I DARE YOU TO READ THIS

Daniel 6 click on it  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+6&version=ESV

I dare you to open the Bible above to Daniel 6. Daniel, chapter 6 is a story about a faithful man, also about a man who became steadfast. I want to talk to you about that today, Daniel 6. Let's pray before I get to the meat of this word:

Pray/read this with me-
Lord, as I write this it staggers me to realize that you know every single thing about every single one of those who read this-AND ME. You know our deepest hurts, you know our greatest joys, you are aware of the things that bother us, things that concern us. You know every sin we have ever committed. You know the good, the bad, and the dark, deep, ugly that we hide.

Father, some of us go to a service and we focus and we think on really the wrong things, superficial things, things we may like or not like, when really a worship service is all about you, the One we're worshiping. So now help everyone direct their thoughts, Lord, toward you right now. And perhaps this is the greatest act of worship, listening so we might actually learn of YOU, because it speaks of our willingness to submit to your authority over us, to get realigned, and readjusted. So, Father, I simply invite you to break through to every single heart, some of which are soft and pliable, some of which are more hard and more difficult. Nothing is too hard for you, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.


When Christopher Columbus announced his desire to explore new worlds and to discover a quicker route to the West Indies, all the experts of Spain said it was impossible. But because of Columbus' steadfast persistence, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sided with Columbus, not the experts, and that's a good thing for us.

Henry Ford believed in the automobile. He pursued that dream, but he had a good friend named Thomas Edison who said it wasn't a very good idea. In fact, offered Henry Ford a job to come work for him, to get a real life. But Ford was steadfast, persistent in his dream, and it's a good thing he was.

The Wright brothers Wilbur and Orville believed that man could actually fly in the sky. But they had friends, they knew journalists, and they had a father—their own dad said it was a costly and insane waste of money. But they pursued their vision and their dream because they were steadfast.

Steadfastness is a level above faithfulness. Daniel was a faithful man; we saw that last week, even in chapter 6. But steadfastness is when you are faithful in extreme times. The idea of being steadfast evokes thoughts of strength, intensity. To be steadfast is to grab a hold of, in fact, to even clutch the promises of God.

One author that I've read a lot, William Barclay, writes these words: "So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way to enter into them is to believe in them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man." Keep those words in mind as we read chapter 6, because we see Daniel facing his possible death, believing, trusting, grabbing a hold of God's promises like this: "the clutching intensity of a drowning man."

Now, if you are a steadfast believer, you can count on four things that we see in the rest of this chapter. Before we get into those four things, can I just say that life is not fair. That bothers some of us, bothers some people, especially kids. Kids grow up and they say, "That's not fair!" And you say, "Life isn't fair."

But some people never grow out of this idea that life should be fair; that if you do good things, then good things will happen; that if you do bad things that you always have consequences—sort of this cosmic karma that should happen. But that's not real life; life isn't fair. Now, God will eventually bring the fairness and equity; not immediately, but eventually.

I heard about two men, they were in a waiting room, both of them were expectant fathers and their wives were in there having babies. And the nurse came out and said to one of them, "Congratulations! You have a brand-new baby daughter." The other guy stood up and he said, "That ain't fair; I was here first." Yeah, but this man's wife delivered first! NOT FAIR! RIGHT? But there are simply things over which we have no control...life happens at the speed we live it.

What happens to Daniel isn't fair. In fact, he doesn't get delivered from the experience of the lions' den, he has to go through the experience of the lions' den and he's helped while he's in it. Remember what David wrote, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death"? We don't like that. We don't want the valley of the shadow of death, we want to be airlifted from mountain peak to mountain peak and forget the valleys. But the Christian life as you go through it, even when you're steadfast, and I would say especially if you're steadfast.

Now, if you are a steadfast believer, I mentioned there are four things that you can count on: persecution is inevitable, trust is essential, deliverance is possible, and influence is unmistakable. Those are the four divisions of the rest of the chapter that we will look at in this text above. So what I'd like you to do even though we left off at verse 15, and 16 really picks up the rest of the story, I want to draw your attention back a few verses and get the whole thing framed nicely as we move into it.

Number one: persecution is inevitable. Look at verse 5 of Daniel 6. "Then these men," those would be his envious colleagues, if you remember, "said, 'We shall not find any charge against this Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God.' "And so they went with that thought to the king to get a decree signed that nobody could worship any god or anything for thirty days, except the king.

Verse 10, "So, when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows opened toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and he prayed and he gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days. Then these men assembled and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God."

Now, it would seem that this story took place in one day. That in the morning they brought the decree for the king to sign it, at noon they were already at Daniel's house watching him pray because that was the time that he did it, and then by afternoon they had his death sentence signed again, and that he was put in the lions' den by evening.

It was a Persian custom that a death or an execution should be carried out before nightfall. So this probably all happened in the course of a single day. They knew that Daniel was devoted to God, and they knew that his love for God would always be paramount, and so they exploited that situation in order to get Daniel killed.

Persecution is inevitable. You and I are not going to get through this life without some battle scars. There's going to be some wounds, there's going to be some persecution, and here's why: you're a part of the kingdom of light. Out there is the kingdom of darkness of which you used to be a part of. When the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness come into contact, there is a kingdom clash, there are fireworks.

And Paul put it this way, "Anyone who desires to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." Because if you're steadfast, then others are going to know that you're a Christian, and if others know that you're a Christian, not everybody's going to like the fact that you're a Christian. In fact, they'll talk behind your back, they'll marginalize you, you might not make it up the scale in the corporation, or worse.

Over the many years I have been a Christian, a pastor, a counselor, I have gotten a couple death threats. I wrote a blog about Jesus being the only way to the Father and got some recently by blog-mail "We're going to come, we're going to kill you." Christian if you live your life God and live in a godly way somebody is going to take offense! But there is a misconception that following Jesus Christ is going to make life easier. Really? Ever read the New Testament? The early church had it anything except easy.

We love the promises of Jesus. In fact, some people make whole cottage industries of little promises that Jesus said, and they hold onto that promise for the day but there are some promises that they just sort of leave out. Let me give you a promise that Jesus made to his disciples.

Matthew 10 verse 16. Jesus said to his followers, "Behold, I send you out like sheep in the midst of wolves." Whoa! Whoa! Stop right there. That's not an easy gig—little sheep getting sent to a pack of wolves. "Therefore," Jesus said, "be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

Every now and then somebody will say, "Wouldn't it be great to live in the time of the apostles?" I say, Eh, sort of. Parts of it would be cool; a whole lot of other parts would not be so cool, this being one of them: "Behold, I send you out like sheep in the midst of the wolves." So Jesus in this section announces this to them, and then he tells them they can expect persecution from three sources.

Number one: the religious establishment; the religious establishment. Jesus said, "Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues." Did you know that organized religion has been one of the chief antagonists against the gospel? Always has been, still is today.

We send our missionaries out to different parts of the world, they will tell us it's not the common people, it's not the townsfolk, it's not the country folks that give us the opposition, its religious organizations that are opposed to our evangelistic work. Who were Jesus' enemies? Let's see . . . scribes, Pharisee, Sadducees, religious people. Even Daniel's antagonists in this chapter had a religious bent forbidding the worship of any god.

So you'll be persecuted by the religious establishment. Let me take this a step further. You're even going to be persecuted by carnal Christians in your own Bible study groups and churches. Carnal Christians who see your newfound devotion for Jesus, they're seeing that you have a desire to take the dare, to step up, to be steadfast, to pray more, to carry your Bible. And they might say something to you like, "Ooh, look who got so spiritual all of a sudden."

You know why they say that? Because they're convicted by your commitment. And they might say, "Well, I'm a Christian too; I'm just not a fanatic." Somebody once said, "A fanatic is just somebody who loves Jesus more than you do."

Number two, Jesus continued: you'll be persecuted by the secular world. He continues, "You will be brought before governors and kings and the Gentiles." You see, a steadfast believer is sort of like a 500-watt light bulb in a pitch-black room; and though it dispels the darkness, it also irritates people. And it irritated the Roman government when the apostles were those bright lights.

And just like Jesus predicted, you know what happened to them? They were flung to the lions. They were burned at the stake. They were sewn into the skins of animals so that beasts could tear them apart. Molten lead was poured over the tenderest parts of their bodies. Caesar Nero even wrapped them up in pitch and put them on poles so that they could be torches in his gardens at night.

But then Jesus takes it a step further in his catalog of promises to them. He said you'll be persecuted by your own family. Jesus said these words, "For brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his own child; and children will rise against their parents to kill them."

Did you know that there are still some cultures today where if a person converts to Christianity, a funeral is held for that family member? And they say, "He's dead to us. He's dead. He's following Jesus now; don't even mention his name." Other cultures are more radical and they believe in honor killings: "This person converted to Jesus, we need to honor our god by killing him."

Now you haven't had those kinds of things probably, but you have had the persecution, many of you by your own family members. Have you discovered that to witness to your own family members is like—that's harder than witnessing to anybody else? They look at you and go, "Who are you trying to kid, dude? We grew up with you. We know you. You're on to some little kick now, but whatever." These are the promises of Jesus—persecution is inevitable.

Back to Daniel, chapter 6. Persecution is inevitable; therefore, trust is essential. Now watch this, Daniel 6, verse 16, "So the king gave the command, and they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of lions." Just sort of a simple, straight-forward statement: "So they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den."

It was actually a pit. In Babylon (Iraq) there is a square hole in a pavilion where people stand and look, and underneath is a large cavern. In those days it would have been divided into two where the lions were on one side, a lot of them, and then the hors d'oeuvre, Daniel in this case, would be on the other side. The lions would then be let loose.

"So the king gave the command, and they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of lions. But the king spoke, saying to Daniel," now listen to the pagan king speak. "'Your God, whom you serve continually, he will deliver you.' "What? Why did this king say that? Well, this king has been on the throne of Babylon now for a year at least, perhaps even two years by now.

Daniel is old, as we know he's not afraid of anybody, and he's in the king's counsel. He's on the cabinet of the king. So this king has heard message after message after message about what happened to Daniel by Daniel. He heard what happened with Nebuchadnezzar, what happened with Belshazzar. It was well recorded in their own history books by that time, and Daniel has been steadfast before this king.

"'Your God whom you serve continually, he will deliver you.' Then a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the signets of his lords, that the purpose concerning Daniel might not be changed. Now the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; and no musicians were brought before him. And also his sleep went from him."

In this whole episode do you once read of Daniel saying, "This isn't fair! God, I've served you seventy years." No, in fact, we don't have record that Daniel said anything at all, at all. Daniel opens the windows, he prays, that was his custom. He definitely knew that the thing had been signed. He definitely knew that death could happen. He definitely knew what a den of lions was. But he opened up the windows and he prayed, because he always prayed.

And then the death sentence is passed, Daniel is taken and placed in the lions' den; he says nothing. Now he may have said something, but the text is silent. It's like Jesus, he opened not his mouth, but he was silent before his antagonists, and he is lowered into the den of lions.

Daniel's story reminds me of another story that some of you may have heard about a guy by the name of Polycarp who in AD 156—he was a Christian leader in Smyrna, a Christian bishop. Polycarp was brought to be burned at the stake. They brought him to the stake, they tied him up, they lit the fire. And then the executioner said, "Listen, Polycarp, you can get out of this real easy. Just deny Jesus very quickly, we'll let you go, you'll have your freedom."

Not yelling, not screaming, "I hate flames." Polycarp said, "I have served Jesus Christ for eighty-six years," he was eighty six years old like Daniel. "I've served Jesus Christ for eighty-six years, never once has he denied me. He's never done me any wrong. How can I deny him now?" And Polycarp looked down at those flames as the will of God for his life.

And I believe Daniel saw the lions' den and he didn't squawk, he didn't say, "I hate teeth, and lions, and no!" Though he wouldn't have loved it, but he knew his God well enough. And he was steadfast enough to know and believe: "Okay, this is it. I've lived eighty-six years, now it's the lions' den. I had to go one way or the other," and they lowered him into the pit.

Now, it's easy to talk about this, but this is where steadfastness has got to kick in. This is where the clutching intensity of a drowning man has to kick in. This is where your faith needs to move from faithfulness to steadfastness.

Here's a good prayer to remember. Psalm 51, David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." The Hebrew word means to be fixed or fastened, immovable. "Steadfast spirit within me." Psalm 112 speaks of a good man, a godly man, and in describing him it says, "He will not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord."

I have a question for you: What will it take to move you? What will it take to move you? What would it take—what could possibly happen in your life to have you stop trusting Jesus Christ? Death of a child? Lingering disease? Loss of employment? Is there something that you have said? "I trust the Lord, but as long as this, this, and that happen. If something else happens, I can't, I can't follow a God like that. I can't trust a God like that." Really?

I remember having a conversation with a young lady some years ago. It actually took me by surprise because she said, "Well, you know, I, I believed in Jesus," past tense. "I followed Jesus. I trusted Jesus." But then she said, "But then my grandmother died, and that was it."

And I said, "Well, with all due respect, I'm very sorry for your loss. That is very painful, but did you really think she was never going to die? Because that's never happened before in history. So that was it? It was your grandmother's death that just sort of—you lost it at that point: 'I'm not following Jesus anymore.' Really?

Job lost his estate, all ten of his children, and his health, and he said, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord." And then as the book goes on and his situation gets worse, he says, "Though he slay me, I will trust him." He can kill me, I'm not going to be moved—that's steadfastness.

I want you to listen to a slogan of an African-American church in Kansas City. I love it so much. It's their slogan; it's on their letterhead, and they have to probably print small to fit it all in because it's a long one. But listen to this, here's their slogan: "Wake up, sing up, pray up, and pay up, but never give up, or let up, or back up, or shut up, until the kingdom of Christ is built up in this world."

"Wake up, sing up, pray up, pay up, but never give up, let up, back up, or shut up, til the kingdom of Christ is built up in this world."

So there's Daniel and they just sort of take him and they lower him in the pit. And then something frustrating happens in the story, that's verse 17, but look at verse 18. "Now the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting and no musicians were brought before him and his sleep went from him." Now I'm reading that going, so what? I don't care about the king and his palace. What's going on in the lions' den?

You know, if this were a movie and the camera shows a guy getting let down, the lions roaring, and all of a sudden the camera pans to the king's palace. He goes, "I can't sleep." I'm going, I don't care about you can't sleeping; take me back to the lions' den. But this is the Holy Spirit showing you and I what the king is going through mentally in this entire episode.

Persecution is inevitable; trust is essential. Here's Daniel just seeing this as the will of God: "I'm going to trust in God." You know what Daniel sort of reminds me of? His three friends a few chapters back who said, "Our God is able to deliver us, but if not, we're not going to bow." Daniel knew that—God can deliver him; but if not, here goes. Oh well. Hi, lion.

Now, let's go on in the story and you see that deliverance is possible; it happens for him. "Then the king arose very early in the morning," the text suggests at the dawn of the day, "and went in haste to the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried out with a lamenting voice to Daniel." Interesting; voice of anguish.

"The king spoke, saying to Daniel, 'Daniel, servant of the living God.' "Why did he call him that? Where did he get that from? He got that from Daniel. Daniel has been steadfast before the king, so that even this king knows that Daniel believes that all the gods of Babylon, all the gods of Medo-Persia are fake. They're just a bunch of statues without life, but he serves the living God, and so the king calls him that.

"'Daniel, servant of the living God,' " now notice the question, " 'has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?' "Now, frankly, it's a little late for that question; should have asked that the day before. But in that lamenting anguish he asked, "Has your God been able to deliver you?" Silence. Let's see what happens now. Can God do it?

Verse 21, "Then Daniel said to the king, 'O king, live forever!' "I guess the king got his answer, didn't he?" 'My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, so that they have not hurt me, because I was found innocent before him; and also, O king, I have done no wrong before you.' And the king was exceedingly glad for him, and commanded that they should take up Daniel out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den and no injury whatever was on found on him, because he believed in his God." Notice that, mark that: "Because he believed in his God" By the way, Daniel held no ill will toward the king who put him in that pit. I don't what he felt about those who told the king to put Daniel in that pit...

"And the king gave the command, and they brought those men who had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions—them, their children, and their wives; and the lions overpowered them, and broke all their bones in pieces before they ever came to the bottom of the den."

Okay, so I'm reading through this story, and it just sort of sounds like, well, the king has insomnia, can't sleep in his palace. That Daniel has a good night's sleep in the lions' den. He gets up in the morning [yawn], "O king, live forever. How's it going up there?" The king can't sleep, gets up early in the morning, laments. Daniel very politely, very thoroughly explains to him the theology behind: "I was stood before God, and God did this for me."

You know, I say that, but it reminds me of a story in the New Testament where Peter the apostle was arrested along with James. Herod had James killed and was going to kill Peter the very next day. So Peter is in prison, the Bible tells us chained between two Roman guards, and he falls asleep. And the angel comes to spring him out of jail, and the angel has to wake Peter up; that's how deep a sleep he was in. And I'm thinking, "Are you nuts? You're going to get killed the next day and you're asleep?" That's trust. Friend, that is trust!

It's like the guy who was in a boat, the boat got into a storm bouncing around on the lake, on, on the sea, on the ocean. And he remembered that psalm that says, "The God of Israel never slumbers or sleeps." And so he looked to heaven and he said, "Since you never get any rest, there's no sense in both of us losing sleep; good night," and he went to sleep. He believed that he would awake secure! Guess what? He was because even if he died he would awake before the Lord he trusted. We can't lose if we believe...

So God delivered Daniel, and we go, wow! Every kid knows this story. Every Sunday school tells this story. He was delivered from the lions' mouths. It doesn't always happen this way, but when it does; it's pretty marvelous, isn't it?

Let me tell you a true story. Paul Harvey told this story; this is where I got it from. I miss Paul Harvey's stories still today...He used to tell the most wonderful stories in such a great way, by the way. He said there's a church in Beatrice, Nebraska, the West Side Baptist Church. The West Side Baptist Church every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. had choir practice, 7:30 sharp every Wednesday.

But one Wednesday—and most people, he said, came to the church before 7:30 so that they could start the practice on time. So they were there on or before 7:30 without fail. But on one particular Wednesday night every choir member had an excuse why they were late.

The piano player took an afternoon nap, she slept too long, she was late. One of the choir members, a student, had homework problems, so he came late. Another couple who sang in the choir, their car wouldn't start, they came late. All eighteen members did not show up, were not at the church at 7:30.

And it's a good thing because on that particular day there was a gas leak in the basement. And at precisely 7:30 p.m. the gas leak ignited the furnace at the middle level and the church blew up. By the way, the furnace room was directly underneath the choir loft. It absolutely decimated and would have killed everybody in that choir loft. Nobody was there—that is deliverance, and that is marvelous.

And I love stories like that, and they happen, but they don't always happen. Even if you love and you believe in your God like Daniel did, they don't always happen. Did Isaiah believe in his God? Isaiah was sawn in two, cut in two. Did Peter the apostle believe in his God? You betcha! He was crucified upside down.

Did Paul the apostle believe in his God? Yup. He got delivered sometimes, but then there was a day when he didn't get delivered. A Roman ax severed his head from his body in one fell swoop on a Roman road.

So here's Daniel, I can just picture him just from what I know of his integrity. He's getting led into that lions' den, he goes, "This could be either a wonderful deliverance out of it, or I'll see you in a few, Lord." Right? Either way would it have been a deliverance? Absolutely! Absolutely! He would of, he would of if he died, been looking into the face of God instead of the face of Darius, saying, "O king, live forever!" That's not a bad thing. So deliverance is possible, and he was delivered.

Look at the last few verses. Here's the fourth truth, and that is that influence is unmistakable. "Then king Darius wrote: To all peoples, nations, languages that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree." Now he just made a decree, right? That anybody who prays to any god for one month besides me will be killed, that was his decree. You know, they all voted him in. Isn't that interesting? You've heard of "queen for a day?" He was god for a month. They voted him in as god: "You can't worship any god but you." He signed it.

But now listen to this decree, "I make a decree that in every dominion of my kingdom men must tremble and fear before the God of Daniel. For he is the living God, and steadfast forever; his kingdom is the one which will never be destroyed, and his dominion shall endure to the end. He delivers and rescues and he work signs and wonders in heaven and on earth," sounds like a psalmist, "who has delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian."

This is Daniel, this is just one guy; one man literally affects two empires. He affects Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and the Babylonian Empire, and now Darius the Mede in the Medo-Persian Empire.

And I've always believed that his influence extended beyond those kingdoms. I believe the whole reason the Magi showed up at the birth of Jesus Christ—incidentally, the word "Magi" is a Babylonian word. If you looked it up in the Old Testament, the word for wise men in Daniel is Magi. What are Magi from Babylon doing showing up at the birth of Christ looking for the King of the Jews? I think Daniel tipped them off, and they took the tip, and they showed up.

One man influenced two kingdoms. See, it doesn't take a lot of people; it just takes the right ones. One or a few steadfast in their God can influence a nation, can influence a family. Never under estimate the power of a godly life.

One of my favorite guys in the New Testament is John the Baptist. What a fireball!  Didn't care what anybody thought of him. "I didn't like that sermon, John." "I don't care. Have you repented?" Right? He was just this fiery guy. Well, Herod has him arrested and put in prison. But listen to what the Bible says, "Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous man." Something about being around a righteous, godly man or woman that can be unnerving and also very, very influential.

Is that what you want? Do you want to stand up for God? Do you want to influence people? Is that in your heart to do so? Then these words are for you, 1 Corinthians 15 verse 58, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

I'm coming to the end, in case you are getting antsy, with one of my favorite stories of all times written by and spoken by a previous chaplain to the United States Senate, Peter Marshall. Which is interesting because Peter Marshall was from Scotland, came to America, got involved in church work and political work here, became the chaplain to the Senate. He told a story called the "Keeper of the Spring," and here's how the story goes, roughly.

He said there was an Austrian village that had a beautiful stream that ran through it. The village was surrounded by the Alps, by the mountains around it. And they hired this guy called the Keeper of the Spring to patrol the hills and to collect debris from the pools that would feed that stream that ran through the town.

He had to pick up leaves and branches, and anything that would pollute or contaminate that stream in the village. And because he did such a faithful job with quiet regularity patrolling those hills, the stream that ran through that village was beautiful, clear, pristine. Swans came, and tourist came, and businesses built their shops there, and farmlands were irrigated, etcetera.

Until one day when the city council had a meeting and they were looking at the budget. And one of the council members said, "What is this line item for a salary we're paying some guy called the Keeper of the Spring?" He scratched his head and he goes, "I've never seen this person, have you?" None of them had ever seen him before.

But they said, "Yeah, but people hear he's up there, and he's working, and you can't see him, but that's why everything is so nice here in town." The guy says, "I think it's a scam." And so they all took a vote and they fired the Keeper of the Spring.

Nothing changed at all in town; everything was exactly the same for a few weeks. But after a few weeks when summer turn to fall, and the leaves started dropping, and the twigs on the trees started breaking off, and the debris started mounting up and clogging up the stream, one day one of the villagers noticed that the stream wasn't so clear anymore. It had a yellow tint to it, and a few days later it was brownish, and several days later it had a stench that came from it, and the swans left, and the tourists did too.

And the water wheels that diverted the water from the stream into the fields to be irrigated slowed down and eventually stopped. And the village elders realized their error, and they said, "Go get that guy and hire him back." And so they found the Keeper of the Spring and they gave him his job back, and within weeks it was restored to pristine beauty.

And what Peter Marshall's point was is that what the Keeper of the Spring was to that Austrian village, the steadfast believer is to the world, and even to the church. One life well lived can impact a family, a neighbored, a city, a country, two nations like Daniel. It doesn't take a lot of people; it just takes the right ones.

Jesus had twelve disciples, and he said go, and within one generation the known world heard the gospel—that's steadfastness. You can't be steadfast and you can't be powerfully used by God unless you know God to begin with.

Can I just say to you as I come to the close of this DARE,  I'm so happy you're here and reading it, but I wonder if you know Jesus Christ personally. I'm glad you've come to read this, but my goal has never been to have a lot of people come, but to have a lot of people know Jesus Christ. Are you sure that you know him?

I'm not asking if you're not a nice person, you might be a wonderful person. I'm not asking if you have a high intellect or an advanced education, you might. People might like you, you might be very, very influential in a lot of different areas of life, you might be very religious, but religion is not what Jesus is all about. The most religious man/woman on earth can still go to hell, but here is the real question do you know Jesus Christ personally? You can you know...

You can't be a keeper of the spring until you've tasted and drank from the stream yourself of living water. Do you know Christ? That's where you begin. And when you begin there, then you let his life give you real life, real purpose, real meaning. You want a cause to live for? There's nothing greater than the cause of Christ, but you must begin with Christ. Let's pray.

My prayer for you my friend,
Father, we are again impressed with a man who lived without much support, if any at all, in a foreign country surrounded by a different worldview and a different belief system, in fact, in many cases antagonists and scoundrels who were out to get him. And he was not only faithful, but he was steadfast. That got him persecuted. That made him trust more. He was miraculously delivered; some aren't.

But whether we are or not, the biggest issue is whom are we influencing? How are others impacted by our drawing breath and breathing it out again, and living and eating and moving in our community? Lord, that's what we long for. That's the kind of deep purpose we want.

Lord, I pray for those who have read this today who after an honest appraisal of their lives they realize they believe you exist, but there has never been a commitment to you, a personal commitment, a surrender, of a life being serious about God and godly things.

We know, Lord, that Jesus said he came into this world not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. It's my prayer, along with the prayers of many who have invited friends today, and love ones, family members, that more commitments, real commitments would be made to you personally. So reveal yourself, and rescue, and draw, and save some we ask.

With your heart now bowed before your Creator, as you are thinking about who you are honestly before God, if as you do so you realize: "I've never really committed my life to Christ. It's never been real and personal. I've known about God, I've believed in God, I agree there was a Jesus who lived historically, but I don't walk with him. I don't love him yet, and I want to change that. I'm ready now to turn from the past and turn my life over to Jesus Christ."

I hope you sense that in your heart. Or for some of you to come back to Jesus after wandering away for some time. If that describes you and you want to come to Jesus and have your sins forgiven, and receive his life and purpose. Say it right now as you read this. Lord Jesus, I have come to you many times under false pretenses. I want to get right with you as I pray and read this. I am sinner and I realize that your great grace is my only hope of heaven. I choose YOU because YOU first loved me even while I was deep in my sins.


Father, for those who have affirmed this prayer. Meet with them now and grant them the mercy that is all inclusive in the cross you died on. Meet them with the mercy and grace that your position in heaven as a living Savior can provide. And I pray, Father, that what they are about to do would become so real to them, so overwhelming to them that they would never turn back. But I pray that they would discover your embrace and your love, and what it means to have their sins forgiven and washed, and to have purpose of life and a purposeful future. I pray for that redemption in Jesus' name, amen.

Dear reader, if you've been dancing around this thing for too long, you've been playing with it too long, you've been waiting another week too long, another hour too long, you've been sitting back with your arms folded too long—get in the game. God loves you. It's true. What Jesus said is true, there's heaven and there's hell, there's choices, there's eternity. Where do you want to spend that eternity? What are you going to choose right this minute my friend?

(Thanks to Skip Heitzip Calvary Church in Albuquerque, NM for letting me borrow from him-tell Pastor Chuck I miss him) 



See you next blog,
Ted