Sept 22

September 22, 2012

 

Encouragement and a Challenge

 

First the encouragement, it is possible you have lost some momentum in the Bible reading journey. From my personal experience, summer and vacation are the most difficult times to stay consistent with my Bible reading. If you have fallen behind in the journey, just jump back in and pick up where we are today. I can guarantee that God will not ask us if we have completed reading the Bible. He will ask us if we loved his Word. Love his Word by reading it today and love God by obeying him.

 

The challenge is found in Daniel 6:5. Finally these men said, "We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God."

 

We live in a day without heroes. It seems that every public figure has some dirty secret in their closet. If someone wanted to dig up some dirt on you, how difficult would it be? When we read the story of Daniel we see one of the few characters in the Bible who doesn't have a secret closet. Now that I think about it, he does have a secret closet, but he uses it for prayer. To Daniel's credit, this guy is squeaky clean. Not even a rumor to build a scandal on in the National Inquirer.

So what was his secret?  Three times a day he would get down on his knees and pray. Why three times? My guess is that sin was such a powerful and devious enemy Daniel could only go 6 hours without realigning his heart to gaze on the face of God. Daniel found that gazing on God's beauty and holiness would give him enough strength to make it 6 hours.

We are all in need of spiritual transformation in our lives. May I suggest we copy Daniel's discipline to keep us all on the straight and narrow pathway? Let's take the challenge from Daniel One... do a test for the next 10 days. Let's pray three times a day on our knees and see if after 10 days our hearts are not much stronger.    

 

There is no better time to start praying and reading than right now.

 

Lord, I pray that many will take up this 10-day challenge. May we all gaze upon your beauty and your character over the next 10 days. Lord, give us your strength to kill sin in our lives.  We want to live in the freedom and victory that Daniel experienced.  In Jesus' name, Amen