When problems occur in our lives, the most common response is that God is somehow not being fair or that our situation is unjust. When tragedy strikes in a family often this will be mentioned as the reason why people turn their backs on God, or for many, the reason why they never seek God. But consider how irrational this response is. If I bought a bookshelf unassembled, then attempted to assemble it on my own without using the instruction manual. If then, it didn't work, would I have any right to be angry with the makers of it? Would they not have asked if I followed the instruction manual? The word, Bible, can be viewed as an acrostic for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. God has lovingly given us 66 books which detail everything including how we should live our lives. He has given us prophecy, much of which has already been fulfilled to reassure us that His Word can be trusted. But the overwhelming majority have never opened the pages of this great book. Others look at only certain portions. Problems and trials will come to all of humanity, we can't escape it. But how we respond to these events depends greatly on whether we are choosing to face these events on the solid foundation of the Rock of Jesus and God's Word or on the shifting sands of human philosophy.

We come to realize that Daniel, besides being a prophet, a member of the king's cabinet, and a seer of dreams and visions was also a student of God's Word and a man of prayer. Notice what Daniel understands from the reading of Scripture in Daniel 9:1-2, "In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans - in the first year of his reign 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." These prophecies are outlined in Jeremiah 25:8-12, Jeremiah 27:5-7, and 2 Chronicles 36:21. Being a student of the word and understanding the times and trusting prophecy, we see his response in Daniel 9:3-6, "Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, "O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. Neither have we heeded Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land." Notice that he first prepared himself for prayer, he didn't do it in a distracted fashion. Notice that he does not point blame on others but uses the pronoun we, not they or them. As we continue in Daniel's prayer, he begins with penitence or repentance and then moves forward to petitioning God for mercy. He doesn't seek his own will, but seeks to align his will with God's will. We read at the conclusion of his prayer in 9:21, that God dispatches the angel, Gabriel in response to his prayer, as we read in 9:23, "At the beginning of your supplications the command went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly beloved; therefore, consider the matter, and understand the vision:".

Are we so naive as to think that our current situation is much different than that of Daniel's? Daniel wrote his book in approximately 536, BC. We have the privilege of reading Scripture almost 2500 years later with much of this history having already been unfolded exactly as predicted. If we became students of His word, we realize that we are approaching End Times. Though we haven't been given exact times like the 70 years of Jeremiah, all of prophecy along with current events clearly point to this conclusion. Daniel prepared himself and prayed as the times in his life were unfolding. What are we doing? Many who are ignorant to God's Word remain skeptical. Many who are in His word, are so distracted by life and things that they have rendered themselves useless to God. It is time for us who know God's Word to prepare our hearts and come before our God and pray. It is time for us to reach out, not casually, but with purpose to the world around us to bring as many others as we can into His kingdom. God's book and prophecy is not written to satisfy curiosity, it is meant to cause action on the part of the reader who has a sensitive and believing heart.