The character of Daniel in the Bible has been a challenging one to read. There are so many facets about him that I find shake me in my faith. As much as I find him challenging, the truth is, I want to emulate him and be like him. One of those character traits is his thirst for God and his belief in the word of God. As I continued my reading in the book of Daniel, it became apparent that Daniel did not just believe the word of God theoretically, he believed every word he read like it was coming directly from the mouth of God and he lived by them. The Bible says that he applied himself to know the word of God. This “application” demands that one believes the word to be true and believes it to be coming from God. Daniel had both. I almost have the impression that Daniel approached the word of God like a child. Submitting to it and when in doubt, always going to the Father for answers. That is precisely what he did when he saw that according to the word of God through the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, the liberation of the Jews was meant to happen. It was while in that freedom year that he sought the Lord concerning His word. What is even more remarkable is the length at which God went to answer Daniel. He gave him more than what Daniel asked for. Ironically, this is so like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to do. In today’s post, my goal is to encourage us to have that child-like faith the Bible calls us to have.
There is a posture that brings the Lord closer to you and that is simply abandonment. When we are fully surrendered to the Lord, we allow Him to have His way in us. We often sing songs with expressions such as “have your way Lord”, “my hopes and my dreams are yours”, “take my life and let it be” but the truth is we sing it with our heads and not our hearts. Or maybe we sing it with our hearts and not our souls. The funny thing with the Lord is that He often will test us on our declarations and when we’re tested we mostly fail because we refuse to surrender and are then proven to be liars. We like to come up with wonderfully sound excuses that make sense to the world and will in fact excuse us in the world but they won’t with God. Indeed, God sees the hearts of men and He knows the hearts of men. We can deceive our folks and ourselves but we can never deceive the One who created all things. Therefore, if we are in Christ, we know we are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17) who now belong to God and whose lives are not theirs anymore, we know that the spirit of God resides in us which means we cannot escape the presence of God nor His scrutiny. As believers in the Lord Jesus, we must be careful to not say what we do not mean because we will be judged for every careless word we say and also our words do not flatter God nor do they add anything to Him. He knows us more than we know ourselves. Sometimes, we are not quick to accept our flaws but the Lord already knows and sees them in us. This must be the reason why the Bible repeatedly tells us to come humbly before the Lord, there is truly no other way. I believe one of the reasons this is so difficult to do is that we are people of sight and reason. We like to see things before we believe them. By “see” I also mean “seeing it in one’s mind”, having something make sense in the mind or understanding. If something does not make sense to a person, he or she will not believe it. This is the mentality or mindset we bring before the Holy One of Israel. To get out of that mindset requires a renewing work done daily. Such a mindset does not change in an instant, rather it is through that slow, steady and continued renewing work that it changes. I hope you are able to see how your mindset can stop you from drawing closer to God even as you read and meditate His words daily. We must be totally surrendered. That is how Daniel was. If Daniel did not believe the scriptures, he would have denied his Jewish heritage a long time ago, especially being in high places as he was. If Daniel did not believe the scriptures, he would not have bothered with seeing the prophecy of Jeremiah fulfilled nor would he pray about the salvation of the Jews. Again, if he did not believe the scriptures, he would not have chosen to be thrown into the lion’s den, instead, he would have bowed down to all the gods of the Babylonians. You see, Daniel did not know much but he believed in the redemption stories he heard his forefathers tell, he believed the many ways God spoke to him, he believed that his qualities were gifts from the Lord not skills he got himself. This is not to say that Daniel was not stewarding those gifts well but simply to say that he knew God made those possible. Our faith has to become tangible to us, it has to become real. That is why I say, Daniel has challenged me and is challenging me in my walk with Christ because he did not have the Holy Spirit as I do, yet he accomplished great things for the Lord and brought many people to the Lord and the best part, the Lord trusted him with the truth of the future. I kept wondering, what are we missing as a generation to get to that level of commitment people like Daniel, Abraham, David, and the apostles had and I am convinced it is our lack of faith. We do not take God at His word and we follow the pattern of this world which is “seeing is believing” when that is clearly against the commandment we are given in Romans “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). That command also has a promise attached to it: being able to test and approve the will of God. We often want to know what the will of God is, here Paul tells us that knowing the will of God is by not conforming to the ways of the world and that includes seeing first before believing. Instead, he said we should “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God— this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1).
One noteworthy observation about Daniel is that he was “highly esteemed” by the Lord (Daniel 9:23; 10:19). I doubt Daniel knew this before hearing it said from the celestial being he encountered. His surrendered life did not leave God unmoved, in fact, it gained him the privilege to know the future, the revelations about his people and the world that no one else knew! He also go to know how great and awesome the God of his forefathers is and how much He must be feared! Through these revelations and divine encounters, Daniel understood just how vast the knowledge gap between us and God was or rather, he got to know that we are feeble creatures who do not know much and that all power, might and praise belong to God. He got to know that the wisdom of God is not to be compared with ours, as a matter of fact, the visions Daniel had had to be interpreted for him and even then he still did not understand them, in fact, they often made him weak, without strength and left him overwhelmed (Daniel 7:28; 8:27; 10:8). This simply goes to show how small we humans are. From the revelations Daniel received about the future, he got to understand that what was happening to the Israelites was bigger than them, he understood that God already had a plan set in motion, that what his people were facing in Babylon was truly nothing in comparison to the salvation the Lord was bringing in the future. and thanks to Daniel’s faith, we have the privilege of seeing God in the same light.
In conclusion, we will not all be Daniels but we can all be used by God for His glory and it starts with believing God at His words and submitting to what He says. Let us learn to approach our Father in heaven as the one who knows all things, holds all things in His hands and loves us dearly. He wants us to let him in as he calls out in Revelation saying: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). He has promised to fellowship with us if we will let him. He has commanded us to love him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength (Deuteronomy 6:5). This requires all of us to work, not parts of us, but all. The gain is much bigger than the loss for indeed to die is gain and to live is Christ (Philippians 1:21). Moreover, our husband is coming soon with our rewards (Revelation 22:12), let us then strive to live a life of surrender. May the Lord increase our dependance on Him and may we find our satisfaction in Him and Him alone. Amen!
A Word Aptly Spoken 