Daniel 1 - Creativity Over Compromise

Tom Shrader examines Daniel 1 to address how Christians can maintain biblical convictions while living in a culture that opposes their faith. He highlights Daniel's creative approach to the dietary challenge - finding a win-win solution that preserved his convictions without creating unnecessary conflict. Shrader emphasizes that believers must pre-decide their decisions based on Scripture and seek creative solutions when their convictions are challenged.

“The culture you live in will always welcome a version of Christianity, as long as it's not biblical Christianity.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Integrity Under Fire (2005)

Recorded: February 03, 2005

Duration: 43 min

Themes: integrity, convictions, compromise, creativity, wisdom, courage, faithfulness, decisions, living in secular culture, workplace challenges, young professional, college student, facing opposition, standing firm, making difficult choices, new believer

Scripture: Daniel 1, Daniel 1:3, Daniel 1:4, Daniel 1:5, Daniel 1:8, Daniel 1:9, Daniel 1:11, Daniel 1:17, Romans 12:2, Hebrews 11

Theological Themes: biblical authority, sanctification, holy living, christian worldview, discipleship, spiritual warfare, biblical convictions, cultural engagement

Full Transcript

I said last week that I think this could be the best year of lessons that we'll ever have as we work our way through these studies. That's based on two of my favorite studies that we do, one on Daniel and one on Joseph. We're going to bookend the year with those.

Today we start a brand new series. If you have Bibles, you can open them to the book of Daniel in the first chapter. We are going to spend six weeks looking at the first six chapters of the book of Daniel. The title of the series is Integrity Under Fire, and the subtitle is Principles for Living in a Hostile Environment.

Living as Citizens of Two Kingdoms

That subtitle is absolutely true—if it's ever been true, and it has been true since the birth of Christianity, it's certainly true now. You live in this very paradoxical environment. On one hand, you live in arguably one of the most spiritual countries on earth. On the other hand, you live in a country whose population equals the third largest number of unbelieving people of any country in the world. So you have this paradox going on.

You live as a Christian carrying a dual passport, really. You have a passport that says USA, but in reality, your citizenship is in heaven. You report to a higher authority. You have a whole different set of rules than perhaps the rest of society governs themselves by. You have this book called the Bible, and that's our authority. Consequently, as Christians, we will find ourselves, oftentimes, at odds with the world around us.

This is a very important point, and it's really helpful to get your arms around it and understand it. The culture you live in will always welcome a version of Christianity, as long as it's not biblical Christianity. As long as it's not real, true Christianity, the world will embrace it. As long as it's got some ethic behind it, but no doctrine behind it, the world will like it. They'll be happy with it. But the minute you put the doctrine with it, the minute you put what makes Christianity Christianity with it, all of a sudden, you are at odds with the world. You're swimming upstream. You're in a hostile environment. To live the Christian life is really to be counter-culture.

Daniel's Context: A Young Man in Enemy Territory

This should be helpful as we look at Daniel. We'll look at Daniel in that context. Here He is as a young man, and we'll present the case to you today, living in a world that He's at odds with all the time. Integrity becomes a giant issue. We try to relate that to the world we live in.

I just did a couple of things. I just went on the Internet, Googled and typed in "unethical behavior," and I was able in 0.17 seconds to find 394,000 references. It was amazing to me to find the breadth and width and depth of this problem. Virtually as I went through—and I didn't spend a lot of time, I'm just going quickly—I saw websites for unethical behavior in every one of the industries.

The Scope of Unethical Behavior

There were websites for pharmacists, dealing with the way they deal with people who come in and ask questions. I found one—this is not a huge surprise I don't think—for the construction industry. They interviewed 270 architects, engineers, construction managers, general contractors, and subcontractors. Here's what they discovered. When asked if they'd experienced, encountered, or observed construction industry related acts or transgressions they would consider unethical in the past year, 84% said yes. 34% said they had experienced this unethical behavior many times.

Among a group of managers from a whole variety of industries, the question dealt with how would you describe your company? 6% described their company as extremely unethical, 10% very unethical, and you combine them all with somewhat unethical. So basically, how many of these managers said their company was unethical? The total is around 32%.

The Cost of Compromise

It's an expensive problem too. Unethical behavior worsens employee fraud. $600 billion a year in employee fraud. In fact, employee costs—about 20% of every dollar is related to employee fraud. It's twice as common as consumer fraud. And this employee fraud has worsened, their estimates, by about 50% since 1999.

We can go through some specifics. You look at science—there was a project, a grant that was done, some work that was done, where 47 representatives from Harvard and Emory University working on a project, and what they discovered is all 47 of them—we're not in conspiracy at this point—all 47 of them had falsified or hyped research in order to keep their grant. And it's in all of these areas.

In fact, here you go. Let's bring it on home. Let's bring it into here. Statistically, one out of three of you are operating in a job where you are hired with a false resume. Oh, not me. I can hear it all over the place.

Political Examples of Character Issues

I want to take a shot here in a second at the new head of the tsunami relief fund, but before I do that—and help you think that I'm singling him out, I don't want to do that—within the first six years of the Reagan administration, 110 senior officials were under investigation or indicted.

If you've been around this study for a while, in early 1994, and I want to really set the context here because I am going to look brilliant in this—in early 1994, Bill Clinton had been president just two years, far before any of you ever heard of Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones, any of the other stuff. Early in 1994, I said in this study, and I quote, "He is fundamentally not on speaking terms with the truth. He is fatally flawed and destined for destruction." And that's not a very—I'm not that smart, it's just really easy to see. See, character isn't an issue if you don't have any. And that's His fundamental problem, as you well know. Very smooth, very articulate, but He's not in touch with the truth.

truth. And if he is, his truth is kind of defined in his own way. And he probably is a pretty good representative of how many people think and operate.

It is appalling to me, and I would kind of put myself in that category of a free market capitalist, etc. It's appalling to me when guys who are running corporations, and we've seen the whole series of them, my personal view is that when these guys take these companies down, and there's fraud, they're economic terrorists. And you ought to deal swiftly and harshly with them for long term. They're doing extraordinary damage. And the fundamental problem there, it's not a mistake.

We can all screw up. We're not talking here about mistakes. I've never said to anybody, I'll never make a mistake. Don't evaluate me on mistakes. Evaluate me on how I respond to my mistakes. I'm going to sin, but evaluate me on how I respond to that sin.

Living in an Ethically Marginalized World

That's what we're saying here. You live in a time when ethical behavior is marginalized. We know we're in trouble because universities are trying to develop classes about how to behave ethically. High school students are being told it's important to respond and behave with a good ethic.

But it really brings you into a crisis immediately, because you have to say, well, where do I get an ethic? Whose ethic? What ethic? And Daniel helps us, I think, understand that you and I have for us this book called the Bible that gives us a prescription on how we're to live and how we're to behave. And our call is to do the right thing all the time.

It's to develop what, and here's a word, here's a word you don't hear a ton, convictions. I'm not talking about theories. When we talk about theories, we're talking about something like, well, yeah, maybe I could be convinced of that. I'm willing to change. I'm not even talking about a belief, where I'm saying, well, my mind's almost made up, but not quite there. I'm talking about a conviction. My mind is made up.

In this case, for example, the scripture clearly speaks to this. And I have no option, really, before God, but to do what the scripture commands me to do.

Three Alternatives When Convictions Are Challenged

What do you do when you have these convictions? You live in a hostile environment. What do you do when those convictions are challenged? I'm going to suggest to you three alternatives. The first two are pretty obvious.

One, you can cave in. You just surrender your position. You run up a white flag and say, I give up. The other is the exact opposite extreme, and that is, I'll just fight. I'm going to stand my ground. Everything is a battle.

And I know certain people who are so convinced of their Christian faith and are so convinced of how hostile it is in this world, that rather than look for some sort of a middle ground, everything, everything is a battleground for them. Everything is at war. Everything is an issue. Everything is a struggle. Everything is of the highest moral issue and value before us today, and the very success or existence of civilization hangs in the balance. That's hard to hear a lot.

The third position, and I want to offer this for consideration today, and I think we see it in Daniel. There's often a way for you to cling to your conviction, to have a clear conscience, and still not have just dead bodies all around you. Not to compromise, but to sit down and say, is the only way to solve this World War III?

Meeting Daniel and His Friends

So that's what we're going to look at today. Daniel chapter 1. We're introduced to these guys, Daniel and his three buddies. Daniel chapter 1, verse 3. "Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of the court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and nobility, young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing an aptitude for every kind of learning, well-informed, quick to understand, qualified to serve in the king's palace. And he was to teach them the language and the literature of the Babylonians."

You get a little history, 605, Nebuchadnezzar leads these Babylonians. They conquer Israel. They kill many. They take some captive. And what you're looking at here is a part of those that were taken captive.

There's a description of them. They're not named yet. They are called, in verse 4, young men. And that term probably would suggest that they are between 14 and 16 years old. 14, 15, 16 years old. Young men from a royal family. They're aristocrats. They're bred to lead. They're noble. They certainly have all of the pedigree that would indicate all sorts of potential to be major players in a land or a civilization.

The Complete Package

They are without a physical defect. They're strong of body and also of mind. They're handsome. They have an aptitude for every kind of learning. It may be both that they're intellectually curious and there is this desire to learn, a capacity to learn. They're sharp. They're bright.

In fact, He says, they're quick to understand. Literally, and this is pretty helpful to get your arms around, they got common sense. Here are these young guys, 14, 15, 16 years old. Good looking guys. Strong. Intellectually very agile, bright. And they've got common sense. They've got the whole package.

So what the king is saying, listen, these are valuable human resources. Any of you that are running companies or any of you that are even engaged in any enterprise that has anybody involved in it beyond you understands that one of the great problems is to find good help. That's what I tell the guys in the service industry all the time. If you just show up on time and do a half-decent job, you're at the top of your field. It's pretty hard to find good help.

And the king's saying, you know what? We got these guys. They seem to have lots of potential. They are naturals. Why don't we see if we can train them to be leaders in our empire, our culture?

The Babylonian Training Program

But how are we going to do that? It's the last sentence. The last thing that has been asked was to teach them the language and the literature of the Babylonians. Daniel and his boys have great potential. He said, here's what we're going

We're not going to detox them. We're not going to have them go out and make some sort of denial of their previous existence. We're just going to immerse them into our culture. We're going to teach them the language. We're going to teach them the habits. We're going to teach them the literature. We're going to teach them to walk like us and talk like us and think like us.

Then, gradually, over a period of time - we'll see that what the king has in mind here is three years - gradually, over a period of time, these guys will become just like us.

The Tension Between Relevance and Compromise

Now, let me hit the pause button there. Because you should feel, at this moment, as a Christian, a little bit of tension. One of the dangers of the good, solid, Bible-teaching, Bible-believing churches and Christians is that they have a tendency to be essentially irrelevant to the culture. They've got all this truth and all these things to say, but they're so sickened, appropriately so, by the worldliness of the environment around them, that they reject the culture.

That's a difficult thing, because Jesus has told us - here He is, praying the night before He dies - He says, "Father, just as you sent me into the world, I send them into the world." Jesus didn't call us to come out of the world, to ignore the world, to be culturally irrelevant. He said, just like you sent me here, I'm sending them into the world.

Paul uses the term, we are ambassadors for Christ. If I'm an ambassador, what do we do? You know this drill. If I'm sending an ambassador to a foreign land, that ambassador has to be trained in the customs, trained in the language. He has to understand all of the ways the culture operates, so he can go and represent the country, protect citizens, all the things that go with it.

So, do you see some tension here? Daniel and his boys are being immersed in the culture, so they'll be assimilated into the culture. The scripture, it seems to me, is telling us to go into the culture, but don't be assimilated into it. Understand it. Feel it.

The World's Agenda for Assimilation

That's what Paul has in mind, Romans chapter 12, verse 2. "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The Living Bible says, "Don't copy the world's behavior." The Philips translation says, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold."

The idea there is something proactive, that the world has an agenda. And whether it's conscious or unconscious, it doesn't matter, same effect - the world's coming after you. So there's some tension there. Do you see that?

At that point, remember, we're away from Daniel now. We're talking about you and me. There's that tension, because you and I, I believe, have to be relevant to the culture. Now, the most relevant thing we can do is to take scriptural answers and scriptural truth into the culture. But I have to find a way to be able to communicate this. I have to be asking and answering questions that people are genuinely concerned about.

Understanding Today's Culture

There's a whole new way among young people. There's a whole new wave of young people. There is a hot term - real simple to understand: Community. Community. Authenticity. These are huge buzzwords to a young person. Why? Because their families have fallen apart.

When I go into a restaurant, I work pretty hard at understanding my server. I cannot remember the last time I had a young woman who was waiting on me, who was living with her biological parents. And I ask all the time, "How's your mom? How's your dad?" "Haven't seen my dad. My dad walked out when I was five." I hear it all the time.

So they're looking to join. They're looking to belong. They're looking to fit. And they want the real deal. Are you the real deal? And you don't have to dress like them and talk like them and think like them to be the real deal. They just want to see something genuine and authentic.

Daniel's Predicament

Well, that's our old buddy Daniel. The king has a plan. He's going to assimilate him into the culture. Daniel has this incredible position. Look at it in verse 5: "The king assigned them a daily amount of food, of wine from the king's table. And they were to be trained for three years. After that, they were to enter the king's service."

And among these - and you know the boys here, Daniel and his three buddies - the king gave them new names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We got all that figured out. Here are the guys. That's the prescription.

Now, what's the problem here? What's Daniel's problem? Well, the dietary regiment that the king has commanded is contrary to what Daniel's faith would allow him to eat. Daniel's got a problem.

Conviction Versus Compromise

Verse 8: "Daniel would not defile himself with the royal food and wine. And he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself."

Let me make sure I set the table right, no pun intended. We're talking about conviction. It's not theory, it's not belief. In Daniel's economy, God has prescribed for Him this dietary plan. The king comes in with a different plan. In Daniel's mind, he can't compromise. There's no way.

So we said at the beginning there's three options: Compromise. Daniel's not going to compromise. Here's the other two options: World War III, or maybe there's a win-win possibility here. Maybe there's a way both of us could win.

So what Daniel does is call the official. And he asks for permission. Verse 9: "And God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel. But the official told Daniel, 'I'm afraid of my lord the king who's assigned your food and drink. Why should you look any worse than the other men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.'"

So Daniel says, kind of explain to me why we're doing this. And the official says, "Here's the deal. The king wants you to eat this way, and my concern is not even enforcing that. My concern is, you're not going to look good. You're not going

There you are. There's the setting. I want you to look with admiration at this point at Daniel. Here's this young man, 14, 15, 16 years old, living in a foreign land, standing up against really the authority of the king of the world, the ruler of the world, and He doesn't compromise.

Does that describe you?

The Small Group Dilemma

Years ago I was in a small group, and it's like every small group I've ever been in. We start with one thing, go to another, and go to another. So we get together. We said, what should we do? And we said, well, let's just deal with some stuff in life.

So we get Patrick Morley's book, Man in the Mirror, and there's eight of us, and we start to go through it. We're about halfway through it. And somebody said, you know what? We're supposed to be Christians here, and we're not really studying God's word. And they said, all right, let's study a book.

So then we get the Gospel of John. We get to about chapter 12, and somebody says, you know what? Now we know all the Bible, and we're studying the Bible here, but we don't know each other. The tension in that small group, and many of you have been in groups like that, is to say, oh, this isn't working. My answer is, no, it's working perfectly. You have a need. You're meeting the need. As the need's met, you have another need. There's nothing wrong with moving around like that.

So we said, what are we going to do? And I said, well, here's what I like to do. Because I had a small group at the time of couples. I had six, seven young couples. And here's what we met every Monday night for Bible study. That's what they always called it. And what they'd do, when they'd come in every Monday night, they'd give them a sheet. And it would be something like this. Today at work, your best friend came in and said, I'm having an affair. Don't tell my wife. What would you do? And then we'd break into small groups and talk about it.

So I said, why don't we do this? Somebody brings in a question each week, and we'll talk about it. Pretty loose. So He said, fine.

The Movie Question

Next week, question came in, and the question was this. The question was, would you see this movie? And for the life of me, I can't remember what the movie was. It was rated R. It wasn't dirty. It had some violence in it, maybe a little bit of language. Would you see this movie? And so we're going around the room, and everybody's answering.

And there's a guy in there. He's a really big guy. He's large. Just physical structure. And I'm not particularly large. I'm small. But big guys do not intimidate me. They've never intimidated me. They think they can, and they amuse me, if anything. Because they try to intimidate you. They'll stand like they're right here, like you're looking at them. And I'm going, you know, at some point, it's going to get down to this, and you lose. So I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. Big guys don't intimidate me.

But this guy had a second characteristic that does intimidate me. He was quiet. Quiet guys intimidate me, because I never know what they're thinking. How quiet is He? One day we played golf with Him, a friend of mine. And He brought a buddy, and we played a little round of golf, us against them. And I said to my friend on the way home, I said, how'd you like this guy? And He said, well, He's quiet. And He said, on the first tee, He said hello to me. And on the 18th green, He said, you owe me $5. So that's about the discussion of the day.

So the question was, would you go see this movie? His answer was this. I would if I was in Miami. And we said, well, let's explain that a little bit. And He said, if I was somewhere where no one knew me, and I had total anonymity, and I could go in and out, and no one would know that I'd seen the movie, yeah, I'd go see it.

Daniel's Conviction vs. Compromise

I want you to see something. Now, although Daniel's friends are with Him, I think Daniel has every option of saying, listen, I'm so far away from home. I'm just a young boy. I'm sure someone came up to Him and said, Daniel, loosen up a little. It's 605 B.C.

At some point, Daniel had to look at the herd of these other guys, and someone had to say, Daniel, everybody's doing this. Don't sweat it, Daniel. It's just food, Daniel. Don't make a big deal out of it, Daniel. But you see, Daniel doesn't have a theory here or a belief here. Daniel has a conviction here, and He can't violate His conviction.

Daniel's Creative Solution

But He comes up with a pretty creative way. Look at His great plan, verse 11. Daniel said to the guard of whom the chief official had appointed over them, "Please test your servant for ten days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see." So He agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

Daniel said, look, I understand now what you're concerned about. You're not concerned about this isn't a conviction or moral issue for you. It's totally pragmatic. You want to make sure we don't look deficient. Well, here's what we'll do. Let's run a little test, and it'll just be ten days. And if we look bad in ten days, you could even say we got the flu or something, and it would be certainly something that we could overlook. So let's go ahead and try this.

God Honors Daniel's Stand

They agree, verse 17. And God begins to work. To these four young men, God gave great knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. They passed the test. They look fine. There's no compromise here. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

And at the end of the time set by the king to bring them to them, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. And the king talked with them. It's an oral exam. What are you about? What do you think? What's going on? What are your dreams? What are your aspirations? What do you know? And He found none equal to Daniel and His buddies. So they entered the

king's service in every manner of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them. Every time there was a dilemma. Every time there was some strategy that had to be developed. Every time there was a quandary. Every time there was something that needed to be solved. In wisdom and understanding that the king questioned them every time, they were ten times better than all the magicians in the encounters.

And that's magician encounters. That's not David Copperfield and some crooner. That's his council. That's his cabinet. Those are his advisors. Ten times better than everybody in the whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. And that is a period of about 70 years.

See what happened? Now there's a tendency in here. There's a tendency in here to get distracted. And to think, oh man, that Daniel is really something. But the key is there in verse 17. To these four young men, God gave knowledge.

The Real Hero of Daniel's Story

The significant character in the book of Daniel is the same significant character in all the Old Testament and New Testament. This is about God and His faithfulness. This is about God who comes along. See, I have a tendency, I'll bet you do, to almost idolize some of these biblical characters. I want to read about Abraham and Isaac and Joseph and Daniel and Elijah. All these great figures. Isaiah, all these great figures. And Peter and Paul and all these giants of the faith. I want to read them and I almost idolize them.

And we do a great disservice when we do that. To say to them, I think they're a hero, that's pretty cool. To say they're a role model, no problem. But I want you to understand something. They have the same power in them that you have in you. That is a very important thing to understand.

At the church, we're in the process of trying to raise money to build some buildings. And somebody gave us, the other day, a couple of big, big, big boxes of baseball cards to sell. And I went through and I'm looking at them and I'm picking out the ones I want to take. Now, I'm kidding, because I said right away, you've got to get these out of here. And there's some old Mickey Mantles. There's a Rick Reichardt. I don't know if you remember Rick Reichardt, but he was the first guy to sign for a hundred grand out of college. Everybody said, this is incredible. Well, I remember him because in 1964, he came and played in the Quad Cities. And I watched him play.

Heroes vs. Idols

And there were all these guys. Then there's this little book at the bottom. You know how you had an autograph book when you were a kid? And you'd take it around and just get autographs? So we're going through and there's Jim Bunning. And we turn a page and here's Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson. And we turn the next page and there's Joe DiMaggio. And we open the next box and here are these baseballs that are autographed.

And we open the next box and this kid had written every major league team and said, I'm your biggest fan. Okay, so he's dishonest to start with. I'm your biggest fan. I'm your biggest fan. And then they'd written back to him and they'd sent him stacks of literature and autographs and pictures and all these things. Mickey Mantle's kind of my hero. I think if you're kind of my generation, Mickey Mantle hits it for most guys. Mickey Mantle's a hero. Not much of a role model, but he's a hero. I don't think there's a problem in the world with having a hero. But don't make these guys an idol.

I don't want you to go, oh, wow, that Daniel's extraordinary. There's something really cool about Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. It's all right to say, oh, Daniel hung in there. But he did that and it's recorded so you can read it and now you hang in there. That's the whole point.

The Problem with Success Stories

There's another thing about this story. It's about chapter one and it's all the way through these first six chapters. It's something that bugs me about Daniel and it bugs me about this story. And that is everything works out okay. That really frosts me. I wish the lions would eat him. I wish the lions would eat him. I wish the fire would burn him. I wish he'd get killed here.

And here's the reason. Because I think there's almost a natural tendency to read this and think that if I'm obedient, I, too, will be successful. I, too, will prosper. That if I do the right thing, everything's going to work out not for the good. I'm not saying that. It's going to work out the way I want it to work out. There's a tendency, I think, when you read this stuff to start to think that way.

To read it and go, well, they did the right thing, so I guess here I am at work. Number one, when I was working on the unethical behavior in the construction industry, said number one violation was price shopping, bid shopping. Shocks you in the industry, I'm sure. He said, we have a tendency to think, oh, if I say, no, we're not going to do that, that somehow God's going to make sure I get that deal. That's not the case.

The Rest of the Faith Story

Just a second here. Hebrews chapter 11. You don't need to turn there. You know the chapter. It's the hall of fame of faith. It's about these giants of faith. It's about these magnificent things that are happening in their lives. The author of Hebrews writes this. By faith they conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. From weakness they were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.

That's pretty incredible, isn't it? I'm watching one night, and there's one of these health and wealth prosperity guys on channel 21. And he's teaching, and he's reading through here. And I said to Susan, I'll bet you, I'll bet you a dollar to a donut that the brakes are hit right there in the middle of verse 35. And I mean, he goes, and women received back their dead by resurrection. Amen!

Okay, let's just read on at this point. Others were tortured, not

accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others experienced mocking and scourging and chains and imprisonment. They were stoned and cut in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went around suffering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated."

Obviously God's in control here. Daniel gets what he wants, and Daniel's thing works out. But I don't want you to expect that because you do the right thing, it will necessarily have the outcome you desire. It will have the outcome that God desires. And ultimately, that will be the outcome you want anyway.

A Process for Handling Challenges to Your Convictions

When your convictions are challenged, you may have to fight at times. But oftentimes, there are ways around this. Let me give you a process.

Here's the first thing. Number one, you have to know what you stand for. That seems so obvious, doesn't it? You have to know what you're all about.

Sarah is 25 years old right now. I remember she came to me one day when I was in my office working, and she said, "Dad, in 485 days, I get my driver's license." I said, "Wow, that's pretty cool." She said, "Does that worry you?" I said, "No. It means in 485 days, you can go to Baskin-Robbins for me. You can take my stuff to Kinko's. You can do a lot of errands for me."

She was smart enough to understand that with that 16 years of age and with the driver's license, typically comes another thing. What is it? Responsibility. And it leads into all sorts of other activities, primarily dating.

The Importance of Pre-Decided Convictions

Because I'm a father of girls, I think a lot of guys like to talk to me about raising kids. Every guy that's got a daughter, when you cut Him and He's honest, is scared to death she'll be sexually active and get pregnant. They're petrified of it. So much so that oftentimes you'll say, "How are your kids?" And they'll say, "Well, she's not on drugs and she's not pregnant." Which seems to me the bar might be a little low at that point. There might be a higher standard than that.

They will come to me and they'll say, "How old did your girls have to be to date?" My answer is this: we never set an age. Here's what we decided. They could date when they were ready. Some kids are ready to date at 15 and some people aren't ready to date at 35. They said, "Did you worry? Was there tension?" My answer was this, and I had to write it down because I liked it: these are nothing more than different wrinkles to test that the girls have already passed. They've already passed these tests. We're not afraid of it. Why? Well, we've worked it through for them and now these are convictions. Does that mean they won't screw up? They sure could. I understand that.

What are your convictions? Here's what you tell your kids: pre-decide your decisions. Don't you climb into the back seat of a car and then try to figure out how far you're going to go. Because whatever you draw as a line in the back seat of the car is further than you would have drawn at home sitting in a rational state.

Let me suggest something to you. You are extraordinarily wise when you share that with your kids. So why don't you follow that? Why don't you pre-decide your decisions? Why don't you pre-decide your limits? So that you're not sitting there when a guy says, "Well, you know what, here's the deal. You're very, very, very close to getting this. And I have the ability to give you this. If you could just slide me a little juice. I'm going to leave the room right now. I've got a call. And the number you need to beat is over there in the credenza. And nobody's going to look in here and I'll be gone about five minutes. In fact, I'll even knock before I come back in."

Pre-decide your decisions.

Making a Rational Appeal

Here you go. It's real simple. When you have a conviction and you feel a challenge, try to figure out what it is we're trying to accomplish, just like Daniel. Get some sort of a strategy. If somebody's asking you to compromise, make a rational appeal. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we're trying to say.

Oftentimes, by the way, that will be couched in the terms of, "I'm a Christian." I want to come back to this because there are so many objects on the board here.

Christianity as Your Greatest Asset

I will oftentimes talk to people and I'll say, "How are you doing in business?" And they'll say, "Well, I'm struggling." I'll say, "Why are you struggling?" "I'm a Christian." As though being a Christian is a liability in the marketplace.

The greatest asset you have in the marketplace is your Christianity. What are employers looking for? Honest, service-oriented, hard-working people. That sounds a lot like a Christian ethic. Who do people want to work for? You live in a marketplace where employees are in demand. How do you get employees and keep employees? How do you get them and you keep them in the organization? Well, you treat them with respect and love and honesty and pay them well and treat them with dignity. Kind of like a Christian would.

Your greatest asset in the marketplace, your greatest asset in life is your Christian faith. Don't be afraid as you run into these conflicts or you're dealing with people, whether it's in a reactive way or a proactive way, to say, "I'm a Christian."

When you do this, I want you to understand it. Everybody around you is now going to hold you to a standard higher than the standard you have for yourself. Whatever you think is the standard, they're going to take it up another notch. They're going to say to you, "I never knew a Christian acted that way. I didn't know that's how a Christian behaved." But that's okay.

And then lastly, you just commit yourself to get these things done. You commit yourself to excellence.

meeting. Guy's sitting around. Guy at the end got a pen in his hand, a piece of paper. Here's the caption. It says, so we agree. Honesty is the best policy. Let's label that option A. You get the point.

Here's our boy, Daniel. Great role model. Don't idolize him. Same power that he has. Same guy that worked in his life. Same guy working in your life.

I'm not saying for a second this is easy. And I'm not saying that if you have convictions and you stand for them, everything's going to work out smoothly. It may. It may not. I will tell you this. There's no right way to do the wrong thing. So you do the right thing the right way all the time.

What God Wants From Your Life

And then, here's what you have. You have achieved what God wants for your life. Here's what God wants for your life. This is real easy. He wants you to trust Him and obey Him. That's pretty, almost like a song. Trust Him and obey Him. There's no other way. That kind of a thing.

Here's what God wants. One thing from you. Trust and obedience because He'll take care of the end results. That's all He cares about. He'll handle the end results. All He cares about in you is your trust and your obedience.

Let's pray. We'll pick up chapter 2 next week. Father, thank you for Daniel and his life. The message that we learn from him.