Pray In Daniel 9:1-27, Daniel turns to the Lord in prayer. His prayer is a model of intercessory prayer. He reads God’s Word, the Bible, and sees God’s promise of deliverance for his people. He turns that promise into a prayer, asking God to make his promise a reality. The first thing that he does is to confess the sin of his people. God had promised blessing, if they had been faithful to him, but they were not. Daniel accepted that God was faithful, but the people had got themselves into the state that they were in. For God’s sake! But Daniel doesn’t just ask God to take pity on the people. He doesn’t ask God to help them, for their sake. We often pray to God to help us, because our situation is so important to us, and we want God to take our issues seriously. We often have selfish motives and desires, and God is not really in a position to grant our selfish prayers. How can we be sure that our prayers will be heard and answered? By praying along that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). If we ask God to bring about what he has told us he wants to happen, then we know that we are asking good prayers. Daniel prayed, not primarily for the good of the people, but for God’s reputation and his glory. As John Piper outlines in his book ‘Desiring God‘, God is most glorified when he is being gracious to his people, is seen to be their God and Saviour, and when they praise him. That might seem self-centred, if we were to look for praise – but it isn’t with God, because he truly deserves it. Daniel prays for God’s name to be praised and honoured, through rescuing his people. He prays primarily for God’s sake, not the people’s sake. While the people Daniel was praying for had broken the old covenant with God, we can look forward to the new covenant where God himself ensures that it will not be broken. For God’s people across all time, the death and atonement of Jesus is the reason why we can call on God to be merciful and gracious. And just like the exiled people start returning to their homeland, believers in Jesus have a homeland in heaven to look forward to. In this sense, Daniel’s intercessory prayer mirrors that of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying for the good of his people (John 17:1-26). When we pray for God’s sake primarily, not our own selfish (or potentially selfish) aims, we know that God will grant our prayer requests. So, pray, for God’s sake!