Purpose in Your Heart

Daniel 1:8-15

Daniel was a very young man when taken captive by the Babylonians. Some commentators think he may have been as young as 11. No matter the age, his understanding and ability had caused the king to place him, as well as his friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a position of favor. These young men were being groomed to be advisors to the king, a process that took three years (Daniel 1:5).

Daniel must have felt himself a leader of sorts over the others, as he spoke on behalf of the group, purposing in his heart that he and the other three would not eat the meat or drink the wine that was appointed to them by the king. His conviction no doubt stemmed from the fact that the meat and wine was also used in the worship of idols, and as children of God, they wanted no part in idol worship.

There was a great risk in taking the stand that Daniel did, for he challenged the eunuchs to feed him and his friends only “pulse”, which are vegetables; with water to drink. He stated that after 10 days, he and the others would be in better shape than those who ate the meat of the king. This would take a supernatural move in order to come to pass, but remember, Daniel had purposed it in his heart.

The Lord moved over the course of the next week and a half, making the 4 Hebrew children, “fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:15). There were certainly no more nutrients in the food of these children, as the eunuch surely knew, so this health was a miracle from God, and the first in many instances where these young Hebrews would “refuse to bow”.

Purpose something in your heart today; whatever it is. We will do very little to effect this world or build the kingdom of God if the purpose does not make its way from our head to our heart. God is not looking for someone to eat only vegetables and drink only water; that isn’t the point. He is looking for someone to purpose in their heart to be used of God. He wants to pour His vitamins and minerals of the Spirit into every child of God who will yield, and prosper them with the goodness of heaven. We must place our hearts in His loving care, purposed to allow the Christ that is in us to bring His glory out through us.

Go today with the spirit of Daniel, unwilling to compromise your knowledge of His love and forgiveness for you. Let no one steal that glorious knowledge away from you, and be prepared for God to make your countenance fairer than all those around you!

Christ's Broken Heart

Psalms 69:20

At Calvary, the soldiers broke the legs of the thieves on either side of Jesus so that they would die sooner, but when they came to Jesus they found no reason to break His legs, for He was already dead. Instead, a soldier took a spear and pierced the side of Jesus, thrusting the sharp point between His ribs and into His heart. Out of this wound poured blood and water, as the sack of water surrounding His heart exploded onto the crowd. From the spear pierced side, Jesus formed His church and we are covered with His blood for our sins and His water of Words for our cleanliness.

The breaking of Jesus’ heart in the physical happened after He was dead, but the breaking of His heart in the spiritual occurred before He drew His last breath. No doubt it was heart-wrenching to see doubt at the tomb of Lazarus, but Jesus had grown to expect as much from mankind. It was awful to know that Peter would deny Him, but denial is part of humanity. It was torture to receive the kiss of betrayal from Judas in Gethsemane, but Jesus prophesied that it would happen. None of these things were the spiritual breaking of the heart of our Savior.

“Reproach hath broken my heart” (Psalms 69:20). This Psalm could probably be called a Psalm of Reproach for the word appears six times, and each in characterizing the coming Savior and what He would face in death. In verse 7, He bears reproach for the sake of His Father’s name, showing us that Jesus was constantly mocked for claiming that He and the Father were one.

The worst reproach of all was not done at the hands of man, but at the hands of His Father. For three hours at Calvary, the sky went black and the earth began to tremble. In that time, God turned His back on Jesus as Jesus bore the sins and sickness of the world. Because God is holy and just and good, He cannot look upon sin, thus He abandoned Jesus there to suffer for us all. Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”; calling His Father “God” for the first and last time in His life. Feeling distant because of sin, He lost the spirit of son ship that so characterized His ministry.

Since Jesus paid for us at the cross, we are so blessed in that we get His benefits through the grace and favor of God. God turned His back on Jesus so that He will never turn His back on us. God abandoned Jesus to suffer so that He would never abandon His church to suffer. Jesus cried, “My God, my God”, so that you could always cry “Daddy, Daddy!”. You gained the spirit of son ship because Jesus surrendered it. You are never reproached because reproach broke His heart (Psalms 69:20).

There was no one found at Calvary to provide comfort to Jesus as He suffered for our sins, thus we have the everlasting Comforter to walk alongside of us every day. Since Jesus faced all of hell alone; we receive all of heaven and sit together with Him. How wonderful is our Jesus?

If Our Heart Condemn Us

1 John 3:20, 21

Sometimes our head and our heart do not agree. We think one thing, but our heart speaks something else to us. As believers, changing the way that we think about God is crucial to our walking in freedom and liberty, which Paul bore out so many times and in so many scriptures. Right thinking leads to right living; so wrong thinking would lead to wrong living.

While our minds are being renewed to think like Christ, our hearts often speak just as loud, and sometimes louder. We can become confused about who we are in Christ, even though our head knows all of the right answers and the right scriptures. When these moments of confusion arise, some believers tend to feel that they are less of a saint because of the way that they are “feeling”. This connection between how you feel and who you are can lead to restlessness and hopelessness.

The Apostle Peter must have felt this same confusion, when he denied knowing the Lord on the evening before Christ’s death. Following this terrible event, Peter feels so downtrodden and confused that he decides to abandon fishing for men and go back to fishing for a living. Jesus appears, walking by the sea, and blesses Peter with a boat-load of fish, much like He had done when Peter first met the Master. Peter abandons the boat and wades ashore to find that Jesus has prepared a meal and is ready to dine with His disciples.

There is no mention of Peter’s failure in that conversation over breakfast, but Jesus does ask “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” (John 21:15). The question is aimed at Peter’s heart, wondering if Peter loves Jesus more than he loves his old lifestyle. Peter says, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee” (21:15). His answer is built around what he knows and what he hopes that Jesus knows. In other words, Peter is not so convinced that he does love Jesus enough, but He hopes that Jesus knows more than He does!

John, who was witness to these events on that day, writes that if our hearts are to condemn us for our actions or for who we are, “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (1 John 3:20). Though our emotions tell us one thing, God knows what we do not know and we are better to appeal to His knowledge of us. Peter may not have an assurance of how he feels about Jesus, so he can only trust what Jesus KNOWS to be true. While I may not always FEEL saved, I trust that God knows more than I do.

If my heart does not condemn me then I can have confidence toward God (1 John 3:21). This confidence leads me to ask whatever I want to of God and be sure that I will receive it. If a believer is not sure about who they are in Christ, they cannot be confident that their Heavenly Father only wishes to do good to them and for them. If you think that He wants less than this for you, then you know that you are condemning yourself, contrary to Christ’s finished work.

Don’t worry about the last part of verse 22, which speaks of keeping “his commandments”; for John is not placing you back under the law. Read on, and learn that “This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment” (1 John 3:23).

The Searching of the Heart

Jeremiah 17:9, 10

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The heart is deceitful; more than the devil”. Unsaved man can never live by what he says his heart wants, for it is full of lust and lies. Filmmaker Woody Allen married his ex-wife’s adopted daughter, whom he had helped raise since she was a little girl. When a reporter confronted him about the relationship, he replied “The heart wants what it wants”, and therein lies the problem.

The heart of man has been tainted since the sin of Adam in the Garden. We are incapable of making moral decisions that line up with God’s morality, since we are “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). God promised that He was the searcher of man’s heart and that He would judge man according to who he was on the inside. This dooms man to judgment.

There is good news to go along with this dreadful news, thank God! Jesus came and lived the demands of God’s holiness to perfection and then sacrificed His life for you and I. God has taken His wrath out on Jesus so that we can accept salvation by faith through the finished work of the cross. When we do this, we are clothed in robes of righteousness and set free from sin. Look at the New Testament’s assessment of the believer who has accepted Christ by faith:

“And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10).

“For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

You are the completed one in Colossians and you are the perfected one in Hebrews, if you have accepted Christ by faith. This is the best news of all good news for it means that God has accepted you independent of your ability to earn it or to keep it. Now you have a clean heart which can hear from the Father with no fear of wickedness or evil tainting your decision. Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Unregenerate man cannot know the things of God because their hearts are wicked, but look at the next verse: “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (2:10).

God is obviously still in the searching business, even after we are saved. However, now that we are His children, His searching is for different purposes. He cannot be looking for more sin, for Jesus has paid for all of our sins in His blood at the cross. On the contrary, the Spirit is searching the deep things of God to reveal them to us. Paul said of the Holy Spirit, “And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). Again, the Spirit is searching the heart of the saint, but not to find sin. Instead, He is finding the will of God in each of our lives.

Your heart is clean if you have accepted Jesus by faith. If you have not, your heart remains locked within sin and transgression, and you will stand alone at the judgment, defended only by your ability or inability to keep God’s laws. Won’t you accept Him who cleans the heart and sheds His love into it? He loves you friend, more than you will ever know!

Circumcision of the Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6

The sign of circumcision which God demanded of the Jews was a physical sign of a spiritual promise. Paul explained it as, “A seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” (Romans 4:11). Abraham accepted circumcision as a sign that he was declared to be righteous upon his faith, and that this righteousness would be passed onto his children through circumcision.

Circumcision was the physical sign of the Covenant of God with Abraham. When man procreated, the seed had to pass through the sign of the Covenant, thus passing that Covenant on to the next generation. Paul stated that the New Covenant had no need of this act, for Abraham was actually declared to be righteous while he was still in uncircumcision (Romans 4:9), and that “them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised”, would have righteousness imputed to them as well (Romans 4:12).

God had a higher plan for mankind than physical circumcision. He introduces the concept of the New Covenant plan of heart change through Moses’ farewell speech to Israel in Deuteronomy 30:6 when he says that He will “circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live”. This was a new concept to Israel, that God could change their heart, independent of their ability to do the good or shun the evil. The usage of “circumcision” made it clear to them that God intended to do a sort of spiritual surgery on their heart, changing them from the inside out.

How spectacular this must have sounded to a law-abiding Jew! The law requires a man to change from the outside in. It is a show of will-power and determination, which is visible to everyone. If you are keeping the law, it is seen by all and if you are breaking it, that is known as well. Attention is always being drawn to your works or the lack thereof, even in the ceremony of the sacrifice. If men saw you coming to the tabernacle carrying a lamb, they knew that you had done something wrong. The law was holy and good, but it constantly exposed how unholy and bad that men were.

Grace, however, changes a man from the inside out. It must, for God promised the cutting of the heart instead of the cutting of the body. One of the promises that God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, regarding the New Covenant and the work of grace was “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27). God saw the necessity of putting a “new heart” within man, and His very own Holy Spirit as well, so that man would live righteous without their own efforts being involved.

Does law teach us how to live right? No! Only God’s grace can do that, for Paul said, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11, 12). Grace does the teaching in us, for He is living there. Hallelujah!

Purpose in Your Heart

Daniel 1:8-15

Daniel was a very young man when taken captive by the Babylonians. Some commentators think he may have been as young as 11. No matter the age, his understanding and ability had caused the king to place him, as well as his friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a position of favor. These young men were being groomed to be advisors to the king, a process that took three years (Daniel 1:5).

Daniel must have felt himself a leader of sorts over the others, as he spoke on behalf of the group, purposing in his heart that he and the other three would not eat the meat or drink the wine that was appointed to them by the king. His conviction no doubt stemmed from the fact that the meat and wine was also used in the worship of idols, and as children of God, they wanted no part in idol worship.

There was a great risk in taking the stand that Daniel did, for he challenged the eunuchs to feed him and his friends only “pulse”, which are vegetables; with water to drink. He stated that after 10 days, he and the others would be in better shape than those who ate the meat of the king. This would take a supernatural move in order to come to pass, but remember, Daniel had purposed it in his heart.

The Lord moved over the course of the next week and a half, making the 4 Hebrew children, “fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:15). There were certainly no more nutrients in the food of these children, as the eunuch surely knew, so this health was a miracle from God, and the first in many instances where these young Hebrews would “refuse to bow”.

Purpose something in your heart today; whatever it is. We will do very little to effect this world or build the kingdom of God if the purpose does not make its way from our head to our heart. God is not looking for someone to eat only vegetables and drink only water; that isn’t the point. He is looking for someone to purpose in their heart to be used of God. He wants to pour His vitamins and minerals of the Spirit into every child of God who will yield, and prosper them with the goodness of heaven. We must place our hearts in His loving care, purposed to allow the Christ that is in us to bring His glory out through us.

Go today with the spirit of Daniel, unwilling to compromise your knowledge of His love and forgiveness for you. Let no one steal that glorious knowledge away from you, and be prepared for God to make your countenance fairer than all those around you!

Christ's Broken Heart

Psalms 69:20

At Calvary, the soldiers broke the legs of the thieves on either side of Jesus so that they would die sooner, but when they came to Jesus they found no reason to break His legs, for He was already dead. Instead, a soldier took a spear and pierced the side of Jesus, thrusting the sharp point between His ribs and into His heart. Out of this wound poured blood and water, as the sack of water surrounding His heart exploded onto the crowd. From the spear pierced side, Jesus formed His church and we are covered with His blood for our sins and His water of Words for our cleanliness.

The breaking of Jesus’ heart in the physical happened after He was dead, but the breaking of His heart in the spiritual occurred before He drew His last breath. No doubt it was heart-wrenching to see doubt at the tomb of Lazarus, but Jesus had grown to expect as much from mankind. It was awful to know that Peter would deny Him, but denial is part of humanity. It was torture to receive the kiss of betrayal from Judas in Gethsemane, but Jesus prophesied that it would happen. None of these things were the spiritual breaking of the heart of our Savior.

“Reproach hath broken my heart” (Psalms 69:20). This Psalm could probably be called a Psalm of Reproach for the word appears six times, and each in characterizing the coming Savior and what He would face in death. In verse 7, He bears reproach for the sake of His Father’s name, showing us that Jesus was constantly mocked for claiming that He and the Father were one.

The worst reproach of all was not done at the hands of man, but at the hands of His Father. For three hours at Calvary, the sky went black and the earth began to tremble. In that time, God turned His back on Jesus as Jesus bore the sins and sickness of the world. Because God is holy and just and good, He cannot look upon sin, thus He abandoned Jesus there to suffer for us all. Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”; calling His Father “God” for the first and last time in His life. Feeling distant because of sin, He lost the spirit of son ship that so characterized His ministry.

Since Jesus paid for us at the cross, we are so blessed in that we get His benefits through the grace and favor of God. God turned His back on Jesus so that He will never turn His back on us. God abandoned Jesus to suffer so that He would never abandon His church to suffer. Jesus cried, “My God, my God”, so that you could always cry “Daddy, Daddy!”. You gained the spirit of son ship because Jesus surrendered it. You are never reproached because reproach broke His heart (Psalms 69:20).

There was no one found at Calvary to provide comfort to Jesus as He suffered for our sins, thus we have the everlasting Comforter to walk alongside of us every day. Since Jesus faced all of hell alone; we receive all of heaven and sit together with Him. How wonderful is our Jesus?

If Our Heart Condemn Us

1 John 3:20, 21

Sometimes our head and our heart do not agree. We think one thing, but our heart speaks something else to us. As believers, changing the way that we think about God is crucial to our walking in freedom and liberty, which Paul bore out so many times and in so many scriptures. Right thinking leads to right living; so wrong thinking would lead to wrong living.

While our minds are being renewed to think like Christ, our hearts often speak just as loud, and sometimes louder. We can become confused about who we are in Christ, even though our head knows all of the right answers and the right scriptures. When these moments of confusion arise, some believers tend to feel that they are less of a saint because of the way that they are “feeling”. This connection between how you feel and who you are can lead to restlessness and hopelessness.

The Apostle Peter must have felt this same confusion, when he denied knowing the Lord on the evening before Christ’s death. Following this terrible event, Peter feels so downtrodden and confused that he decides to abandon fishing for men and go back to fishing for a living. Jesus appears, walking by the sea, and blesses Peter with a boat-load of fish, much like He had done when Peter first met the Master. Peter abandons the boat and wades ashore to find that Jesus has prepared a meal and is ready to dine with His disciples.

There is no mention of Peter’s failure in that conversation over breakfast, but Jesus does ask “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” (John 21:15). The question is aimed at Peter’s heart, wondering if Peter loves Jesus more than he loves his old lifestyle. Peter says, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee” (21:15). His answer is built around what he knows and what he hopes that Jesus knows. In other words, Peter is not so convinced that he does love Jesus enough, but He hopes that Jesus knows more than He does!

John, who was witness to these events on that day, writes that if our hearts are to condemn us for our actions or for who we are, “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (1 John 3:20). Though our emotions tell us one thing, God knows what we do not know and we are better to appeal to His knowledge of us. Peter may not have an assurance of how he feels about Jesus, so he can only trust what Jesus KNOWS to be true. While I may not always FEEL saved, I trust that God knows more than I do.

If my heart does not condemn me then I can have confidence toward God (1 John 3:21). This confidence leads me to ask whatever I want to of God and be sure that I will receive it. If a believer is not sure about who they are in Christ, they cannot be confident that their Heavenly Father only wishes to do good to them and for them. If you think that He wants less than this for you, then you know that you are condemning yourself, contrary to Christ’s finished work.

Don’t worry about the last part of verse 22, which speaks of keeping “his commandments”; for John is not placing you back under the law. Read on, and learn that “This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment” (1 John 3:23).

The Searching of the Heart

Jeremiah 17:9, 10

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The heart is deceitful; more than the devil”. Unsaved man can never live by what he says his heart wants, for it is full of lust and lies. Filmmaker Woody Allen married his ex-wife’s adopted daughter, whom he had helped raise since she was a little girl. When a reporter confronted him about the relationship, he replied “The heart wants what it wants”, and therein lies the problem.

The heart of man has been tainted since the sin of Adam in the Garden. We are incapable of making moral decisions that line up with God’s morality, since we are “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). God promised that He was the searcher of man’s heart and that He would judge man according to who he was on the inside. This dooms man to judgment.

There is good news to go along with this dreadful news, thank God! Jesus came and lived the demands of God’s holiness to perfection and then sacrificed His life for you and I. God has taken His wrath out on Jesus so that we can accept salvation by faith through the finished work of the cross. When we do this, we are clothed in robes of righteousness and set free from sin. Look at the New Testament’s assessment of the believer who has accepted Christ by faith:

“And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10).

“For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

You are the completed one in Colossians and you are the perfected one in Hebrews, if you have accepted Christ by faith. This is the best news of all good news for it means that God has accepted you independent of your ability to earn it or to keep it. Now you have a clean heart which can hear from the Father with no fear of wickedness or evil tainting your decision. Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Unregenerate man cannot know the things of God because their hearts are wicked, but look at the next verse: “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (2:10).

God is obviously still in the searching business, even after we are saved. However, now that we are His children, His searching is for different purposes. He cannot be looking for more sin, for Jesus has paid for all of our sins in His blood at the cross. On the contrary, the Spirit is searching the deep things of God to reveal them to us. Paul said of the Holy Spirit, “And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). Again, the Spirit is searching the heart of the saint, but not to find sin. Instead, He is finding the will of God in each of our lives.

Your heart is clean if you have accepted Jesus by faith. If you have not, your heart remains locked within sin and transgression, and you will stand alone at the judgment, defended only by your ability or inability to keep God’s laws. Won’t you accept Him who cleans the heart and sheds His love into it? He loves you friend, more than you will ever know!

Circumcision of the Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6

The sign of circumcision which God demanded of the Jews was a physical sign of a spiritual promise. Paul explained it as, “A seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” (Romans 4:11). Abraham accepted circumcision as a sign that he was declared to be righteous upon his faith, and that this righteousness would be passed onto his children through circumcision.

Circumcision was the physical sign of the Covenant of God with Abraham. When man procreated, the seed had to pass through the sign of the Covenant, thus passing that Covenant on to the next generation. Paul stated that the New Covenant had no need of this act, for Abraham was actually declared to be righteous while he was still in uncircumcision (Romans 4:9), and that “them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised”, would have righteousness imputed to them as well (Romans 4:12).

God had a higher plan for mankind than physical circumcision. He introduces the concept of the New Covenant plan of heart change through Moses’ farewell speech to Israel in Deuteronomy 30:6 when he says that He will “circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live”. This was a new concept to Israel, that God could change their heart, independent of their ability to do the good or shun the evil. The usage of “circumcision” made it clear to them that God intended to do a sort of spiritual surgery on their heart, changing them from the inside out.

How spectacular this must have sounded to a law-abiding Jew! The law requires a man to change from the outside in. It is a show of will-power and determination, which is visible to everyone. If you are keeping the law, it is seen by all and if you are breaking it, that is known as well. Attention is always being drawn to your works or the lack thereof, even in the ceremony of the sacrifice. If men saw you coming to the tabernacle carrying a lamb, they knew that you had done something wrong. The law was holy and good, but it constantly exposed how unholy and bad that men were.

Grace, however, changes a man from the inside out. It must, for God promised the cutting of the heart instead of the cutting of the body. One of the promises that God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, regarding the New Covenant and the work of grace was “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27). God saw the necessity of putting a “new heart” within man, and His very own Holy Spirit as well, so that man would live righteous without their own efforts being involved.

Does law teach us how to live right? No! Only God’s grace can do that, for Paul said, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11, 12). Grace does the teaching in us, for He is living there. Hallelujah!

Purpose in Your Heart

Daniel 1:8-15

Daniel was a very young man when taken captive by the Babylonians. Some commentators think he may have been as young as 11. No matter the age, his understanding and ability had caused the king to place him, as well as his friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a position of favor. These young men were being groomed to be advisers to the king, a process that took three years (Daniel 1:5).

Daniel must have felt himself a leader of sorts over the others, as he spoke on behalf of the group, purposing in his heart that he and the other three would not eat the meat or drink the wine that was appointed to them by the king. His conviction no doubt stemmed from the fact that the meat and wine was also used in the worship of idols, and as children of God, they wanted no part in idol worship.

There was a great risk in taking the stand that Daniel did, for he challenged the eunuchs to feed him and his friends only “pulse”, which are vegetables; with water to drink. He stated that after 10 days, he and the others would be in better shape than those who ate the meat of the king. This would take a supernatural move in order to come to pass, but remember, Daniel had purposed it in his heart.

The Lord moved over the course of the next week and a half, making the four Hebrew children, “fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:15). There were certainly no more nutrients in the food of these children, as the eunuch surely knew, so this health was a miracle from God, and the first in many instances where these young Hebrews would “refuse to bow”.

Purpose something in your heart today; whatever it is. We will do very little to effect this world or build the kingdom of God if the purpose does not make its way from our head to our heart. God is not looking for someone to eat only vegetables and drink only water; that isn’t the point. He is looking for someone to purpose in their heart to be used of God. He wants to pour His vitamins and minerals of the Spirit into every child of God who will yield, and prosper them with the goodness of heaven. We must place our hearts in His loving care, purposed to allow Christ in us, to bring glory out of us.

Go today with the spirit of Daniel, unwilling to compromise your knowledge of His love and forgiveness for you. Let no one steal that glorious knowledge away from you, and be prepared for God to make your countenance fairer than all those around you!