Yesterday, I suggested that perhaps God sometimes delays answering our prayers because He enjoys it when we seek Him. Has it occurred to you that God not only loves you, but also likes you? He wants you to spend time with Him. Not just for your benefit, but because He also receives pleasure from your friendship with Him.

There are other reasons we don’t see answers to some of our prayers, but I want to touch on just one of those today. In Daniel 10, Daniel is visited by an angel who has come in response to his prayer. The angel explains that he started to come on the very first day that Daniel began to pray, but was detained for three weeks.

Detained by whom? Who could detain an angel for so long?

The angel tells Daniel that it was the “prince of the Persian kingdom”, a demon, who had resisted him. He had fought this demon prince for 21 days and was not able to make it to Daniel until Michael, “one of the chief princes, came to help…”

Sometimes we don’t like to think about the fact that there’s a literal (just unseen) war raging all around us. Honestly, I don’t think we have any idea of the fierce nature of the fighting. But it’s real. It’s happening now. And you and I are the prize.

Could it be that an answer to your prayer is on the way? Could it be that a battle is being fought in response to your request?

Daniel prayed for 21 days. What if he had stopped after 14 days? Or 20 days? Would the angel still have come?

We really need to persist in our prayers. We have no idea what may be taking place around us.

One other thought: if there’s a demon prince over Persia and one over Greece (read Daniel 10), then is there one over other countries? What about regions or states? Could their be a demon over your neighborhood or school?

Ephesians 6 seems to indicate an organizational hierarchy when it comes demonic forces. I just don’t have any trouble believing there are spiritual forces of evil organized against us. What would the alternative be…that they just run amok? I think they’re too intelligent for that.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should have an unhealthy preoccupation with demons, but I suspect that’s not the problem most of us have. I tend to think we don’t give much, if any, thought to the evil forces in the unseen realm who are bent on our destruction.