What Life is Really About

09.11.11

Daniel 2.30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind. NIV

Had Daniel been someone else, he might’ve eaten the king’s food, drank the king’s wine and claimed glory for himself in the interpretation of the king’s dream – had Daniel been someone else. But Daniel wasn’t someone else, he was a man of integrity and great faith. Men like Daniel are rare.

So much of whom we are and what we are is based on (we feel) what we have, do, or are called: possession, performance, and/or position. At least that’s how many sum up life – what I own, how I do, or what I’m called. It takes a tremendous character to leave it all in God’s hands and give Him the glory for where we are, what we are, and who we are. Daniel was quick to deflect attention from himself in order to keep the conversation pointed in the right direction: King Nebuchadnezzar, as important as you are and as much as what you have and have done, there is Someone far greater than you Who has given you possessions, performance, and position to accomplish His will in the earth! Daniel was given the opportunity to tell a great man what life was really all about: God. As I said, men like Daniel are rare; he realized it was all about influence and not about ambition.

Our world doesn’t understand faith like Daniel’s. Unfortunately many in the church don’t understand it either. Faith is that unshakable conviction that this life is all about knowing God – nothing else. Faith is the immovable understanding that everything in life is because of God. And faith is the steadfast expectation that everything in life is done in the wide open presence of God. Every situation or circumstance, every test, trial, triumph, or tragedy is done so that God can see what and where our hearts are. God is present with both believer and betrayer because God’s purposes transcend people though He uses people to cause His will to be done.

The difference between Daniel – a captive taken against his will to place against his preference – and everybody else in the narrative was that Daniel understood the presence and power of God. Daniel understood that God will do whatever He has purposed with anyone – including despots like Nebuchadnezzar… or our boss, or our neighbor, or our elected politician who does and says, over and over, what we don’t like. The way to approach these people is not because we have more wisdom than anyone else, but from the foundation of faith where we firmly hold that only God is God and the rest of us aren’t. God chose for a pagan king to know that; and He chose a man like Daniel to bring the message.

The events of this coming day and week are divinely designed and deployed to show where my heart really is. All that I am going to go through is to show how real my faith in God is. May I reflect His glory and give Him glory is all I say, think, and do…

Sola Fide, sola Deo Gloria, sola Christos!