August 6
Jeremiah 19:1-20:18; Daniel 1:1-21
We all have a choice. We can either define ourselves by our circumstances or by our character. When it comes to circumstances, we have all heard it before. Everyone wants to explain why their life, their situation, their family, their workload, is the worst. Nothing and no one is immune to this. At work, though I have been a physician for over thirty years, other physicians feel the necessity to tell me how terrible their night of call was, as though it was something novel or different. A question that I will often ask people who are in the faith is how their walk with God has been going, whether they have been spending time in His word, in prayer, gathering together at church? For those outside the faith, I take the opportunity to introduce them to God. For many, the circumstances start to be listed. Work has been crazy, there is a new baby in the house, I'm planning for a wedding, etc. Despite the intricacies of life, we all have the ability to make the choice to get up a little earlier, go to sleep a little later, and use what little time we may have more productively, such as our lunch breaks. Others will deflect from their personal lives and point to the tumultuous times that we live in, with statements like, with all the shutdowns, all the uncertainties, all the isolation, all of the death, who has time to focus on the things of God. These are all circumstances, and if there is one thing you can be certain of, from your youngest days to your final days, is there will always be circumstances. The truth is our walk with God is a relationship which can not and should not ever be dismissed. He is not a pleasant little addition to our lives, but if we are His children, He is integral to every facet of our lives. He defines us. He gives us clarity in the midst of our circumstances. He will see us through and refine us, making us stronger. If life seems out of control, perhaps, it is because we have made the choice to lose sight of the only One who can take control and make sense out of what often seems like chaos.
We meet Daniel, one of God's prophets, who lived during one of the more chaotic times, during the Babylonian captivity. Daniel and his three friends were carried away in the year 605 BC, in the first of three waves which ultimately led to the destruction of Judah in 586 BC. We read of him in Daniel 1:3-4, ",Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had the ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans." Prophetically, we read of these times in Isaiah 39:7, "And they shall take away some of your sons who will descend from you, whom you will beget; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." Daniel was a teenager who had everything. He had looks, intelligence, lineage, etc. We read in the next few verses that he lost his name, lost his parents, lost his language, lost his surroundings, lost his fertility (rendered a eunuch), etc. He could have used every circumstance in the book as to why his situation was the worst. But he chose character over circumstance. He would not take these changes as a reason to turn his back on God. In fact, in Daniel 1:8, he refuses the wine and food given him from the chief of the eunuchs, since being a Jewish man under the law, the food would defile him. But he didn't refuse it pridefully, but respectfully. In the end, he and his friends fared better than the others who had compromised, and we read in Daniel 1:17-21, that God blessed them in the midst of their circumstances. We witness this character again in Daniel 2, when they come to take the lives of all the king's "magicians, astrologers, and Chaldeans" since they were unable to interpret the king's dream. Daniel never panicked, but took the opportunity to pray in 2:17. When God gave him the king's vision and the interpretation, rather than taking the glory onto himself, he deflected from himself and gave all the glory to God."
Though we like to point to circumstances, everyone is listening to someone. That someone might be the media, the "experts", family, friends, etc. But that someone could just as well be God. The choice is ours. We read in 1 John 4:1-2, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." So, when in the midst of our circumstances, we need to decide where it is that we will seek guidance and solutions. We should take comfort in knowing that despite our situation, we read in 4:4, "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." When we focus on our circumstances, we easily forget what Paul wrote in Romans 8:37, "Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." We, His children, despite our circumstances have already won. We simply forget this. When our focus is on things rather than Him, we define ourselves by the wrong things. He has never and will never leave us, but when we forget this, we mistakenly leave Him temporarily. May we remember that He has each of us exactly where we need to be.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: