When you think nothing is happening, God is working for your good. Consider this remarkable Christmas story:
Daniel was the man who funded Joseph the step-father of Jesus when he had to take his family and hide in Egypt for four years. How did he do that? It’s part of the story of a man who got stronger under pressure.
Daniel was a man under pressure. He was a teen man captured during warfare and taken as a slave to Babylon. This is approximately 700 BC. He had three friends and together they held on to the faith they had been taught as young men. When presented with temptation after temptation, they held firm. Pressure showed their character.
Eventually Daniel was placed in charge of the school of the Magi - a secular Babylonian university that eventually was about 10% Hebrew in makeup. Those were the men who continued to look for a sign of the Messiah. And those were the men who arrived in Bethlehem - seven hundred years after Daniel! There may have been dozens that made the journey … (It wasn’t three kings – that’s a song.)
When they arrived in Bethlehem, they brought gold and costly spices. Joseph was able to use that money to escape to Egypt for a few years, then make his way back to Nazareth and even start his own stone mason business which his sons also worked in.
Some of the struggles of Daniel and his friends are legendary … not eating the king’s food, the lions den, the fiery furnace, prison, and a life filled with challenges.
But Daniel was a man who had been discipled.
We don’t know who his father was, we don’t know what city in Israel he was captured from – and he spent his entire life in a land of captivity.
But Daniel’s character, faith, and resilience was instrumental in the life of Jesus as a baby, in giving Joseph money to help his family – and later for Mary to have resources after Joseph died and her son Jesus went on the evangelistic trail.
What you do today will affect generations of men coming behind you … what you do right now will carry eternity for a man you’ve never met.
MY FRIEND, WHEN YOU THINK NOTHING IS HAPPENING … GOD IS AT WORK IN YOUR LIFE. 700 YEARS BEFORE JOSEPH NEEDED RESOURCES, GOD PUT A PLAN INTO MOTION THROUGH DANIEL’S LIFE.
Thank you for being a friend. For supporting this ministry we are engaged in together. What you do will produce results. Those results are men like Daniel. Men who change the future of the world.
Trust your Christmas will be superb. Filled with love and hope and joy.
