“Who are you?”
It is a simple question, with a not-so-simple answer. You might respond to this question with just giving your name. But that doesn’t really tell people much about you. If you had to make a list of things that would help define you as a person, what would you put on it? Maybe you would say some of the following things in regard to your identity:
Your job
Your family and friends
Your interests and hobbies
Your physical characteristics
Your faith
I am sure there are other things you could include, but this is a pretty good list. These things can change over time, and most of them can be changed by circumstances that are outside of our control. In fact there is really only one thing on that list above that can’t be taken from you (without your help), and that is your faith. The only person that can take away your faith is you.
That is actually a pretty big deal. Think about that for a moment. Your faith is something that you have complete control over. The bible stresses this fact many times. The Old Testament carries with it stories of people who have had just about the whole list taken from them, but their faith remained. Job is an example of this of course. His faith remained even when all else was lost.
There is another book of the Old Testament that addresses this subject too. The book of Daniel was written as a kind of covert message to the faithful who suffered in exile. Daniel was taken from his conquered home of Judah by the Babylonians to be in their royal court. One of the first things that the book talks about is the Babylonians giving him a different name, Belteshazzar. Why would they do this? In a word, power. To name someone means you have power over them, and this was certainly true of the Babylonians. As a further insult the new name probably had a reference to a pagan god in it. The idea was for Daniel to be assimilated into this new culture and forget his old faith.
It didn’t work though. Daniel actually thrived in this system without losing his faith. He resisted their attempts to fed him pagan food, and he gained stature in the new land when God used him to interpret the king’s dream.
Daniel 2:31-49
46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. 47 The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”
48 Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men. 49 Moreover, at Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court.
So here are the bullet points of Daniel’s life:
He was taken by force from his home to a more powerful land
He stayed true to his beliefs
He was able to interpret the king’s dream.
He was given power in the court of the king as a result
Does this story remind you of anyone else?
Everyone of those bullets above also applied to Joseph’s life in Genesis.
That’s three times in the Old Testament that we get the same theme. Joseph, Daniel, and Job all lost everything except for their faith. And in each case their faith stayed strong. It’s almost as if the bible is trying to tell us something.
Maybe the best show of faith though occurred with Daniel’s friends. We might know them best as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Those were also names given to them after exile by the Babylonians. Their true names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These three were faced with an awful choice when it was discovered that they were not worshipping the king’s golden idol. The king threatened to throw them into a furnace. This is what they told him in response:
Daniel 3:16-18
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
And there it is, the biggest theme of the book by far. Here is what faith really is: a response to God’s will. It is not a catalyst for God’s will. The three men told the king that God will do whatever God wants to do, and they were ok with that.
That’s the real take-away here: the understanding that God will go wherever God wants to go. True faith is not trying to get God to go to a certain place or outcome. True faith is following God wherever God takes you.
So what if we defined ourselves by our willingness to go wherever God wants? People would love to see you that way.
God Bless