I want to speak today about a kind of prayer that is becoming increasingly rare in the church — and increasingly necessary for the hour we are living in. It is the prayer of the remnant. It is not the polished, rehearsed, five-minute offering we call prayer at the opening of a church service. It is not the rushed, perfunctory prayer we say over a meal when we are not even really talking to anyone in particular. The prayer of the remnant is what Daniel did in Daniel 9: he set his face toward God. That phrase — "I set my face" — carries the full weight of intentionality, resolve, and holy stubbornness. In Hebrew it is nātan pānay — literally, "I gave my face." I turned the full force of my attention, my will, and my being toward the Lord God and refused to be moved until heaven responded.
What triggered Daniel's prayer? He had been reading the Scriptures — specifically the book of Jeremiah — and he found in Jeremiah 25:11–12 and 29:10 the prophecy that God would accomplish seventy years of desolation for Jerusalem before restoring the people from captivity. Daniel 9:2 records this: "I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the LORD through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem." Daniel's prayer was ignited by the Word of God. He read a promise, and rather than sitting back and thinking "God will do it in His time, nothing is required of me," he was provoked to prayer. He understood that God's promises are not automatic — they are released through the intercession of a people who take the Word seriously enough to pray it back to God with tears and fasting. This is one of the most important principles in intercessory prayer: God's written promises are not meant merely to comfort us, they are meant to fuel our intercession. Find a promise in Scripture and make it the basis of your prayer.
How does Daniel approach God in this prayer? He goes to extraordinary lengths of self-humbling: fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. In the ancient Near East, sackcloth — rough, uncomfortable goat-hair fabric — was the garment of mourning, of grief, of desperate appeal to a superior. Ashes on the head signified mortality, unworthiness, and complete dependence. Daniel was not performing for an audience — he was engaging in the kind of soul-humbling that strips away every pretense and comes before God in naked dependence. This resonates with what God says in 2 Chronicles 7:14 — one of the most important conditional promises in all of Scripture: "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." Four conditions: humble themselves, pray, seek His face, turn from wicked ways. Daniel met every one of them, and he met them not as an individual pursuit of personal blessing but as a representative intercessor standing in the gap for an entire nation.
The substance of Daniel's prayer is extraordinary. He begins not with petition but with adoration: "O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments" (v. 4). Even in the middle of national crisis and personal anguish, Daniel anchors his prayer in who God is — great, awesome, a covenant-keeper, a mercy-extender. This is the foundation of all effective intercession: not the urgency of the need, but the character of the God we are bringing the need to. When you know who God is — truly know Him — you can pray with a confidence that does not waver in the face of impossible odds.
Then comes something that is almost startling in its honesty: Daniel confesses sin. Not the sins of others. Not the sins of the pagans around him. His own sins, and the sins of his people. Verse 5: "We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments." Verse 8: "O LORD, to us belongs shame of face." Verse 11: "Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law, and has departed so as not to obey Your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us." Daniel was arguably the most righteous man in Babylon — the text in chapter 1 describes how he "purposed in his heart" not to defile himself (1:8), and in chapter 6, his enemies could find no fault in him except his devotion to God. Yet he did not pray, "Lord, I'm not like the rest of them. Judge them but spare me." He identified himself completely with the condition of his people and took their sin upon himself in intercession. This is identificational repentance — standing in the gap not to excuse sin but to carry it before God in a cry for mercy. It is the intercession that Jesus Himself modeled on the cross when He became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).
I want to draw your attention to Daniel's repeated appeal to God's character rather than to his own merit. Verse 18 is pivotal: "For we do not present our supplications before You because of our righteous deeds, but because of Your great mercies." The Hebrew word for "mercies" here is raḥamîm — a plural of intensity derived from the word for womb, conveying the most tender, compassionate, protective love of a mother for the child of her own body. Daniel is not appealing to his own track record of prayer, his years of faithfulness, his reputation in the kingdom, his three-times-daily devotions. He is throwing himself entirely upon the raḥamîm — the womb-love, the tender mercies of God. This is the ground that every intercessor must find: not our faithfulness but His, not our merit but His mercy, not our name but His. As verse 19 cries: "Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name." The ultimate appeal is God's own glory and God's own name. When you pray for your city, your nation, and your church on the basis of God's own name and reputation, you are praying in alignment with the very heart of God.
The response to Daniel's prayer came while he was still praying. Verse 21: "Yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering." The answer was dispatched from heaven before Daniel finished his prayer. Isaiah 65:24 confirms this principle: "It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear." The remnant prayer of one yielded intercessor moved heaven with such speed that an archangel was dispatched mid-sentence. Do not underestimate what one person, fully yielded, fully humbled, armed with the Word of God, and standing in the gap for others can accomplish in the realm of the Spirit. History is not shaped primarily by politicians and armies — it is shaped by those who set their face toward God, take the sins of a generation upon themselves, and cry out in the authority of God's own name for His mercy to prevail.
We need the prayer of the remnant today. Not later. Not when we feel more qualified or more spiritual or more certain of the outcome. Now — in the middle of cultural chaos, spiritual confusion, and the pressing needs of the people around us. The remnant does not wait until conditions are favourable. The remnant creates the conditions. We are the people who set their faces. We are the people who take the Word seriously enough to pray it. We are the people who humble ourselves before the throne without pretense or performance, pleading the mercy of God over our families, our churches, our cities, and our generation. God is still looking for what He declared in Ezekiel 22:30: "So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it." Will you be that person? Will you stand in the gap? Will you set your face toward God and refuse to move until heaven answers? The prayer mountain is calling. The remnant is needed. And the God who heard Daniel is still listening.