For the Culture: Daniel’s Example of Prayerful Witness

Jan 11, 2026

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34s
“we can't really do that, can we? How can we really transform or saturate Spartanburg, the Carolinas of the world and still live within the world? And in Daniel chapter two, we see a way to do that, a way to move forward. You see, historically, the church has interacted with the world through a series of paradigms, like how we are gonna position ourselves against the world. I thought it'd be helpful for us to kinda introduce those today as we get started, but we're gonna do it with a boat edition of this. And you may go, what's a boat edition? We're gonna illustrate these four postures with different boats.”
24s
“So the first is a cruise ship. This is how Christians sometimes have seen themselves in culture. We say we are of the culture. We're on a cruise line with the rest of the world. Yeah. Sure. We might get the flu. Our boat might be quarantined when we get back to port, but we're all kind of going on this journey together. There's no real difference between the church and the culture.”
20s
“Then there's others who see the church as a battleship. Now we're against the culture. Now we're firing our our missiles and our guns at the culture. We're completely against it. We're in conflict with the culture. And there are times that the church has experienced this. There are times of persecution. The church has been in direct opposition with the culture.”
25s
“Third is a submarine. This is my favorite one. Right? Now I understand I agree with it, but there are some who are like, hey. Listen. We're we're gonna hide from the culture. We're gonna pop up and fire off some torpedoes every once in a while, but we're hiding from the culture. We're not really gonna be a part of it, but we're gonna snipe at it. We're gonna kinda do our thing, but then we're gonna take our own ball and go home with it. We're not gonna really interact with culture at all.”
29s
“And you may ask yourself the question, which one's the right one? Well, to be honest, all of them have their place when it comes to our relationship with the culture that we live in. And yet, underlying all of these things, we need to understand that God has called us to be for the community that we live in. God wants us to be for it. And we're gonna see that in Daniel chapter two.”
29s
“And often when I read this man I just wanna go right to the next part because the dream is so fascinating, but here in this story we find Daniel being for the culture, being for his people, being for the community that God gave him to live in. Now the story goes like this. I just read it, but I'm gonna recap it. Daniel has been brought out of Israel.”
35s
“Talk about a tough boss. Right? You have a deadline. You have to do an impossible task. If you don't, I'm gonna tear you limb from limb. I'm gonna turn your house into a garbage dump. And there was no answer for this. Now Daniel and his friends are also considered in this class of leaders. They are magi. They are learned men. They're advisers to the king. Daniel hears about the punishment. He goes, wow. That seems a little extreme. And he finds out that that this is what the king is looking to do. And so Daniel goes to the king and asks for more time.”
30s
“Says, would you give me just a chance to to dream the same dream that you have, to know what his interpretation is? And here we find some things that I think are really instructive for us as Christians who live in the world, which is first, is that we need to be for people because God is for you. God is for Daniel. God's had his hand on Daniel's life, but Daniel doesn't just leave that with himself. Daniel knows that he is there to be a blessing to the people that he lives among.”
31s
“See, Daniel could have been like, guess what? The king wants to wipe everybody out. How about I just save myself and my friends? Man, those bad guy, man, they don't even believe in the true God. They're expendable. Let's get rid of them. But that's not what Daniel does. Daniel decides to stand and take this on himself for the people that he's living among, and he asks for more time.”
42s
“Now I find this to be so fascinating because what Daniel does is he decides to pray. He asks his friends to pray. A lot of us don't think to pray when there's an emergency, do we? We think about a plan rather than prayer. Often, we think about methodology. We think about how we can hack the system, how we can figure things out. We look at our own strength. And Daniel seems to be somebody who can interpret dreams. And so sometimes you think like, hey, Daniel just had, like, the superpower where he could just kinda figure stuff out. He had this ability to tap into something just on his own strength. But that's not how Daniel operated.”
30s
“You know, power is not something that we gin up. Like, sometimes we think about faith. Like, if I have enough faith, then I can go do anything. Faith ultimately is dependence on God. It's far more akin to the idea of loyalty rather than some kind of, like, some kind of force. Like that that that idea of just like this energy force thing, that's like Star Wars. It's not the bible. We're not walking Jedis. What we are is we are people who know an all powerful God, and we ask for him to move on our behalf.”
29s
“And so without prayer, there is no power. And Daniel knows this. He goes, let's go pray. Our only way forward is to pray. And so they begin to pray, and God answers their prayer. And Daniel that night dreams the same dream that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed. And he goes to the king and he says, king, I have a plan. I I know what it is. And he goes and talks to the king. We find verse 27, Daniel appearing before the king with the answers the king is asking for the questions the king is asking.”
38s
“No wise man, medium, magician, or diviner is able to make known to the king the mystery he asked about. Daniel's like, Nobody can tell you. There's nobody there's no power out there that can do that. Which I'm sure the king then is like, well, why are you here? Right? But Daniel then follows up and says, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. What a phrase. Says there's a God in heaven who does. He reveals mysteries, and he has let king Nebuchadnezzar know what will happen in the last days.”
42s
“Daniel knew something about the way the world works that I think we should adopt, if you haven't adopted this already. Daniel realized that he was not the main character of the story. When you read the story, what do you what do you think? You're thinking like, Daniel's the main character. He's gonna try to find a way to not get killed. Daniel's the central character of the story. But Daniel knows that he is not the main event. He's not the main character. God is the main character in the book of Daniel, in the entire bible, and in human history.”
33s
“And I think a lot of us need to reprogram the way that we think about our experience because most of us walk around thinking that we are the main character in our story. We walk around thinking that we are the one upon which all human existence revolves because it's our perspective, our point of view. But the biblical way of thinking about the world is that God is the central character in history, and we get to serve him.”
27s
“is that all of this will come to an end because a new kingdom will come, a stone will come, and strike the feet of the statue, and the entire statue will be destroyed because God is gonna bring a new king. That king is Jesus, and he's gonna come, and he's gonna fill the entire Earth with his glory. And that's what the whole point of this entire dream is, is that there's gonna be a king that's coming who's greater than every other king, and his kingdom will never end.”
37s
“Now here's the crazy thing, is that king wants every person to know him. See, God wanted Nebuchadnezzar to know him. The most wicked man, the most powerful man, the most godless man, Nebuchadnezzar, the one that nobody could ever save, God's like, I want that guy in that kingdom. And what you'll find happening throughout this book is that God pursues Nebuchadnezzar's heart. Nebuchadnezzar get things wrong all the time, but here you find just a taste of him starting to get to know that there's a God in heaven that knows him and loves him, has a plan for his life. Look with me in verse 46. Scroll on down.”
27s
“And when we step into moments around us, whether it's at work or at home or in our community, in our culture, and we are for them. When we say we have a different vision for human flourishing, but we ultimately want you to to flourish. When we do that, guess what? God changes people's story.”
24s
“Have you ever wondered where the magi came from when Jesus was born? Everyone where the wise men come from? Right? There's a story of the wise men. They just show up carrying three gifts, frankincense, myrrh, and gold. They they come and they they ask king Herod. They're like, hey. Where's the king of the Jews? Why do those guys come looking for Jesus?”
46s
“Well, I think it's found here in this story because they see a picture of the gospel. How do they tell the story to themselves? Hey, there was one moment where there was no hope. The king wanted to kill all of us. We were under death. But there was one person who took our place and stood up in front of the king and said, I have a better way. I have a mystery I wanna reveal. There's a king that is coming. And over the years, they saw the rise and fall of the empires just like Daniel prophesied. They saw the Persians come. They saw the Greeks come. They saw the Romans come. And now they're like, there's a king that is coming that's different. So they go to Jerusalem, the place where Daniel grew up, and they're like, where is he?”
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