You are Beloved...

Charles Spurgeon speaks of Daniel in his fifth chapter of The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life.

How Daniel studied the book of Jeremiah, how he sought its prophetic meaning and how Daniel devoted himself to prayer.

Then Spurgeon shares some points on how Daniel prayed:


-Daniel felt deeply the misery of the people for who he pleaded.

-Daniel was ready to receive the blessing because he felt deeply his own unworthiness of it.

-Daniel had a clear conviction of God's power to help his people in their distress.


He then talks of how beloved Daniel was of God and how God answered Daniel's prayers swiftly.

I love these next few passages, which I found encouraging. Hope they encourage you too.

"You may perhaps say, 'It is easy to understand that God should send so swift an answer to Daniel because Daniel was greatly beloved.'

Has your unbelief made you forget that you are greatly beloved, too? 

As a believer in Jesus Christ, you will not be at all presumptuous if you apply to yourself the title of 'greatly beloved.' Must have you not been greatly beloved to have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot?

When God spared not His own Son but gave Him up for you, must you not have been greatly beloved? 

You were called by grace, led to a Savior, and made a child of God and an heir of heaven. That proves, does it not, a very great and superabounding love? That time, whether your path has been rough with troubles or smooth with goodness, I have no doubt it has been full of proofs that you are greatly beloved."

Spurgeon continues:

"When I look back upon my own life, I must confess my unworthiness and acknowledge my sin most sincerely, and yet I dare to feel and to say that I am a man greatly beloved of my God. He has given me such distinguished mercies to enjoy, when I have served not even the least of them, that I cannot help saying, 'Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies'(Psalm 103:4). 

I make my boast in the tender mercy of my God all the more freely because I am sure that you are also specially beloved of heaven. 

The more unworthy you feel yourself to be, the more evidence you have that nothing but unspeakable love could have led the Lord Jesus to save such a soul as yours. The more unworthiness the saint feels, the more proof of the great love of God in having chosen him and called him and made him an heir of bliss.

If there is such love between God and us, let us pray very boldly. 

Do not let us go to God as though we were strangers or as though He were unwilling to give - we are greatly beloved. 'He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things.' (Romans 8:32). 

Come boldly, for despite the whispering of Satan and the doubting of your own heart, you are greatly beloved. Jesus said, 'If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it' (John 14:14). Who will refuse to ask when such encouragements are suggested to us minds?"