it regularly, then you will be constantly reminded of it and where you stand with it. This is then combined with the next one…

6. Include others. At some point it is important to verbalize your goals

with someone that you trust. Nothing cements a relationship like a shared goal. This person can encourage you in your goal, pray for you in your goal, and help to keep you accountable in your goal. This way, you will be less likely to forget about the goal and you will not give up so easily.

7. Celebrate along the way. This is what I like about our new “praise

report” sheets! These praise reports allow us to give thanks to God for answered prayer. It is always energizing to see the success that we have in achieving our goals. It is also helpful to our faith and our dreams when we see that God is leading us forward by achieving what He has placed on our hearts.

8. Dream big. Our dreams fall into the categories of both short-term and

long-term; small and big. It is important to make sure that you have some big dreams on your list. It isn’t a goal that is big/ for the sake of being big. It is a goal that is big because you know this is what God wants to accomplish through you!

9. Think long. Most of us overestimate what we can accomplish in the

next year, and in the next two years. If we want to dream big, then we have to think long. We have to have dreams that will take years to achieve, or might not be achieved until after we are gone. We might have dreams that start with us, where we just plant the seed and get it going.

10. Pray hard. Goal setting begins AND ENDS with prayer. God-

ordained goals are conceived in the context of prayer, and prayer is what brings them to full term. You need to keep circling your goals in prayer. As you circle your goals, it not only creates God-ordained opportunities, it also helps us to recognize God-ordained opportunities.

Conclusion: I love this thought of “thinking long.” I love it because like Honi, it has stretched my thinking about how I am called to dream and pray. If I don’t put this concept of thinking long into my life, then I will be fearful of having big dreams, because I won’t believe that my actions today will lead God to do a great work beyond my lifetime. I will lose the perspective that a seed planted today becomes fruit somewhere down the road. I hope you are challenged today to dream big, pray hard, and think long. Amen.