Stuck Between A Rock and A Hard Place: Praying Powerful Prayers

The boys were all given new Babylonian names: Daniel was renamed Belteshazzar. Hananiah was renamed Shadrach, Mishael was renamed Meshach, and Azariah was renamed Abednego.

In the second year of king Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, he said to them, "I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”

Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, "O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it." The king replied to the astrologers, "This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”

The astrologers answered the king, "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.”

Submit Yourselves to God

³When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.

¹⁸If I had cherished sin in my heart,

the Lord would not have listened;

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."

"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

Praise be to the name of God forever and ever.

“God you are the one who changes times and seasons, you are the one who sets up kings and deposes them.”

“I thank and praise you”

Daniel replied, "No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.”