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 5

Grow Together: Observe and Apply

In a godless society, our call as Christians is not to waver in what we believe, but to stay true to our convictions and to stay faithful to God. Unfortunately, not everyone has done this successfully. We see this in the case of King Belshazzar in Daniel 5. In our lives today, not only have we seen people we’ve been in community with walk away from the church or even their faith, we’ve sadly also seen an uptick in the stories of pastors and ministry leaders who have fallen from their positions of leadership, for various reasons. Rather than getting bitter, how can we learn to do it better in our own lives? Here’s a few lessons we learn from the fallen leader, Belshazzar:

1. Forgetting God makes us unnecessarily vulnerable.

In Daniel 5, Belshazzar appears to have forgotten, or at least, his Kingdom had forgotten, who the true God was, and failed to worship accordingly. This was the problem with King Nebuchadnezzar as well. Every time God would do something miraculous, he’d give thanks for a moment, then slip right back into sinful leadership patterns.

Think about your own life. Why do you fall into the same old habits of sin that have plagued you for years? Why do you slip into sinful attitudes when you’re tired, hungry, under stress, or distracted? Because you forget about God.

One of the greatest discipleship tools that you have available to you personally is this: REMEMBERING.

• Memorizing scripture.
• Writing your prayers and praise reports down in a journal.
• Retelling of stories of God’s faithfulness to your family.
• Talking to your kids while you’re driving around about things you’re learning in
  your own journey with Jesus.
• Reflecting on those early moments when you FIRST came into a saving relationship with Jesus.

Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Do you tend towards forgetting God? Do you have daily/weekly practices in place to help you remember Him? If not, what might you adopt this week?

2. Don’t mock the Maker.

What was the moment that King Belshazzar really proved the contents of his heart? It was when, with drink in hand, he BY NAME worshipped the gods of those inanimate materials RATHER THAN the God for whom those vessels was designated for. He wasn’t just some ignorant fool, he was an arrogant man who KNEW about the God who had humbled Nebuchadnezzer, yet, he failed to humble himself in the same way. Humans living pridefully and unsubmitted to God is literally making a mockery of the God who’s responsible for the very ground we’re standing on and the very breath in our lungs.

Where are you wrestling with pride? How can you learn from Belshazzar’s mistakes?

3. An obedient heart > a heartless sacrifice

What was God after all along? Obedience, repentance, and surrender. If God had no interest in the affairs of Babylon, he could have ignored it entirely, but instead, he used his boot-on-the-ground people, like Daniel and his friends, to impact rulers at the highest level of influence. Yet what do we see with Belshazzar? Total apathy. He receives the judgement, and in a most empty response, offers Daniel all the gifts and promotion he had promised, despite Daniel rejecting them previously. What does this show? That his heart was nowhere near repentance.

He offered the highest offering he could from his position of leadership: the
commanding position directly below his own, plus a bunch of gifts. Yet, in an INSTANT all of it was snuffed out, proving his rule was nothing in comparison to God’s rule to begin with. We can learn from this fallen leader that there is nothing that impresses God, and nothing we can muster in our own power to save ourselves. Belshazzar thought that this menial sacrifice would somehow appease Daniel’s God, but it was never what God was after. He was interested in the King’s repentance.

How are you feeling compelled to return to God, to repent, to obey, to surrender?

Pray Together:

Lord, forgive us for how we’ve forgotten you time and time again. We repent and say, we’re so sorry. Help us to put in place practices in our lives to keep you ever before us, ever on our minds. We don’t want to forget you. Forgive us for how we’ve mocked you, how we’ve disobeyed. We return to you and surrender to you today. Thank you for your abundant grace. In Jesus’ Name we pray, AMEN.