Daniel's challenge

Chapter one of Daniel we find desperate times. Jerusalem has fallen and the brightest and best of the Jews were carried off into exile. All of this happen because of disobedience and sin. The Jewish people had wandered off into a lifestyle of paganism. For several hundred years they had mixed their devotion to God with the pagan cultures around them. This blending of cultures was rooted in a decision to not fully obey God’s instructions regarding the people of the promise land. God instructed them to remove them but the Jews did not. The influence of the pagan religions that was sexual and perverse overcame the purity of following God. The Jewish people began to act like the pagans around them thus causing God to move in discipline. God responded this way out of love and only after years of pleading through His prophets. God’s desire was that the world would be blessed through the Jewish nation but they would not obey.
As I read this I can become prideful but I realize that I have the same “bent”. I want God on my terms and not on His.
The Jewish nation was broken, the temple of God, which was the national symbol of God’s presence, was destroyed. The Jewish people were carried away from their homes and those that were left in Israel were uneducated, unqualified, and unprotected. It was the worst of times.
God stirs a man and his friends to live in “The God Culture”. Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Misheal, and Azariah, were exceptional young men who lived fully facing God. They were selected to be immersed into Babylonian culture and to be trained as leaders. The Babylonians believed that conquered people should be assimilated into a common culture thus maintaining unity. Daniel had “made up his mind” (v.6) to live fully facing God and not to follow the god or culture of those who held him captured.
This decision lead Daniel and the three to challenge the common practices of his captors and to fully rely on God. God came through launching Daniel into a place of influence. Because of Daniel’s obedience God gave him and his friends unusual abilities and wisdom.
God will do the same for us. Notice that God didn’t remove Daniel from his situation. He blessed him in the situation. History shows us that Daniel and the three were so influential that they lead a revival in that pagan culture. What would happen if followers of Jesus Christ made the same decisions? We so often want to be separated from the influence of our culture that we live in the “Christian bubble”. We then become weird and detached. That is not the desire of God. Living in “The God Culture” is influencing the culture for God’s glory!