Divine Purpose - Daniel

I would like to take a moment to address this issue of "ordering your life" according to the Purpose. As Christians we have been preached to for so long that we often make the mistake of thinking that just because we know something to be true that we are then automatically ordering our lives according to that truth. But knowing something does not mean you are living by what you know. We must be on guard against smoothly assimilating messages and "words" with our brains. Receiving the Word into your brain will do nothing for you; the Word must be received into your heart. I do not want to hear congratulations and applause for an "enjoyable" message or a "thought provoking" article. I want to see us order our lives according to what we claim to agree with. As it is now, we are educated well beyond our level of obedience. We do not live a tenth of what we say we believe. Before we have put one message into practice we are anxiously anticipating the next. May God deliver us from partial obedience, which is only disguised disobedience.
Seeing something and living it are two different things. There is a difference between knowing the Path and walking the Path. Daniel is doing both, but he does not stop there. There is a third characteristic we need to see in him, and that is, Daniel rises up to pray for the fulfillment of God's Purpose. True prayer affords us the greatest opportunity for self-denial. When was the last time we offered up prayer, not for our agenda or plan, but for God's Kingdom to come and for God's Will to be done? When was the last time we came before the Lord, not to get our needs met, but to meet His Need? When was the last time we subjugated our own desires and wishes and gave ourselves wholly to praying for God's Purpose to be accomplished? When was the last time we separated ourselves from family, friends, and business and sought the Lord; not to receive a blessing FROM Him, but to be a blessing TO Him?
We learn that Daniel was not only a man of heavy administrative responsibility and governmental authority, but he was preeminently a man of prayer: a man who withdrew from his earthly responsibilities in order to seek the face of the Lord - not once a day, not twice a day - but three times a day, offering up prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings before God. In addition to this, Daniel frequently ministered to the Lord with fasting.
Now, everyone wants power with God, but few want to deny themselves. They would rather just have someone pray for them or lay hands on them while they live any way they please. You know, there is no law that says a Christian must pray three times a day and serve God with fasting, like Daniel did. We are not led by rules and regulations, but by the Spirit. You can pray once a day, once a week, or not at all. You can eat three or four meals a day if you like. But I hope one day we will become more hungry for the Lord and more thirsty for His Purpose than we are for our earthly food and drink. I hope one day we will become so consumed with heavenly things that earthly things begin to lose their grip on us. I pray we will at least have enough wisdom to understand that if we really want to know God we will have to pay a price for knowing. It will cost us something to obtain experiential truth, and it will cost us something to hold on to it after we obtain it.
Something should be driving us to pray. There should be some unction, some inner compulsion, to seek God, to seek Him early, and to seek Him often. If that is not our daily experience then something is wrong. Perhaps we have grown complacent, or comfortable, or cold. Whatever the reason, vision is the cure. If we have truly seen God's Purpose we cannot just go along as before. It will consume us. A person with a small vision will pray small prayers. Daniel is a man of huge vision, and so he prays large prayers.
I have said many times that everyone wants apostolic revelation, but no one wants apostolic persecution. We would like to have a gift like Daniel so we can interpret dreams, hear the voice of God, and receive prophetic insight into world events. Oh yes, we want the gift, but we do not want to pay the price. Is there any wonder that what is touted as "prophetic" today is simply "pathetic"? There is no depth of root in these people, no secret history of being dealt with by God, just an insane rush to bring forth yet another "word" that will satiate a greedy population's lust for something new and exciting (II Timothy 4:3,4; I Timothy 1:5-7). New and exciting, maybe: but something the prophet has never actually walked in, and something which the people have no intention of walking in. They are ever learning, but never walking in the truth of what they have learned (cf. II Timothy 3:7).
Daniel has seen the Purpose; Daniel has ordered his life according to that Purpose; and Daniel is in the daily habit of praying for that Purpose to be fulfilled. Something bigger than himself is fueling his prayers. He is daily paying the price, living according to the Truth he claims to agree with, demonstrating the preeminence of Christ, showing that "the heavens do rule". So in him we see the Remnant Principle. Anyone who sees, lives, and prays according to that Purpose is marked out and set apart - marked out by the enemy, and set apart as the Lord's own possession. ~C. Brogden