Give ear, our God, and
hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears
your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but
because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord,
forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay,
because your city and your people bear your Name.” Daniel 9:18-19
3) Those
who know God show great boldness for God.
Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not
foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They
had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions
would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact He did. But these
things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right,
and that loyalty to their God required them to take it, then, in Oswald
Chambers’s phrase, they ‘smilingly washed their hands of the consequences’.
4) Those
who know God have great contentment in God.
There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full
assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this
relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death, and on for
ever. This is the peace of which Paul speaks in Romans 5:1 – ‘being justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ – and whose
substance he analyses in full in Romans 8.
No comments:
Post a Comment