9 December 2025

Daniel – Strong in Faith. Faithful in the Fire
Devotions from the life of a young man of conviction

10. Prayer as a Lifestyle – Why Relationship with God Is Your Foundation
Faithfulness doesn’t begin in emergencies but in everyday life

Daily Verse

“And he prayed three times a day, as he had done before.”
– Daniel 6:11

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Introduction: Power reveals character

For many people, prayer is like a fire extinguisher on the wall:
You’re glad it exists – but you hope you’ll never have to use it.
When a problem shows up, you grab it and cry: “God, help!”

Daniel knew prayers like this, but he knew something else far better:
Prayer as a rhythm that shaped every day.
Not out of fear, not out of pressure – but out of relationship.

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Devotion – Prayer not as duty, but as relationship

Daniel came to Babylon as a teenager. He was far from Jerusalem, far from the songs, the temple, the feasts. Everything that reminded him of God was left behind.
But instead of losing contact, he built something in that foreign land that no one could take from him: an inner habit.

Imagine what his daily life looked like:

The palace was loud – merchants, officials, servants, soldiers. Smells of food and metal, voices in foreign languages, hurried steps on stone floors.
Yet somewhere upstairs, behind a heavy door, there was a place of quiet.

A window, perhaps made of wood, facing west.
Facing a city he could never forget.
There Daniel knelt.

Three times a day.
Not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

In a world where idols stood in public squares and pagan rituals were everyday life, that place remained like a piece of home in a foreign land.
For Daniel, prayer was not a “religious act” – it was breathing with the soul.

And that breathing changed his character.

Many years later, as he rose in the royal court, Daniel changed nothing.
He became advisor to kings, governor of provinces, one of the highest officials in the kingdom.
Yet he remained the same man at the window.

He knew:
The more decisions you must make, the more you need stillness before God.

Then came the moment that tested everything.

A new law. Signed by the king.
30 days without prayer – except to the king.
A month that may have seemed like a formality, a harmless regulation, to many.

But Daniel saw more than paper and politics.
He saw a line his heart could not cross.

He could have found excuses:

“God knows my heart.”
“I can pray again later.”
“It’s only one month.”

But habits are like roots.
What grows deep cannot simply be cut off.

Daniel left his window open.
Perhaps he heard the murmuring of the streets, the footsteps of guards, the clinking of armor outside.
He knew people would watch him.
He knew there would be consequences.

But he prayed.
“As he had done before.”

That is one of the strongest sentences in the Bible:
Not “because he suddenly had to” – but “as he had always done.”

Faithfulness is not created in a moment of danger, but long before, in ordinary days when no one is watching.

The miracle of Daniel surviving the lions’ den impresses us.
But the real miracle had already happened:

That the lions’ den did not change him,
because the window had shaped him for years.

In the night, in that dark hole of stone, Daniel did not suddenly trust God –
he did it as he had always done.
The prayer at the window was the preparation for the prayer in the pit.

What does this mean for us?

We long for strong moments of faith, bold decisions, supernatural miracles.
But Daniel shows: the secret of great faith stories is often unspectacular consistency.

God builds in habits what we will need in crises.

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What we can learn from Daniel

• When prayer is relationship, you don’t need a reason – you need time.

• Big trials are won by people who live small faithfulness.

• Your prayer life doesn’t disappear in crisis – it reveals how deep it has become.

• The strongest people are often the quietest pray-ers.

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Practical steps for today

1. Choose a specific time today to talk with God – not randomly, but intentionally.

2. Make a place your “window” – a chair, a table, a walk.

3. Ask God not only for solutions, but for closeness.

4. Let your prayer be simple – not a program, but a conversation.

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Questions to reflect on

• What habit do I want to firmly build into my daily life today?

• Where have I reduced prayer to “emergencies” – and how can I change that?

• What would be my “as I had done before” in faith that keeps me steady?

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Prayer

Lord,
make prayer a part of my life, not a tool.
Give me calm in everyday life, spaces of encounter, moments of listening.
Teach me to come to You faithfully, not only when needed,
but because I love You.
Deepen my relationship with You, day by day,
until faithfulness becomes natural to me.
Amen.

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Key thought of the day

Prayer is not a moment of need –
it is the rhythm of a life built on God.

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