God gave these four young men wisdom and the ability to learn many things that people had written and studied. Daniel could also understand visions and dreams.
Daniel 1:17
Daniel is one of the few well-known biblical characters about whom nothing negative is written. Not saying he was perfect, but what a commendation. The secret of his life was characterised by an underpinning of faith, prayer, courage, consistency, and lack of compromise as we discover today.
Background
Roughly 2,600 years ago a teenager from Judaea was taken captive by the rapidly ascending Babylonian Empire. Daniel was about 15 years old when he went to Babylon during the third year of Jehoiakim (609-558 B.C.), along with the other elite young men of Judah.
Arriving in Babylon Daniel and his friends were placed in a three-year training programme to prepare them to oversee Jewish affairs in the Babylonian Empire.
Not much going for Daniel and his friends you might think, no family and no home so you might think Daniel would give up on his faith but that was not the case as we saw yesterday. Why? Daniel and his friends had their lives underpinned by faith.
In chapter one we find Daniel and his friends refusing to compromise. When the king’s order did not agree with Daniel and his friends in respect to eating food which had been first offered up to the Babylon gods, Daniel and his friends would not compromise. Instead, they knew the importance of ensuring that their private lives mirrored their public lives and therefore they asked for a time limit to demonstrate their private faith in God.
For Daniel and his friends, this was a huge risk. It could have meant their lives being forfeited. That though was a price Daniel and his friends were prepared to pay.
Their underpinning faith proved how great God is. Particularly for Daniel, this was the reason Daniel survived kings and empires. He proved that underpinning your life in God throughout your life is well worth doing. As we have seen in the last two days Daniel did not have a life without its problems, but time and time again we see the importance of underpinning.
So let’s take a moment and ask have we compromised?
Is all of our life underpinned by God?
Daniel and his friends show us that men can be captured, enslaved and even have their names changed yet still can be determined not to lose their identity or faith. Daniel and his friends proved that God was miraculously working with them, and not only to preserve their lives but to prosper no matter what their circumstances were.
Dare to be a Daniel? Then underpin your life in God.