DANIEL BELIEVED IN the power of prayer, and he didn’t care who knew that. When forces who were upset about the influence he had with King Darius tried to force Daniel out by persuading the king to ban prayer to anyone but the ruler, Daniel was unfazed.

He went home and continued his practice of thrice-daily prayer, in an upstairs room “where the window opened toward Jerusalem” (Daniel 6:10). In other words, in full view of everyone; he wasn’t going to hide.

Trapped by his own edict, King Darius reluctantly had Daniel thrown into a lion’s den as punishment for defying his edict. Daniel emerged unscathed the next morning, telling how an angel had come to shut the lions’ mouths. We don’t know explicitly that Daniel prayed for protection that night, but it’s a fair assumption.

It wasn’t the first time an angel had come to him with a dramatic answer. Once he had been praying for the people of God when an angel arrived with His answer: “At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved,” the visitor announced (Daniel 9:23).

Wouldn’t you like an answer to your prayer before you even got to the “amen” part, too? But what about when that doesn’t happen? Well, Daniel sets an example for us.

Sometime later, he was deep in prayer for his people again. He fasted and prayed for 21 days, at which point an angel arrived. Declaring Daniel to be “greatly loved” again (Daniel 10:11), the heavenly visitor explained he had been dispatched by God the first moment that Daniel had prayed—just as before.

But it had taken him three weeks to arrive with the answer, the angel went on, because his mission drew opposition from the prince of Persia—an unseen spiritual force opposed to the purposes of God.

It’s a reminder of the supernatural reality Paul writes of in Ephesians 6:12, that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” With that in mind, Paul admonishes in verse 13 that we should “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”

What might have happened if Daniel had given up earlier? In his book Destined for the Throne, Paul Billheimer suggests, “The answer to many prayers that have already been granted in heaven may never be received because the petitioner becomes weary, discouraged, or intimidated, and gives up the fight.”

When Jesus urged His disciples in Matthew 7 to ask, seek and knock, He used the continuous tense: not a one-time thing, but repeated asking, seeking and knocking. Sometimes, when an answer to prayer seems delayed, like Daniel we just need to stand firm—in the promise that we are greatly loved and that God’s promises may be delayed, but not denied.