FAITH CAPSULE: Power prayer always answers and unfailingly.

Daniel 6

Praying as a way of life before God is a sacrifice that entails labour.
The labor in prayer is costly, meaning prayer is not cheap and will not gain the attention of God.
David demonstrated that sacrifice is costly and not cheap in praying before God.
Once, David had to sacrifice before God, and when offered land for free, he refused and did not accept.
2 Samuel 24:24 records of David, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.”
Costly, David sacrificed before God.
Sacrifice is with labour; it is costly, so is prayer before God a sacrifice, labour with cost.
To pray before God requires understanding and embracing the answer from God with understanding.
Praying before God is not to intimate God for answers.
No one knows better than God.
God is God, the unchanging changer, and God alone reverses the irreversible.
The earnest prayer of Jesus(Luke 22:44) and the prayer of Elijah (James 5:17-18) are the testimony that praying with earnestness is labor that will provoke an answer from God.
Prayer is the power to open heaven.
At the location of water baptism, where people were getting baptized, there was no record of heaven opened, but without prayer.
Luke 3:21-22 records, “When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened.”
Pray with earnestness.
Prayer is a sacrifice with labor that answers for deliverance and preservation in this wicked world. 
Prayer is a labour with a custom approach.
David testifies labor prayer for his deliverance and preservation that is custom: “As for me, I will call upon God, and the LORD shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice.” (Psalm 55:16-17) 
Praying with labor, with a custom, will not fail to gain and retain the presence of God.
Daniel is another one with a lifestyle of prayer as a laborer in a custom. 
Daniel 6:10 records the testimony of his deliverance and preservation, “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.” 
Labor can be a custom way of seeking God. Daniel needed the intervention of God when he engaged in prayer as his custom, and could not die before his time.
Do you have a schedule for attending to God prayerfully? 
Study the word of God to understand the power of praying before God as a lifestyle.

Prayer for the day: Ask for the strength of prayer as a way of life.

FAITH CAPSULE: Prayer never fails to open the door.

Daniel 6

Prayer never fails to open the door.
Prayer will not fail; however, a wrong approach does not lead to the right.
To pray before God calls for understanding and to embrace the answer from God with understanding.
The answer to prayer before God is not rooted in forcing God to answer as expected.
Praying before God does not have to be in a multitude of words or a marathon in prayer.
Praying before God is seeking God to find God.
In all ways of seeking God, there is a demand for understanding.
Psalm 47:7 records that praising God demands understanding, stating, “For God is the King of all the earth; Sing praises with understanding.”
If the word demands praising with understanding, praying before God demands praying with understanding.
Asking, seeking, and knocking is praying before God.
Matthew 7:1-12 is a documentation to understand praying before God, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
The key is to understand how to ask with the expectation of getting.
Praying before God is waiting on God.
The word of God promises to act for those who wait on Him.
Isaiah 64: 4 records, “For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him.”
If God will not answer prayer before Him, He would not have asked to seek Him prayerfully.
God answers prayer; He waits to act for those who wait for him.
Daniel testifies to prayer as a labor with a custom approach.
Daniel testifies labor prayer for his deliverance and preservation that is custom: “As for me, I will call upon God, and the LORD shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice.” (Psalm 55:16-17) 
Praying with labor, with a custom, will not fail to gain and retain the presence of God.
God is God, the unchanging changer, and God alone reverses the irreversible.
With understanding, pray earnestly when the situation calls for seeking God, to find Him with prayer.

Prayer for the day: Ask that the understanding and strength needed at prayer time become established in you.

FAITH CAPSULE: Know that Jesus, the Word of God, is light.

Psalm 95

Know the word of God.
John 1:1 records, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Jesus is the Word of God.
John 8:12 states, “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
Know that Jesus, the Word of God, is light.
The destination for the word of God is the heart of all that will open up for the entrance of the word of God.
A heart that does not allow the word of God shall settle for a dark world.
Take to the Word of God as stated in Revelation 3:20, ” Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
Without doubt, the Word of God is for the heart.
Is your heart with space for the Word of God?
To become for the Word of God is not by force.
God is not a slave master, with the force to gain entrance into one with no interest in allowing God into the heart.
God is a saving master; He knocks on the heart to be open for His entrance.
Proverbs 4:4 buttressed, “He also taught me, and said to me: ‘Let your heart retain my words; Keep my commands, and live.” When word enters the heart, it answers in every way of life by terminating the activity of darkness. With understanding, word is true to terminate darkness as the Psalmist testified, “The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.” (Psalm 119:130)
Above all, the word of God should be in the heart in the world of darkness.
A heart that does not allow the Word of God to settle in the heart shall settle for a wicked and dark world.
Psalm 95:7-9 stated,“Today, if you will hear His voice: ‘Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work.”
The children of Israel heard Him with their ears, not with their hearts, and that caused them to be a rebellious generation.
Evidently, not being able to hear God with the heart, the Israelites turned rebellious and tested God.
The Word of God must gain into the heart more than into the head.
Despite all that the word of God accomplished, the children of Israel failed to see in the Word of God.
Psalm 95:10 concludes, “…it is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.” Just like the Israelites, many are not allowing the Word of God to be a direction in the darkness of the world.
A failure to allow the Word of God is causing hearts to go astray.

Prayer for the day: Ask to be enabled for the entrance of the word.

FAITH CAPSULE: A hardened heart rides on empty pride for self-destruction.  

Daniel 5

An empty pride heart is arrogantly lifted to be destroyed.
God does not have plans for those with pride but to pass them unto their self-destruction.
God addressed pride through Jeremiah, “Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: ‘In this manner I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear My words, who follow the dictates of their hearts, and walk after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be just like this sash which is profitable for nothing.” (Jeremiah 13:8-10)
In the wicked world, pride has taken a prominent position.
The word of God makes it clear that pride is evil.
With pride, man refuses to hear God.
The majority are in a position to hear but give themselves to the dictates of their heart.
The walks of the pride are not in the word of God, but in the character of one who serves God.
Pride of the heart becomes the agent to destroy.
Uzziah was an example of a prideful heart.
Uzziah was sixteen years old whenhe became King.
He reigned for fifty-two years in Jerusalem because God lifted him. Uzziah did right in the sight of God. He sought God as God made him prosper.
Later, as King, “…he was strong, his heart was lifted up, to his destruction, for he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.” (2 Chronicles 26:16)
One with a lifted heart to self-destruction is the character of empty pride to become hardened.
As the King, it is wrong to burn incense to God as a priest.
When Priest Azariah corrected Uzziah for his wrongdoing, he became angry, and leprosy broke out on his forehead.
God lifted Uzziah, the pride of the heart, and reduced him.
2 Chronicles 26:21 records, “King Uzziah was a leper until the day of his death. He dwelt in an isolated house, because he was a leper; for he was cut off from the house of the Lord…”
Among the ways to avoid becoming a victim of pride is to keep your heart with all diligence. (Proverbs 4:23)
King Uzziah was a victim of a hardened heart.
Nebuchadnezzar was also a great king until he became a victim of pride through his hardened heart.
Daniel 5:20-21 recorded, “But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. Then he was driven from the sons of men, his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and appoints over it whomever He chooses.”

Prayer for today: Ask God for the grace not to live life as a victim of pride.

FAITH CAPSULE: Have faith that drowns the fear of the world and not have a place.

Job1, 2:1-10

Do you fear God or not?
One with no fear of God consciously extends an invitation to the enemy of all.
The word of God described Job, “…blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. And he had seven sons and three daughters. Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yokes of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.” (Job 1:1-3)
Job was a man of God.
He was straight with God, but he was not sure of the walk of his children with God.
Job was constantly sanctifying his children.
Job was rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings according to the number of his children, as stated: “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” (Job 1:4-5)
After Satan was allowed by God to attack Job, he lost his properties, his children, and his health.
By virtue of all his adversities, he deplores his birth by cursing the day of his birth.
On top of it all, Job gave a testimony, “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.” (Job 3:25-26) What could have been the fear of Job?
Job became exposed to fear as he opened himself up to the fear of the world.
Fear is not of God; fear is the initiation of evil.
Whenever fear rises in life, faith will sink.
Fear and faith do not complement each other.
What could have happened to Job to be exercising great fear?
One with a lack of understanding of the extent of protective covering of God over the affairs of all in the areas of our concern will possibly be exposed to fear and not have faith.
Clearly, God is not pleased without faith.
Unfortunately, Satan knew the extent of the protection of God over Job when he mentioned that God had made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he had on every side. (Job 1:10)
When God makes you impenetrable, do not make yourself penetrable for Satan.
One with a lack of understanding of what God can do shall become exposed to Satan, to gain a position with pain.
Psalmist states, “A man who is in honor, yet does not understand, is like the beasts that perish.” (Psalm 49:20)
All should know that God is mindful of all, He visits, and He crowns with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:4-5)
Give yourself to the word of God to know and understand that God delivers and preserves.

Prayer for today: Ask that faith in God rise in your life, as fear of the world be drowned and not have a place in your life.