Daniel 6:5
‘Then these men said, “We will not find any ground of accusation against this Daniel unless we find it against him regarding the law of his God.”’
We can all understand what it’s like to wrestle with hatred or jealousy. As a christian, we aren’t to let it reside in us. Jesus boiled down the Law into two commands, to love God and others.
Anger can be difficult to remove. We need His help. Pray for love or forgiveness. I’ve had some solid lessons on this recently. It was captivating my mind. I’ve had to learn to forgive by faith. I would go through the process of forgiving only to feel anger building up again. I had to toss it out of my my and claim that I’ve already forgiven them. It was a good lesson.
This is part of being His disciple. Matthew 16:24 says, ‘Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me”‘. Our old sin nature wants to do plenty of things that are against God and His ways. We want our way. We have appetites that we want filled. We want honor and praise and so on.
Daniel’s coworkers in today’s passage are giving into their darker nature. They are setting a trap for Him. This would be infuriating. Daniel knows better than to get angry. We will have people try to sabotage us. Don’t seek to get even. Romans 12:19 tells us what to do, ‘Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”’.
We need to trust the Lord. We trust Him to assist us in denying ourselves. We trust Him to deal with those who are against us. We trust Him that His way for us will be good. We trust Him that His love for us will always be there.
I heard a message yesterday that said that some of the paths we enter may be temporarily bad. This was my reality the past few months. That resonated with me. This was a valley of the shadow… Sometimes this is His will. I had a hard time with this. I was fighting for my way. A hard, but important lesson. We will see that this gets much worse for Daniel before it gets better. We don’t see him complaining. He’s trusting.
“You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You”, (Isaiah 26:3). Our hearts aren’t to get anxious. Even though things aren’t going the way we think they should go. He wants us to trust Him.
Thank You, God, for being there for us. Our hearts aren’t to get anxious when we go through the dark valleys. Thank You that You will keep us in perfect peace.