Do I trust God enough to put it all on the line?
Daniel 3 transports us to the plain of Dura, a few miles outside Babylon. There, King Nebuchadnezzar has erected a statue of himself that he commands his subjects to worship; failure to comply will lead to death in a giant furnace.
But as we know, Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego respectfully disobey the king to his face and accept their punishment.
Blind with rage, Nebuchadnezzar has his guards heat up the furnace as hot as it will go, but when the three men are thrown in, not only are they not singed, but the king sees a fourth man walking around with them, who he calls a god.
Even though this story is so familiar, the part that hit me on this reading was verse 26. The king says, "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!"
When he sees they were untouched by the fire, he worships their God, recognizing that they trusted him to save them. He respects their defiance, ironically promoting them to even higher positions in his kingdom.
As Christian leaders, we serve the same unseen God as Daniel and his companions. But do we believe God is just as powerful today as he was then? And willing to act?
I believe he is. But what strikes me the most is my need to trust him so deeply that I am willing to lay my life before him.
If I would do that, then it should be easier to put my company, my family and my problems at his feet and say with King Nebuchadnezzar, "There is no other god who can rescue like this!" (v. 29b.)
Laying it down,
Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
LinkedIn profile | My books
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
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