"Daniel" Week 2

Welcome to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world.

We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before.

Now, let's get to it.

Good morning, man of church.

How are we doing?

We good?

Yes?

Well, if I haven't had a chance to meet you, my name is Jake.

I get the privilege of being the pastor here.

I want to look into the camera there and welcome all our folks who are joining, either from our microsite at Quantico or from our microsite in Omaha or anywhere across the military highway or the world.

Can we just give them a welcome?

Yes?

Well, if you were here last week, you know that our micro site leader Kyle actually kicked off this sermon series on Daniel.

It's it's kind of one of his passions, is Daniel, so he's been fired up about this for over a year.

Didn't he do a good job?

Yes?

He did such a great job.

Yeah.

We're so blessed by him, and I know he's he's sharing actually this week as well.

So uh just a quick recap of last week.

We don't have time to go into all the details because Daniel is a pretty significant book, and we're only talking about Daniel for four weeks.

So another quick encouragement is read the book.

Read it.

There are so many amazing things in it.

There are great narratives, good Bible stories that you probably heard when you were a kid in children's church, or if you haven't been in church before, they may be brand new to you, but they are amazing.

There are crazy uh life lessons about character.

And there's also, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but Daniel is considered kind of the revelation of the Old Testament.

So there's a lot of stuff in Daniel, which we will get into at least one week.

I'm um we're we're gonna try to put it in for the last week and talk about some of the end time stuff that Daniel has in this book.

Crazy, crazy prophecies and revelations.

So just to recap last week, the big idea is we're number one, God is in control.

Over Daniel, it doesn't matter if you're a captive in a foreign country, God is still in control, and we can't let our environment make us believe that God is less faithful to us, nor can we let our environment let us be less faithful to God.

Our environment doesn't dictate our faithfulness, right?

And then, of course, his plan is always bigger than we can see.

It's so good.

So, what you're gonna notice as we walk through the rest of Daniel, what you're gonna see is that Daniel and his friends and his contemporaries, they're actually small players in a much larger cosmic battle.

I know it's it's hard when we read the stories, we think that what's happening is just what's happening, but it's actually so much bigger.

They have roles to play just like we have roles to play.

Um, and depending on our awareness, depending on our obedience, depending on our persistence or our faithfulness and how God has gifted us, we can either be active or passive participants in this cosmic battle.

So I'm really excited to get into this next part.

We're gonna skip all the way to chapter six of Daniel as we pick things up here.

So, just to kind of give you a little history.

So, Daniel is a captive, he's been taken from his homeland, he's actually part of the noble family.

We don't know if he was a son or a cousin of the king at the time.

He was related somehow.

He was brought when he was a youth to Babylon.

It was very, very likely that he was made a eunuch.

If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Um, so he was made a eunuch, and and he's serving under the chief of eunuchs, but he gets promoted because he's so good at what he does and he's so committed to being faithful to God.

So we're gonna pick up um there's been a few kings who've been in charge, Nebuchadnezzar, then Belshazzar his son, and now we have Darius as the king.

Daniel chapter 6, verse 1.

Daniel 6:1

It said, It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom.

These are just like officials, okay, that's all they are.

And over them three high officials.

So he's got 120 kind of congressmen, and then over those he sets three that are particularly uh authoritative and special, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss.

So Daniel's previous excellence got him a seat at the table.

Quick takeaway excellence in the past can get you at the table, but only continued excellence can keep you there.

And we're gonna see how Daniel does this.

He does not get lazy, he continues to pursue it.

Verse 3 it says, Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him.

And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

That's crazy.

So excellence will set you apart from other people.

Every single time it will set you apart.

I tell my kids this, I tell my boys particularly this, I challenge them, I say, look, if you guys just do the basics really, really well, you will be a standout among all of your peers.

If you just show up on time, if you just do what you say you're gonna do, if you just have integrity, if you just have faithfulness, man, you're gonna be a standout in the excellence that with which you live.

Meet your deadlines.

Like they're basic things.

They're not astounding feats of accomplishment, but if they're done well, it's actually going to distinguish you among all the people of this world.

And look what King Darius planned as a result of Daniel just being so excellent, having this excellent spirit.

He singled them out as a standout and he earmarked him to actually govern the entire kingdom, which is crazy.

That's a huge honor for someone who's a prisoner and a eunuch.

It's not something that you would expect him to achieve.

And here's the big takeaway if you're taking notes.

Living with excellence creates opportunities for you.

Living with excellence creates opportunities.

You guys with me?

Good.

All right.

So this is a common theme you see throughout the Bible.

Proverbs 22, it actually says this.

It says, Do you see a man skillful in his work?

He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men.

We know this.

When someone's really good at what they do, they just get elevated.

So Daniel served under four different rulers, and every single one of them looked at Daniel as a standout.

He wasn't from their nation, he was a prisoner, he didn't share their belief system, yet, because of this one thing he had, it gave him space to influence nations.

And that was excellence.

And when I say excellence, what I'm not talking about is perfection.

There's a distinction.

What I'm talking about is consistently giving God your best with whatever it is he's put in your hands.

That's what I mean when I say excellence.

So I'm gonna get back into Daniel here.

Actually, I told you he served across multiple different rulers.

Actually, the ruler before Darius was Belshazzar, not the name that they gave Daniel, if you know from last week, Daniel was renamed Beltashazzar.

So Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son, and he had this kind of crazy, weird, supernatural thing that happened.

But Daniel had such a reputation that the king called on him when he couldn't find anybody else to tell him what was going on.

He had like this hand appeared and wrote on the wall, and the king's wife said, Oh my gosh, there's a guy.

He he served under your dad, and he has this excellent spirit in him.

It says it in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

We're going back a little bit.

This is what uh Belshazzar's wife says.

There's a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods.

In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were found in him.

And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father the king, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems, were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Beltushazzar.

Now let Daniel be called, and he'll show the interpretation.

And so Daniel does, shows his interpretation.

It's this crazy, amazing thing.

But he had this spirit of excellence that was consistent throughout his whole life.

So what does it mean to actually have a spirit of excellence?

What's it look like?

This idea, it's actually used all over the Bible.

We see different Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words that we translate into excellence in our language.

The words they typically use to describe it is when someone in the Bible is talking about something great, something honorable, something surpassing.

Even the word to glow, it gets interpreted as excellence.

And we we know we've seen people around us like this.

They kind of have this glow, right?

They're just special.

You can tell there's just something about them.

It's super attractional.

There's a certain flavor to how they do things.

In fact, Proverbs even talks about you can have a spouse who's like this.

It says Proverbs 12, 4, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband.

That's good.

I'm not gonna read the second half.

In fact, it goes on and it says, actually, it's really difficult to find an excellent wife.

Proverbs 31 says, An excellent wife, who can find?

She's far more precious than jewels.

It's unique to have somebody who is excellent in what they do.

Solomon, actually, he was one of these kinds of people.

Solomon, the king over Israel, he was the wealthiest, wisest king ever to exist.

And this is what it says in 1 Kings 10.

Thus Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.

But you know, it's not just Solomon and 10 out of 10 wives who are called to be excellent, it's also the people of God.

We are called to be excellent.

I don't know if you knew that or not, but there's this expectation, there's this drawing of the Lord for us to be excellent.

Psalm 16, 3, the psalmist is talking about the people in the land.

He's talking about evil people, and then he says this as for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.

It's part of our calling to be excellent ones.

In fact, one of the things we say in Leader Step is we say, excellence is our standard.

It's one of the ways we try to do things here.

And when we do things without excellence, we go back and look at it and say, Man, that didn't seem like it was excellent.

Not because we're perfectionists, but because who we are doing this for is the most excellent one.

And so we want to serve him with excellence.

In fact, I would say it this way: excellence is a mark of godly men and women.

Excellence is a mark of who we're supposed to be.

That should be our example to the world.

We should be the most excellent people on the planet.

I mean, if you think about it this way, what we believe, we believe that the Spirit of the Most High God, the creator of heaven and earth, comes and takes up residence inside each one of us after we accept him.

If that's new to you, that's what we believe happens.

When Jesus left, he said, Unless I leave, the Holy Spirit won't come.

But when the Holy Spirit comes, he will be with you.

And so we believe that the Spirit of the Most High God is with each one of us, and we know that he is the most excellent.

It's a crazy advantage when it comes to life, if you think about that.

You've got the spirit of the creator of the universe with you.

He develops our character, he gives us access to be faithful when everybody else is faithless.

He helps us be gentle when the world is super harsh.

He allows us to forgive when instead we could choose to be bitter.

He lets us develop self-control when the world is pushing us towards indulgence.

All of those things, all those excellent elements, come from him.

And it's one of the things that he expects from the church.

It should be one of the hallmarks of godly men and women.

In fact, we should be looking to see how we can push ourselves in the church and the body towards excellence.

1 Corinthians 14, 12 says this.

So with yourselves, since you're eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.

There should be a desire that all of us have to be excellent and how we contribute to the development of the body.

And I think it's important too to make sure that we're not just excellent in some things, we're excellent in the right things.

2 Corinthians 8 says this.

Paul writes a second letter to this church.

He says, But as you excel in everything, you guys are doing great in a lot of stuff, in faith and speech, and knowledge and all earnestness and in our love for you.

See that you excel in this act of grace also.

He's talking about an outreach that he had planned.

Like their version of a serve day.

It was kind of a big deal.

And he was telling them, hey, take up an offering for this big serve day.

He's saying, look, you guys do all this other stuff great.

You have a great worship experience.

Holy Spirit moves, there's awesome teaching.

You do crazy cool stuff.

Excel in this too.

Don't be slack in this.

This is this is an area where you should be excellent.

In our church, I'm gonna tell you, we push being excellent when it comes to outreach.

We really, really want to reach the world.

I would say this: it's not just enough to be excellent in your work.

We need to make sure that we excel in the right things.

And this is where I see so many people, including me, oftentimes, uh get this wrong.

Doing well in all areas, doing well at work, maybe keeping our body clean, maybe we're good at getting rest, maybe we're we're prioritizing certain things, and we have boundaries that we very, very diligently guard because we want to live a life of excellence.

But we stop short of excellence when it comes to things of the faith.

So we're committed to a diet of food, but we're not necessarily committed to a diet of the word.

We're committed to putting in time at the gym, but we're not necessarily committed to putting in time on our face before God.

We're committed to driving our kids all over the place.

Man, I got kids I'm driving everywhere.

Here, there, and yonder.

But I'm not necessarily committed to driving to events where I'm gonna be connecting with the people of God.

Doing outreach.

Like, man, some of you, you get you got places to go on Saturday, right?

You got sports.

And I'm not I'm not trying to make you feel bad if you got a sporting event that you can't make it to the outreach.

But I would say the level of commitment you have to those things, have the same level of commitment to excellence when it comes to the things of the Lord.

Amen.

Let's get back into the word here.

Okay, so I will say this too: excellence attracts attention.

It just does.

In Daniel chapter 6, verse 4, we're going back into this.

Daniel 6:4

The king wants to put Daniel, he wants to make him a governor, and then somebody say, then, then, Daniel 6, 4, then the high officials in the satraps, so the other two people and the rest of the 120 satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom.

But they could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him.

So Daniel was so good at the things that he did that it actually frustrated the people around him.

That's kind of crazy.

They saw his level of deliberate intentionality, and frankly, they were just jealous of him.

I think when you're good at something, it's natural that people are going to be jealous of you.

Just happens.

We all have this human nature, this competitive spirit.

And sometimes we get jealous of people who are good at things.

Quick aside, um, if you're good at something and you're arrogant, it will make people more jealous of you and kind of despise you.

But if you're if you're good at something and you're humble, it actually people will often treat you a little bit differently.

So that's a freebie.

Daniel, he actually found himself getting attacked by others.

They're super jealous of him.

I don't think that they were just jealous of his skill, though, that he was very good at the things that he did.

I think that they were also jealous of the benefits that that offered him.

They were jealous of the position that he received as a result of his excellence.

So Daniel wasn't just excellent, Daniel was also faithful.

Both of those things together made this amazing mixture.

So I would say this: don't just be good at what you do, be good to who you do it for.

And they don't have to be someone who believes the same thing that you believe.

This King Darius was not a Jesus follower.

He was not a follower of Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, you know, that he was revealed at that point in time.

He wasn't a friend to them necessarily.

Daniel was a captive in his kingdom.

I would say this.

Um, if you're good at something, but you're really terrible to the people around you, people will tolerate your terribleness because they want access to your talents until they find somebody else who can do it just as good or better, and then they'll get rid of you.

Daniel, he was not just good at what he did, he was good to the people around him.

So I would say this: don't just be good at what you do.

Be a good man, be a good woman, be a good and faithful servant of God, be excellent in all those areas.

It matters.

All right, let's go back into the narrative here.

Daniel chapter 6, verse 5.

Daniel 6:5

So these men, the satraps, the other two leaders, they said, We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel, unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.

So Daniel was living such an excellent, such a clean, such a blameless life that there wasn't any reason to accuse him.

They couldn't bring a charge against him.

So instead of attacking him, what they decided to do is that they would attack his values, they would attack his ideals.

This is a tactic of people who are jealous of you.

In fact, it's also a tactic of the enemy of our soul and the enemy of our God.

What he'll do is if he can't attack us, he'll attack our ideals and then make us guilty by association because our views are bigoted, or our views are old, or our views are so traditional, right?

And then because of the things that we believe, now we're guilty, even though we live an excellent life.

Going on, verse 6, it says, Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement, so they consorted together to the king, and they said to him, Oh, King Darius, live forever.

All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors, are agreed.

So Daniel's probably not agreed to this, but they try to paint this picture.

Everybody thinks this same thing, King Darius.

Everybody thinks you should do this.

Alright?

Another common tactic of the enemy.

Make us feel like we're all alone, like we're the outsiders.

Everybody else thinks this way.

You're the odd man out, you're the odd woman out.

Such an old way of thinking.

Just get up with the time.

So everybody agrees, King, and this is what they say.

Everyone agrees that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction.

That whoever makes petition to any God or man for 30 days, except to you, O king.

So if you pray to anybody for a month, just have them only pray to you for a month, O king.

Uh, what's the what's the pun?

How about this?

Let's say they get cast into a den of lions.

Let's do that.

Anybody who prays to anybody except you, they get cast into a den of lions.

It's just 30 days, though, right?

Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document so it can't be changed according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.

So, what's the king do?

He's got these leaders, this 123 leaders, who are supposed to be super wise, and they give him this advice, and it kind of makes him a big deal, even more than he is already.

So, what's he do?

He signs the document.

He's like, This is a great idea.

Therefore, King Darius signed the document and injunction.

So, important thing to know about King Darius is he's not a bad guy, actually.

In this narrative, he really isn't.

Um, he he's actually just a pawn.

He's being used by the enemy of God.

He likes Daniel, he he appreciates Daniel, he wants to promote Daniel.

That's what the king wants.

But he's not a person of faith.

He's completely oblivious to what's happening up to this point.

All he's doing is he's just following the advice of people around him.

I think this is what the enemy of our souls likes to do.

I think he likes to make us think that we're all alone.

And then what he'll do is he'll take innocent, ignorant, oblivious people who don't have evil intentions necessarily, but because of their ignorance, they're easy pawns to use against people of faith.

I think that happens a lot.

So let me just pause here and give you one point that I think we should take away when it comes to excellence.

And it's this choose what deserves your excellence.

Pick what deserves your excellence.

As I'm talking about this, some of you probably have thoughts the Holy Spirit's bringing up.

You're like, ooh, excellence, I know I'm not being excellent in this area, this area, and this area.

Choose, be selective about what deserves your excellence.

Paul talks about this in his letter to the church at Philippi.

Um, he prays for him.

He says, It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

So we need to be prudent about the type of things that we approve of.

We only approve of excellent things.

There are there are excellent things and there are not excellent things.

In fact, he goes on and he says, it begins with our thoughts.

You want to know how to make sure that you're focused on the right things for excellence?

It begins with their thoughts.

Philippians 4, verse 8, he says, Finally, brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, those things.

Philippians 4:8

And then he kind of captures them all.

If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

That's the kind of thing that we need to be selective in.

Pick what we're going to be excellent with.

And once you decide where God's calling you to excellence, expect that you're going to be challenged.

Expect that it's going to happen.

When you draw a line in this end, you say, no, I'm going to be excellent in this area.

I'm going to serve God this way.

Like excellence is super great when it benefits you, but excellence actually isn't easy.

It's super difficult.

And when it starts to cost you is when you really see how committed you are to it.

When you got to wake up a little bit earlier to go to the gym, huh?

When you got to say no to some of that food on the plate next to you.

When you have to put in the extra hours at the office to get that proposal down the line.

When you have to get up early, because you know you just you gotta work.

You don't really want to go to work, but you have to work, and part of being excellent at your job is being on time.

What happens to Daniel's excellence when excellence stops benefiting him?

What does he do?

See, up to verse 5, excellence is getting Daniel promoted, but now there's a law that says his excellence might get him killed, and that's the real test.

See, anybody can have standards when your standards get rewarded.

And much of much of our history in this country, we have been a positive Christian environment.

We are shifting, we have shifted, I would say, from a positive Christian environment where Christianity is rewarded, the values that we hold in this room are rewarded.

Then we move to a neutral Christian environment.

Now we are in a negative Christian environment in this world.

So it's easy to have standards when being a Christian means you're gonna get rewarded.

But now, when being a Christian means that you're gonna get ridiculed, that people are gonna say hateful things about you, what do you do?

That's when it matters.

True excellence is revealed when maintaining your standards actually costs you something.

Verse 10.

It says, When Daniel knew the documents had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper room open towards Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before God as he had done previously.

I love what Daniel does in response.

He just keeps living his life in a righteous manner.

He just keeps doing the right thing.

He doesn't let him sway him, he does what he can, what's under his control, to make sure that he's honoring God.

Doesn't matter what the consequences are.

I'm gonna still honor God.

I think it's interesting too.

It says he had done this previously, so it wasn't like he prayed more just to make a political statement.

Right?

It also wasn't like he prayed less to avoid trouble.

He had already been doing this.

He just did what he'd already been doing.

It said, as he had done previously.

He's not scrambling for God's favor or God's presence, he's just continuing in the habits that he already had.

I wonder how many of us can say that.

That when a crisis happens, that we've prayed enough that we don't have to have these emergency prayers to God.

To be like, Lord, please have favor, tell me what's going on.

He was just in this habit of praying.

I think all of us we want this miracle of God delivering us from a lion's den, like we know happens with Daniel.

If you didn't, sorry, I gave you the ending.

We all want the miracle.

It's flashy, it's impressive, it's spectacular.

But you know what's not flashy or spectacular?

Getting on your knees every day, three times a day, for a mundane prayer.

It's not flashy.

It's not.

We want we want his miracle, but I wonder how many of us are willing to accept his routine.

The truth is, crisis didn't actually create Daniel's character.

What it did was it just revealed it.

So what happens to you during crisis in your life and how you respond, that that reveals what's inside you.

And I wonder, does it reveal that you have an excellent spirit?

Or does it force you to confront inconsistencies in your character?

I would say this too, if you're taking notes.

Develop excellence before you need it.

Put it in place before it's absolutely necessary so you don't get eaten by some lions.

You gotta build habits before you need them.

You don't build character in a crisis.

What happens is you reveal what you built before the crisis.

Daniel 6, 13, it says, this is what happens.

The leaders see this, the the other 122 people see this, and they're like, We got him.

So they go to the king.

Verse 13, it says, Daniel, who's one of the exiles, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you've signed, but makes petition three times a day.

He's not praying to you, he's praying to God or his God.

The king, when he heard these words, he was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel.

And he labored till the sun went down to rescue him.

This is so sad.

Again, the king isn't a bad guy.

He's bound by the legal system that he actually set up.

He's in a super difficult place.

He likes Daniel, he appreciates Daniel, but he's been used as a pawn by evil people.

And now he's a slave to a system that he helped build.

Just a quick aside here, I think this happens a ton of times in our political system.

Good many people they get co-opted into political camps, and then they find themselves being complicit in really terrible policy that they never would have endorsed.

But they gotta go along with it because that's what my party does.

Y'all, the only party that we support is God's party.

Right?

And don't neither of them align perfectly with him.

Okay?

We we support his decisions and his edicts and his values and his rules.

That's that's what we do.

I digress though.

I digress.

Let's get back into this.

Here's what happens The king commanded, because he was bound, he couldn't change the laws.

And they made that, they made, they made sure they kind of got an aha moment at the beginning.

They said, Well, let's sign this, which you know can't be changed.

Let's go ahead and sign this, and the king's like, that's a great idea.

Let's sign it, can't be changed.

30 days, I get all the prayers.

So he can't do anything.

Verse 16, it says, The king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions.

The king declared to Daniel, May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you.

I think it's crazy.

The king's actually rooting for Daniel.

And if you see, he's actually appealing to Daniel's values.

He wants to see if Daniel's values come out in the wash as being the top thing.

He's like, dude, I hope, I hope what you believe is real, because it's about to get real.

Verse 18, it says the king didn't sleep all night because he was concerned for Daniel.

Go on to verse 19, it says, Then at the break of dawn, the king arose and he went in haste to the den of lions.

As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish.

The king declared to Daniel, Oh Daniel, servant of the living God.

Has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?

Again, he's saying this with anguish.

He's anticipating that Daniel's not okay.

And Daniel said to the king, Oh King, live forever.

I love that.

This guy threw Daniel in a den of hungry lions.

He spent all night with him.

Probably like bones and bodies and all kinds of craziness there.

The guy who threw him there, he's like, Man, bless you.

Live forever, King.

That's the first thing he says.

He says, My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths, and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him and also before you.

I honored my God, I also honored you.

That's important.

Oh, King, I have done no harm.

Then the king was exceedingly glad, and he commanded Daniel be taken up out of the den.

So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God.

This is crazy.

Like Daniel just consistently beats the odds.

Captive eunuch consistently beats the odds.

You know what this is?

It's favor.

It's more than just excellence.

He he repeatedly has this thing, this characteristic, it just cannot be explained by him being talented.

And so I don't want to overstate that excellence is all that we need.

It's not.

We actually need something more beyond excellence.

Because there are excellent people in the world that do not have the Spirit of God in them.

Daniel's wisdom, his interpretation, his preservation influence, his endurance ultimately all point to something that's beyond him, that's greater than him.

It's to the God that he serves.

See, excellence, it's not believing that I am capable of anything.

Excellence is believing that God can do extraordinary things through whatever I faithfully honor him with.

That's what excellence does.

And so you and I, we bring God our natural ability, and God then brings us what we naturally don't possess, and he does something amazing with us as his favor rests on us in the way that it rested on Daniel.

And I don't want you guys to mistake me to hear me saying that God's favor means that you have a simpler life and easier circumstances.

Favor doesn't mean you always get a promotion.

Daniel did get a lot of promotions.

Daniel's favor, though, also eventually got him thrown into a lion's den.

What's true, though, is that God's favor was just as present in the lion's den as it was when he was getting promoted throughout the ranks of the kingdom.

His favor was still on Daniel.

And so what we can't do is confuse God's favor with favorable circumstances.

They're not the same thing.

So Daniel, he eventually prevails against his enemies.

At verse 24, we read that without raising a single word against his accusers.

This is crazy.

He doesn't even speak against them.

Did you notice that?

He doesn't shout against them, he doesn't try to plead his case, he just prays and gets thrown into a den of lions.

It's kind of nuts.

And his enemies get handed over to the punishment that they planned for him.

And we're read this.

Again, Darius, a pawn, not a godfollower.

This is what Darius does.

The king commanded those men who'd maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions.

They, their children, and their wives.

And there were some hungry lions because it says before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.

Y'all, the Bible's got some crazy stuff in it.

Daniel's supernatural advantage, it wasn't ultimately that he beat everybody else.

It was that God could use Daniel's life in circumstances where his natural ability was completely useless.

Like when you're in a pit with hungry lions, doesn't matter your excellence, your intelligence, your political skill, your work ethic, none of that's gonna save you.

When you're in a pit with a bunch of lions.

Daniel just brought excellence and faithfulness to God.

God did all of the rest.

This is what happens.

In verse 25, it says, King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth.

This is the result of Daniel's excellence before God.

He says, This peace be multiplied to you.

I make a decree.

Now think about this.

Imagine if our president, or if another leader in another country, if the the leader of China, put a decree out like this.

He has this crazy experience with one of his leaders who is serving a God that he doesn't necessarily serve.

And he's like, I just, you know what?

I'm gonna put out a proclamation to all the earth, and this is what this is what Darius's proclamation says.

I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel.

For he is the living God, enduring forever.

His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end.

He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.

He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

That's pretty powerful.

I think it's really easy to miss it in this story.

Daniel didn't do anything.

I don't know if you notice that or not.

His action, it was actually more inaction than anything else.

He just kept serving God.

He didn't make crazy, crazy proclamations, he didn't violate his values before God.

And the result was not that he was just personally delivered from trouble, the result was that God received glory from his actions.

Across the entire nation, across the entire kingdom that Darius ruled, and it was not a small kingdom.

It was extraordinary faith he showed.

But his faith, it wasn't something that was developed in an instant for an instant.

It came from a life living, cultivating that excellent spirit.

This is something he had previously done it.

He had always been praying.

And he just said, I'm just not gonna stop doing that.

I'm not gonna stop serving God, I'm not gonna stop loving God, I'm not gonna stop with this habit, this discipline that I know.

So if I could say this differently, excellence isn't occasionally doing something extraordinary, it's consistently doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

That's what Daniel did.

Super good.

His excellence got him noticed, it got him promoted, and then it got him scrutinized, it got him attacked, it got him thrown into a den of lions.

But ultimately, what it did was it created a platform by which God was glorified.

And that's why we want to pursue excellence as believers.

I think God is actually calling all of us to excellence.

It's what he wants for me.

I know that it's what he wants for you.

And in fact, I think you guys probably feel this.

I feel it in areas where I'm inconsistent that God is calling me to be more excellent.

In fact, um, it's supposed to be a mark of his people.

I've said that before, but I'm gonna read you one more verse from 2 Peter chapter 1.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

It says, His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

So his excellence draws us to him, and then he calls us to be like him as well.

So I told you before, I would say this, if you want some application steps, I would choose what deserves your excellence.

Be really, really picky.

I'm sure that there are areas where you need, like, you know, like I need to be more excellent because compromise is actually killing me.

It's harming me.

You might have like dozens and dozens of things that you're thinking of.

Some of you might.

I would encourage you, um, don't feel like you need to change everything all at once.

That can be overwhelming.

It's like people who come up with a um New Year's resolution list and they think of all the areas that they want to be better.

And so they've got 15 New Year's resolutions, and by January 3rd, they've failed on almost all of them.

There's this great book by a guy named Charles Dohig.

Um, it's called The Power of Habit.

I highly recommend it to you.

If you feel like God's challenging you to develop some new habits.

He talks about keystone habits and how there's you can pick one thing to change oftentimes and it will have this waterfall effect in your life.

Like it will it will it will fix many things.

Like if if you feel like, man, I just haven't been praying at all.

If you begin to pray and intercede and connect with God on a daily basis, I guarantee it will have effects in so many other areas of your life.

If you feel like, man, I just don't know what the word says, I feel ill-equipped when it comes to fighting the good fight of the faith because I don't have, I don't have any weapons.

The sword of the spirit is like way over there.

Maybe just get into the word more.

If you feel like you're doing life alone and it's difficult, maybe one of the habits you need to commit to is fellowship.

I don't know.

And those are just those are just church things.

There could be lots of other practical things that God's calling you to commit to.

But I would encourage you to do this.

Choose what deserves your excellence, and then just pick one area.

For the next 30 days, pick one area.

Raise the standard in just one area and see what the results are.

And then the last thing, this is so important, do it for God.

Don't do it so other people praise your excellence.

Do it for him.

Don't study the word so that way you can be the smartest person at the Bible study.

Don't don't don't do that.

Do it so he gets the glory.

Don't pursue excellence so people think more highly of you.

Pursue it so that way they think more highly of your God.

Someone pray for us today.

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast.

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We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.