Surrendering – Let Go, Let God
Text – Daniel 6:10, 16-24
Situation: Your company has made announcements that it is cutting 100 jobs across the company in an effort to trim expenses and increase shareholder equity. The cuts will be made after upper management reviews employee performance. What do you do?
Situation: You receive a phone call from a concerned neighbor and friend that they saw your son riding around with other teens after the game. They were drinking and causing trouble. What do you do?
Situation: The word in the hall is that your boyfriend was flirting with the new girl that moved here from out of state. What do you do?
Each of these situations is traumatic if you’re going through them. Perhaps some of you have gone through them and you can really relate. What do we do when these situations come up? If you were about to lose your job you could suddenly start working lots of overtime without pay to impress the boss. You could even volunteer to wash his car. You could submarine other co-workers in an effort to elevate your stature and importance to the company.
If you were to get the phone call about your teenage son, you could ground him. You could do an intervention and put him in a 12 step program. You could sit him down and lecture him with a bunch of new rules and curfews.
If you’re worried about your boyfriend going out with someone else, you could challenge her to a fight after school. You could leave a nasty note on her locker. You could get in a big argument with your boyfriend and forbid him to talk to anyone else.
Many of us would choose one of the responses above or create some unique tact that allows us to gain control of the situation. That is basically the root of the problem with all of these scenarios – Control. We want our lives to be predictable and controlled. Most of us don’t deal well with surprises, especially unpleasant ones. We will do some of the most unbelievable things in order to get control of an uncontrollable situation. We believe that in having that control we will have peace. Often in our own efforts to make things better, we make them many times worse. Instead of peace, we find chaos.
How can we have control and peace? How do we get our arms around our chaotic situations and stabilize them. I have an interesting passage of scripture to look at as we deal with this dilemma.
Read Daniel 6:10,16-24
Paraphrase the setting – Darius is the new king. Daniel is promoted to one of three top overseers of the kingdom. He is on the verge of getting promoted to the top position. Jealousy creeps in and a trap is set for Daniel. The schemers use the king’s vanity and pride to set the trap- no one can pray except to pray to the king.
I. Daniel knew the law was in effect, yet he was faithful to God
a. Life isn’t easy, Satan is seeking to derail your life, and rattle your faith
b. In the face of a real threat to his life, Daniel’s solution was to pray
II. Daniel had risen to prominence in the kingdom. He could’ve tried to solve the problem himself.
a. He could have argued his case before the king – It’s not fair!
b. He could have pointed his finger at the ones that laid the trap – “It’s not my fault…”
c. He could have given in and gone with the crowd – “This is just one big misunderstanding.”
III. Daniel counted on God to deliver him – he saw no other options.
a. How many of us would have been anxious for God’s deliverance?
IV. Daniel praises God for his deliverance – vs. 22, 23.
Like it or not, you will face difficult times in your life. Many of us are tempted to deal with those issues in our own strength and might. Daniel provides us with an example of how we should deal with them.
1 – Stand strong in our faith to God
2 – When faced with difficult decisions – pray and seek God’s will
3 – Refrain from depending on our own might to solve it all
4 – patiently wait on God’s solution & will for the situation
5 – Regardless of the outcome, praise God for being God in your time of trouble
Conclusion: Are you still trying to fight your own battles? Let Go, Let God be God in your life.
