Be Real Together:

Take a few minutes to catch up, tell stories, and laugh together. Trust and friendship take time to build. If you’re launching a new DNA, one person should tell their story — what do we need to know about you? Next week, have another person in your DNA share their story.

Read Together: Daniel 10-12

Grow Together: Observe and Apply

This week, we concluded our series on the Book of Daniel. The first half of the book documents a man named Daniel and his friends - stories of faithfulness to God in the midst of a culture that stands in direct opposition to him. The second half of the book is filled with visions and prophecies about the future - both things coming during and just after Daniel’s lifetime, as well as prophecies that are yet to come to pass in our lifetimes.

In Daniel 10-12, Daniel receives good and bad news through a vision and his visitations from an angel or two.

BAD NEWS: He’s shown incredible details of both earthly wars and spiritual battles that are in the making and is overwhelmed by the realities.
GOOD NEWS: In the midst of it, there is incredible hope on the horizon.

1. God honors the humble and hears their prayers
Think about Daniel’s origin story…Every time Daniel was faced with a challenge, he went straight to God. He recognized that he himself was not God and that he needed God to be his source of wisdom, guidance, and strength every time!

It’s also important to understand that just as Daniel’s posture towards God was crucial to his interactions with God, the same applies to us. Humility is always a precursor to coming to God. Why? Because when we don’t come to God humbly, we act as if we’ve got something to offer him. Our pride does us no favors when it comes to interacting with God, but our humility results in an experience of God’s grace.

2. God’s love and peace strengthen his people.
We’re living in a time in history where we need to be strengthened by God if we’re going to be faithful and endure in this life. We need spiritual strength to discern what God is doing and how we are to engage with the challenges we face. Remember - while Daniel is being shown an insane vision of both physical and spiritual battles that will come, they are all designed to wage war on our souls and keep us from living a life that’s pleasing to God.

See, the spiritual battle isn’t just happening in the cosmos outside of our lives, it’s
happening around and inside of us. Even those of us who are followers of Jesus need to understand that, while the ultimate battle has been won by Jesus, we still wage war in the day to day over living from our victory.

3. God’s people will be sifted, but the faithful will receive their inheritance.
It can tend to feel like there are seasons where the church is sifted in the sense that, we go through hardship, we experience challenges, and we’re shaken up by the circumstances. Not everyone makes it through those experiences, but those who do tend to come out refined - almost like gold in a fire - being purified and cleansed so that they can endure even more down the road.

It seems as though God is communicating that we have 2 options in this life:
- Go through the purification process (testing) and come out more like Christ
- Avoid God’s purification process and grow more wicked and opposed to him.

And the reality is that it will only become more and more obvious as time goes
on which direction humans are heading. However, the story of the end of time results not in dismay, but in resurrection life! It’s guaranteed that we will be sifted in this life, but we can stay faithful because there is an inheritance in heaven that is being kept for us in heaven. This truth can allow us to rest in knowing that God is in control, he’s working a plan, and he’s going to see it through.

Pray Together:

Jesus, thank you for showing us the way to live. Thank you for giving us hope that even in the midst of the chaos, you are with us, Holy Spirit, guiding and directin us. Please help us the realize and internalize the importance of living a life of loving obedience toward you. In Jesus’ Name we pray, AMEN.