Standing Out Pt. 2 Series

Slide Introduction

Welcome, welcome, welcome-I’m so glad you could join us from where ever you find yourself.

I would love to start our morning off by asking you this question-What is the strangest, weirdest, maybe even the scariest dream you’ve ever had?

Think about that for a moment-What is the strangest, weirdest, or even the scariest dream you’ve ever had?

I’ll tell you one of mine, I don’t really dream that often, hardly at all, and if I do, I really don’t remember them. But I had one a few weeks ago that left me a little shaken…

And so, here’s my dream (and don’t judge me) but a few weeks ago I had a dream about these two people right here.

Slide-Show a picture of Moana and Maui

I had this dream about Moana and Maui. And for whatever reason we were stranded in the middle of the ocean and neither of these two could get us home. I mean they are supposed to be way finders and yet we’re stuck in the middle of the ocean.

And the only thing we had to eat were Fruit Loops, like no one wanted to fish, we just had this box of Fruit Loops and Maui was just getting angry with me because I kept eating the Fruit Loops.

And he’s a rather big guy and he just kept threatening me. And I’ll be honest I was frightened and Moana is just sitting there not helping the situation. And I don’t know if we ever made it home but I just remember waking up and trying to calm down the old heart rate.

It was just a weird dream. And I don’t know why I was dreaming about it. My daughters absolutely love Moana and they love Fruit Loops-so maybe I just had to much of that on the brain.

But what are some of things you’ve dream about?

I did a little researching this week and I found some common things people dream about, the list might not surprise you but here are a few: people dream about falling, teeth falling out, showing up to work or school naked (anyone ever have that dream? I’ve never had that dream), being chased or dying, meeting someone famous, or dream cheating.

I always love the dream cheating one because usually your spouse will wake up and they’re just angry and short with you. I mean as soon as they open up their eye’s they’re giving you attitude and you’re like, ‘What did I do?’ ‘You dream cheated!’ Baby, it was just a dream.’ ‘So!’ ‘Ok, it’s going to be that type of a day?’

Anyone else had that experience?

But all of this to say we are in week two of series on the book of Daniel.

And what we are doing in this series is looking at some of the important point’s in the life of Daniel. We’re looking at some of the moment’s when Daniel stood out in the right way, at the right moment, and in the right season.

And this is what we are wanting to do. As Christ followers we want to make sure we are standing out, we want to make sure we’re not conforming to the world, no instead we want to be transforming the world around us.

We want to be standing out for the right reason, in the right way, so that just like Daniel we can bring honor and glory to the Father.

And you might recall from last week in Daniel 1, that God had told the Jewish people, ‘Hey, you need to get your act together, you need to turn back to me and stop doing all these evil things. I’m warning you, if you don’t stop there’s going to be some trouble.’

And yet, the people of God would not repent and turn back and so God allowed the Babylonians to come in under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar and overtake them.

And we saw in Daniel 1 how the Babylonians took the best of the best when it came to the young men, they took these young Jewish boys back to Babylon and over the course of three years they retrained these young Jewish boys to act and think like Babylonians.

And this is where we meet Daniel and company. And we see in Daniel 1 how Daniel and company stood out. We saw the character and integrity of these young Jewish boy. We saw the wisdom and courage of these young men as they were determined not to defile themselves and eat the king’s food and wine.

We saw how Daniel and company stood out in the right way and in the right moment.

Today we’re going to continue with that theme as we look at Daniel standing out in the right way and in the right moment as King Neby has this dream.