Thy Kingdom Come # 10

2. A Battle For Revelation (continued)

It should be a great comfort to us to know that, presiding over the whole networking of this age-long conflict with its many engagements and battlefields, we have the Master Strategist, who is steadily planning and working towards the final victory. He is not waiting for the great image to topple over, but is preparing and shaping a spiritual instrument for its overthrow. And He has some strange ways of pursuing His great campaign, and especially of placing His key men. It was He who put Daniel in Babylon, and later on it was He who put Esther and then Nehemiah in their strategic positions in the palace at Shushan. It may have seemed the wrong place at times, and the costly experiences for those concerned seemed most unfortunate; yet they were all a part of the Lord's wonderfully wise means for reaching His end.

Daniel, like Paul, was "a prisoner of the Lord", and so should we all be. We must avoid fixed ideas as to how the Lord will use us, we must be careful not to arrange and order our own lives, and indeed we must even beware of praying to the Lord to do things in the way which we think is the right one. Daniel might have prayed that Nebuchadnezzar would revoke his edict; perhaps he did, but he had no response from the Lord. He might have prayed that he and his friends might have special protection - that they would be miraculously spared although the others were slain. God had something more positive than that in view. So they prayed through to His will in the matter; they were not only spared, they were advanced in the kingdom; and the light which they received was not only of immediate importance, it was a revelation for the whole age. Once again, then, faith was the victory.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 11 - (3. A Battle for the Lord's Honor)