Prayer: The Secret to Serving for the Long Term

Vernon Ross, the Archdeacon of Westmorland and Furness, shares how the lives of Daniel in the Bible and William Wilberforce show us that our prayer life provides the foundation for our political engagement and is the secret to serving for the long term.

 This is the story of two people serving in politics who were in it for the long term: Daniel and William Wilberforce.

Daniel , a young exile in a foreign land, was a civil servant who sought to serve God, stay faithful and change the culture an ethos of the land he was exiled to. He served in Babylon under the regimes of, Nebuchadnezzar, Belteshazzar, Darius and Cyrus. He faced numerous challenges and imprisonment, even being placed in a lion’s den.

William became an MP in 1780 at the young age of 21. He became the leader of the Clapham sect, which was was a group of evangelical Anglicans which successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the British commonwealth. He first tried to get an abolition bill through parliament in 1790, but he lost the debate by 163 votes to 88. Despite this he never gave up, and introduced further bills in 1791 and 1792. The first success was the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, which abolished the trade in enslaved people in the British colonies., followed by the full abolition act passing in 1833. Wilberforce died 3 days later after 53 years working faithfully for the abolitionist cause!

Both of these men lived through turbulent and epic times. For Daniel, his home his country had been occupied and depopulated, and for Wilberforce there was huge social upheavals and war with France. Daniel was in exile; Wilberforce was on what was viewed by many as the lunatic fringe of the church (Clapham sect) and politics.

Daniel was a man steeped in prayer. He prayed 3 times a day and his overwhelming desire was to stay faithful to God. He was seen as a go-to person for advice and dream interpretation, including by King Nebuchadnezzar. Wilberforce worked on over 70 campaigns, from slavery, and church schools for the poor to the RSPCA. Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham Sect were so deeply spiritual that they spent 3 hours a day in prayer. Today, the average Christian minister spends 5 minutes in prayer, and the average Christian spends one minute in prayer!

We want to change a country, we want to show up and make a difference. But ultimately, what we bring to any table we want to sit at or any event we want to be involved in is ourselves- who we are , our values and our practices.

Daniel and opposition

Daniel 1:8 ‘But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Daniel 1:19 The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service.’

Daniel 6:26 ‘Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. So it’s politics and he got some life threatening opposition. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent.’

But as we know they found a crafty way to catch him to imprison him, all based around his faith and prayers, he ended up in the Lions Den, but even there God rescued him. He had opposition, he had change of governments, change of priorities, but he kept being who God called him to be a person who stayed prayerful and faithful, and that gave him his influence.

WILBERFORCE AND OPPOSITION

Wilberforce faced opposition and challenges, including his own ill health. He had to resign from parliament in 1825 due to this, and followed the final stages of the battle for emancipation from a distance. He could have been a great cabinet minister; he was seen as the equal of his friend William Pitt. However, despite their friendship, Pitt never publicly supported him. I wonder how much quicker he would have achieved his goal if Pitt had publicly backed him rather than just tacitly backed him. William’s story shows how disappointments and let downs are common in this line of calling.

Despite the challenges he faced in following God’s call in the public square, William rededicated himself to his calling on his forty-first birthday, praying:

“Oh Lord, purify my soul from all its stains. Warm my heart with the love of thee, animate my sluggish nature and fix my inconstancy, and volatility, that I may not be weary in well doing.”

prayer life and action

We can often divide prayer life and reading the Bible from action. But prayer life and reading the Bible give the energy, the foundations, the focus and the direction for our action. If we are in politics this for the long term, the lives of Daniel and William Wilberforce show us how we can sustain this and be agents of Gods’ change in this strange land in these epic times, where as Christians we feel like we are in exile and on the fringe.