Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. (Daniel 6:5 KJV)
The princes looked for anything they could to discredit Daniel. There was only one area in which they could come up with something. We read in verse 5, “Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” The only way they could find a conflict between Daniel and the Persian government was in his religion. They knew that if they found anything it would be where his faith ran afoul the Babylonian religion.
What a testimony to the kind of Christian life Daniel lived. You could not divorce Daniel from his faith. You could not explain him apart from his faith. It was his faith that made him who and what he was. Daniel was not a part-time Christian. He was completely a full-time Christian. He was a Christian through and through and all around him knew that he was such a Christian.
There is an Old Italian proverb that says that every flask smells of the wine it holds. Daniel gave forth the aroma of a one-hundred percent Christian.
L.E. Maxwell tells of a group of prospectors who set out from Bannock, Montana in search of gold. They went through many hardships and several of their little company died en route. Finally they were overtaken by the Indians who took their good horses, leaving them with only a few limping old ponies. Then they threatened them, telling them to get back to Bannock and stay there, for if they overtook them again, they would murder the lot of them. Defeated, discouraged, and downhearted, the prospectors sought to make their way back to the capital city.
On one occasion as they tethered out the limping ponies on a creek side, one of the men casually picked up a little stone from the creek bed. He called to his buddy for a hammer and upon cracking the rock, he said, "It looks as though there may be gold here." The two of them panned gold the rest of the afternoon and managed to realize twelve dollars' worth. The entire little company panned gold the next day in the same creek and realized fifty dollars, a great sum in those days. They said to one another: "We have struck it!"
They made their way back to Bannock and vowed not to breathe a word concerning this gold strike. They secretively set about re-equipping themselves with supplies for another prospecting trip. But when they got ready to go back, three hundred men followed them. Who had told on them? No one! Their beaming faces betrayed the secret!
Like Daniel, the life we live as Christians should betray our secret. We have been saved! Jesus is our Savior! He lives within our heart. Who we are revealed in what we are, leaving us with a testimony that our faith is genuine.
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