Daniel 6:10 (NKJV) 10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.
Everyone must wait in life. Often our waiting occurs in times of great stress. The story of Daniel does not involve protracted times of waiting. However, when we are under stress a few days can seem like a very long time indeed. One of the most important faith skills we can develop is the ability to wait successfully. Faith requires this skill but if we expect to walk in favor, we must master it.
The case of Daniel is a little different from the last story we studied, that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego. Whereas the king who ruled in their time had no predisposition to favor them, the king in Daniel’s day did favor him. In fact, the favor is what brought the trial into Daniel’s life.
The background for the lion’s den incident is that the Medes and Persians had conquered Babylon. The new king had divided the region into 120 areas and placed rulers, called satraps, over each one. He then placed three governors over the satraps. Daniel was one of the three governors.
The king recognized that Daniel was doing a better job than his two colleagues were. The bible says there was an “excellent spirit” upon him. The king was thinking about putting Daniel over the whole region. Needless to say, the other governors and 120 satraps did not like this idea one bit. They began to try to find some way that they could accuse Daniel to the king.
The more they looked the more they understood that there was nothing with which to accuse Daniel. He was loyal to the king, he did his work very well and he did not say anything they could use against him. He rose higher and higher in the king’s estimation. Finally, they realized that there was only one way they could trip up Daniel.
Daniel 6:5 (NKJV) 5 Then these men said, “We shall not find any charge against this Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God.”
They reasoned that if they could find some way to make the will of the king go against the law of Daniel’s God, Daniel would obey God rather than the king. The king would have no choice but to condemn Daniel and remove him from office. It might even be possible to cause the king to put Daniel to death. They went to work on a plan.
All kings are weak in the area of pride. They decide to approach the king with a proposal.
Daniel 6:6-9 (NKJV) 6 So these governors and satraps thronged before the king, and said thus to him: “King Darius, live forever! 7 All the governors of the kingdom, the administrators and satraps, the counselors and advisors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute and to make a firm decree, that whoever petitions any god or man for thirty days, except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. 8 Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which does not alter.” 9 Therefore King Darius signed the written decree.
King Darius heard their words and liked the idea very much. He signed the decree, which meant that for 30 days he could not change it. For the next 30 days, no one could pray to any God other than the king. The enemies of Daniel put in a very clever provision. Anyone violating this decree would not simply be put into prison. They would be thrown into a den of hungry lions. If they made it out alive they would be considered innocent, but if not they would be considered guilty. Of course, they would also be quite dead.
Now, we are talking about successfully waiting. Daniel is about to enter into a very stressful waiting period. In our study of the three men in the fiery furnace, we learned that they won the battle of waiting before it even began because they “closed the back door” by saying, “King, no matter what happens, we will not bow to your idol.”
Many times, we cannot wait successfully because we allow the possibility of compromise to weaken us. We must realize that compromise never produces victory. Compromise always results in failure. The devil will make it seem that a little compromise cannot hurt but it always leads to more compromise. The only way to wait on the Lord successfully is to eliminate the possibility of compromise immediately.
We have all had these thoughts. “What if God does not heal me?” “What if I don’t get the money I need?” “What if I lost the house…..the car…..my marriage?” You can put in whatever thing you may be facing. The devil loves to play the “what if” card. I like to turn that card around on him. “What if I do get healed? What if God does a mighty miracle in my finances? What if I win such a great victory that you never recover?” I find that this tends to slow down the devil’s “what ifs” quite a bit.
The way to stop the “what ifs” entirely is to simply tell the devil, “It does not matter if “what if” happens or not, I am not going to compromise. I am going to serve God anyway.”
Daniel closed the back door just as the three young men did. We read about it in today’s scripture. As soon as he heard about the decree, he went into his room, opened the windows toward Jerusalem and prayed three times as was his custom. He did not close the windows. He did not try to cover his disobedience. He immediately went and prayed openly, knowing it would get back to the king. He did not use words to say it, but he was declaring the same thing the three young men had said before him. “No matter what happens, I will not compromise my relationship with my God.”
I want to point out something. This law was only for thirty days. It would be easy for Daniel to say, “God will understand. I will just compromise for the thirty days and then I will go back to my prayer routine.” Many times the devil tells us that what we want to do is just a small compromise. Surely, God will understand.
I believe there are times while we are growing that God will certainly understand our failings. However, we need to be willing to grow up in the Lord. If we will not make a stand against the small compromises, we will not make a stand against the big ones. If we compromise once, the devil will give us more opportunities. The second is easier to justify than the first. Eventually we will come to a compromise we know we cannot submit to but we will be too weak and too used to compromise to resist successfully.
Daniel knew that if he gave in to his enemies for 30 days, they would do something else until he could no longer serve God and the king. He decided to draw the line right then and there. He probably gave his prayer time a little extra gusto on that day. He was not hiding. He wanted everyone to know that he served the living God first and foremost and whatever happened as a result was in God’s hands.
As you and I face times of waiting, we must close the back door just as Daniel did. We must make a quality decision that we will serve God not matter what. This is not a compromise of faith. If we do not make this decision the devil will use every tactic to delay the answer to our prayer. He knows that if he puts enough pressure on our emotions he will cause us to stop waiting and then he can defeat us. Do not give him that opportunity. Tell him today, “I will not compromise because of a fiery furnace or a lion’s den. I will serve the Lord!”
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