There Is a God in Heaven

In this powerful episode of the Press Movement Podcast, we step into the Book of Daniel and discover how prayer meets pressure. Host TPorter is joined by her son, Ethan Porter, host of the Tell Me the Truth Podcast, as they explore Daniel chapter 2. When King Nebuchadnezzar demands a forgotten dream and its interpretation, Daniel responds not with panic—but with prayer. He doesn't pray alone—he calls his faithful friends to pray with him. The result? God reveals the secret.

Ethan breaks down how this moment shows the power of collective prayer, the importance of believing that there is a God in heaven, and how praise always follows answered prayer. This episode reminds us that no matter what the pressure is, prayer can reach every situation—and God still responds.

🎙️ Join the movement. Press in. Pray through.

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.

And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to the Press Movement Podcast. Thank you for joining us.

We are coming to a new book, the Book of Daniel. And to commemorate our walk into a new book, I have brought one of my favorite preachers and teachers in the making, who I was actually there as God made him, my son, Ethan Porter. Hello, hello.

Glad to be here. Thank you for joining us today, Ethan. So glad to have you.

Absolutely. Pleasure to be asked to be on the podcast. Well, you owed me.

I was on your podcast. Yep. So this is a debt paid and, you know, I hope to pay off many more.

So we'll get it out of the way since I mentioned your podcast. If they want to follow you, you're going through every book of the Bible right now. Yes.

I think that right now as of recording, we might be on John, but from by the time this comes out, maybe Romans, hopefully. Well, yep. You guys are walking through the Old Testament, New Testament, examining every book of the Bible.

And it's a really good tool. The name of the podcast is Tell Me the Truth Podcast, and I'll make sure the link is in this description. How about that? Why, thank you, mom.

That would be amazing. Great. Okay.

So let's move into it today. Let's get to the Book of Daniel. Okay.

What can you share with us about the Book of Daniel? Absolutely. So Daniel is written, of course, by Daniel, and it talks about how the children of Israel are under the captivity of Babylon with King Nebuchadnezzar. And so the prayer that I'm specifically going to focus on is Daniel chapter 2, verse 19 through 22.

But for context, like I said, they're under Babylonian captivity. And Daniel chapter 1 is an amazing chapter if you want to get context. However, for the story that we're going to talk about today, just starting in Daniel chapter 2, you read in verse 1, it's the second year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar.

And what happens is Nebuchadnezzar has this dream. And you learn later if you read down this dream is from God. But he has this dream, and the Bible talks about how he was troubled in his spirit.

And so after he's troubled in his spirit, he has to figure out what this dream means. And verse 2 talks about how he called the astrologers and the magicians and the sorcerers and the Chaldeans. And if you keep reading, he asks them to interpret his dream, but pretty much he doesn't remember it.

And so he's telling them, if you can interpret this dream, you'll get a reward. But if you don't, we're going to kill you. And it seems like the Chaldeans are trying to get time or trying to see if he can actually try to remember his dream.

But Nebuchadnezzar doubles down and says that you have to tell me the dream, and I forgot. And so the Chaldeans basically say, Nebuchadnezzar, nobody can do this. The gods can't do it.

The astrologers can't do it. Nobody can do it. If you read verse 9, it says, but if you will not make known unto me the dream, there is but one decree for you.

For ye have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, till the time be changed. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can show me the interpretation thereof. He's basically saying you're waiting for the stars to change or align so that you can kind of guess the stream.

And so verse 12 talks about how the king was very angry with their response, so much so that he commanded them to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. Just right there is a preaching moment that you're always going to get frustrated trying to do things or get answers from things outside of God. And so he got so frustrated that he wanted to kill all the wise men in Babylon.

Well, the author of this book, Daniel's in Babylon, and so when Daniel is hearing about this decree, he calls it hasty. Why does Nebuchadnezzar have such a hasty decree to kill all of the wise men? And so Daniel tells Ariok, he says in verse 15, why is the decree so hasty from the king? In verse 16 says Daniel went in and desired of the king that he would give him time in that he would show the king the interpretation. So Daniel's, before he even knows the dream, he's asking the king, can you give me time so that I can get an answer from God? But one of the cool parts and why I say that this specifically talks about prayer is because Daniel had praying friends as well.

Verse 17 says that then Daniel went to the house and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, or as we know them as the three Hebrew boys. This is that they would desire mercies of God of heaven concerning the secret. The word desire means asks.

What Daniel does is he doesn't just do it on his own. He tells the king, give me a second and I'm going to reveal this dream to you. And he goes to his friends and tells them, pray for me so that God can give me this revelation.

And so what happens is if you read verse 19, it says that the secret was revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. So it took the prayers of his friends all coming together saying, let's ask God because I know that he's going to respond. And God gives it to him.

He gives, it's so cool. He gives Daniel a vision of the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar. And so what Daniel says in response to the prayer slash praise that we're going to talk about right now, he says, blessed be the name of God forever and ever.

The word blessed means bow or to kneel before. It is something to where it's humble that while we're talking about a king's dream, we're talking about the king of kings. It says for wisdom and might are his.

It says that he changes the time and the seasons, which is so cool because who Nebuchadnezzar had called were the astrologers or the Chaldeans who worked in magic as well. And so they'd use the stars and they use the seasons to figure out something. But the Bible talks about and Daniel talks about how God changes the times in the season.

I remember a lot of people would look online for the Avengers end game and they wanted to see what the plot was going to be, what the outcome was going to be. And those people are called speculators. If they're looking at a movie, they would speculate the outcome.

But the difference between a speculator and the writer is the writer dictates how the story goes. And so they were speculating on what the dream would be. But he talked to God who was the one that even gave him the dream, so much so that he changes the times and the seasons.

He removeth kings, it says, and set it up kings. It says he gives wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. Wisdom is how you do things.

Knowledge would be what to do. And so when he tells Daniel that he's given him wisdom, he's given him the how. And when he's given him knowledge, he's given him the know, the what to do.

Verse 22 says he revealed the deep and secret things. Deep things are those unsearchable things, things like another person's dream. How can you tell somebody else their dream that they may forget? Well, God is able to reveal the deep and the secret, meaning the hidden things, because he knows everything.

He knoweth what is in the darkness. He sees all. The Bible talks about how the eyes of the Lord are in every place and the light dwells in him.

And so verse 23 is like with every prayer, there's a praise. I thank thee and praise thee, O God of my fathers, who has given me wisdom and might. I think that that's so significant, that wisdom is the how to do something.

But if you can't fulfill it, or if in this moment, like the wise men are about to get killed, might is now the force or the ability to do something. You could have the wisdom and still be fearful of that. It could be wrong.

But when you have wisdom and might, you act upon the wisdom that's given. And has made known unto me now what we desired of thee. I like how it says we, because it pushes the emphasis that it wasn't just Daniel praying.

It pushes the emphasis that it was Ananias, Mishael, and Azariah praying that the Lord reveals it. It says, for thou hast now made known unto us the king's matter. I love this story and I think it would be remiss for me not to go down to say at least what happens.

And so I think that this story is so cool because you see the byproduct of a prayer with a man and his friends beseeching God and praising God. And so the outcome of our prayers is this. It says in verse 25, then Ariok brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus unto him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah that will make known unto the king the interpretation.

I brought this guy, he's going to tell you your dream and he's going to interpret it. It says the king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen and the interpretation thereof? Daniel answered in the presence of the king, which is so crazy. Imagine if you're watching this podcast, you're in front of the king of England.

You're in front of a king of nation that just took over your people. This is a major, major event. And it talks about how Ariok made haste that Daniel would see him.

They're on the verge of every wise men, those that were wise in an area that could figure something out, they're on the verge of dying. And so he's making haste, but he says, Daniel said, or answered in the presence of the king and said, the secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise, the astrologer, the magicians, the soothsayers show unto the king. Nobody else could do it.

But the next few words is one of my favorite parts of the scripture. Understanding that Daniel had asked God, Daniel had praised God and had the byproduct of our prayer and of our praise is the result God's going to do. And so what we can do is we can testify.

He said, but there is a God in heaven that reveals secrets and make of known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream and the visions of thy head upon thy bed are these. And Daniel begins to list out the dream, what happened.

And so I believe that this is an amazing prayer because you see, first off, the prayer of multiple people. You see the praise that Daniel gives and the testimony that though nobody else could do it, no matter who it was, the astrologers, the wise men, the magicians. And in our days, you could say the counselors, therapists, the doctors, nobody else may be able to do it.

But his response is the response that we can testify about after God answers our prayers. But there is a God in heaven that can reveal things that can change things that can move things. I think I'm with you on that, that, but there is a God in heaven is a showstopper.

I don't know if Daniel went ahead and went on to the next word, the next sentence, because I would think that would be a seal on moment. Everybody just get quiet and acknowledge it. Because when you just recognize that simple fact that there is a God, he is real.

He is in heaven. He is listening and he responds to our voices. I believe that alone can shape your faith in any situation.

As far as how you would encourage the people today, even from this prayer, or even just in your own walk with God, what would you leave with those who are listening as encouragement? I would say that with this story, you understand that if you have, like you had mentioned, the understanding that there is a God in heaven, it's that you can believe that he can do anything. I like to think about whenever I have a situation, I like to start just from the beginning. Do I believe that God exists? That's not even a hard question.

That's of course going to be a yes for me, but that's my faith level starting from there. Because then I start, did he make the heavens and earth? Yeah, I believe Genesis 1 and 1, that in the beginning, God created the heaven and earth. When I start going through the rest of the book of the Bible, and then I compare it now to my situation or wherever it is, I can think like Daniel thought.

I can think like all the others thought in the Bible, that there's a God in heaven. And so when I compare my faith to the resume of God, which is his Bible, which is his word, that this seems like something that is, in comparison to my situation, so much greater, harder to do, but it was light. This is just a chapter's word.

So when it comes down to it, if I have faith as of the grain of a mustard seed, it doesn't matter what stands up. And you know that because there is a God in heaven, when his people cry, it really doesn't matter what stands up because he responds to our voices and prayer reaches every single situation. Join the movement, join the community, like, share, and subscribe to this podcast.

Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook. Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and were wondering, how long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice. It's too quiet in this world for the troubles we have.

You have to raise your voice and God wants to hear from you. It's Too Quiet, a book about prayer, is designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith. Visit PressToPray.com.