Your Habits Determine How You Handle the Pressure (Daniel 6) | Obedient Faith: Week 3

What happens when your faith is put under pressure?

In Daniel 6, Daniel faced a choice: protect himself or remain faithful to God. But his response in the crisis wasn’t something he invented in the moment. Daniel had spent a lifetime building habits of prayer, integrity, and obedience. When the pressure came, he simply continued doing what he had always done.

In this message from our Obedient Faith series, Pastor Dan looks at how the spiritual habits we build in seasons of comfort become the places we turn in seasons of trial. Prayer was not Daniel’s last resort. It was his first response.

Trials often reveal where our dependence truly lies. We can reach for our own strength, our own solutions, and our own understanding—or we can learn to depend more deeply on the God who is always faithful.

Because God is faithful, we can confidently obey Him—even when obedience comes with a cost.

📖 Scripture: Daniel 6

In this message:
• Developing an “excellent spirit”
• Building spiritual habits before the trial comes
• Why prayer is a posture of dependence
• Choosing obedience over self-preservation
• Trusting God when human solutions aren’t enough
• How Jesus gives us victory over the enemy

Your habits in times of comfort become your comforts in times of trial.

Pray first. Trust God. Walk in obedient faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to all of you who are joining us online. It is awesome to worship with you this morning. If you have a Bible or Bible app, you can open up to Daniel chapter 6. Last week I told you we'd be in Daniel for two weeks. So, Bible or Bible app, Daniel chapter 6. We're continuing our teaching series this morning called Obedient Faith. And the real main point of this entire series is that because God is faithful, we can confidently obey Him. When you obey the Lord, no matter what He asks you to do, no matter what the possible consequences you think you're going to experience, no matter what fears rest inside your heart, no matter what hesitations you have about wanting to do this thing or not, God is faithful to carry you through on the back end of your obedience. And oftentimes in trials, when trials come upon us, God is going to call us into a deeper level of dependence on Him. Now, there is a kind of a unique phrase that is popular among people who are involved in like first responder type work or if they're involved in the military. But if you're in job, if you're involved in a job that requires a lot of detailed and specific training, because your job is going to have a moment where you come under a lot of pressure, they have this principle they follow in the training time. And it goes like this you don't rise to the occasion under pressure, you fall to the level of your training. There's all kinds of training that happened in his life to become a special operator so that when the pressure was on, he and his team can function at an extremely high level, and they fall to the level of their training, and therefore they succeed. Now that principle isn't just true if you're a special forces or first responder or in law enforcement. That principle is true for all of us. We fall to the level of our training under pressure. Now in 2003, I had the experience of working at Walmart. It was actually a great company to work for. And I was a cashier, so as I was getting ready to do my first holiday season, they spent time sending all the cashiers through what they call CBLs, computer-based learning, on training for the holiday season. So I took several courses on how to recognize counterfeit money. I had to take courses on how to de-escalate situations when somebody's credit card declined and they could not access their transaction. I had to learn how to deal with shoplifters, which apparently you're actually not allowed to do anything, I learned. So if somebody's stealing something, you just let them steal it. That's the easiest way to do with it. But as you learn these things, you're kind of wondering, like, why do I need to know all this? And my manager was like, listen, Black Friday's coming. You're gonna experience all of this in one day, I promise you. I thought, ah, there's there's no possible way. But sure enough, my very first Black Friday, this was pre-Amazon, pre-internet. You guys remember this? Some of you do. For those of you who weren't alive yet, there was a time when people went to stores to get stuff. And and and they lined up for blocks around all kinds of storefronts. And there were, you could actually, younger generation, just YouTube, Black Friday 2005, okay? It's you'll see people get trampled, it's crazy. So you're ready to go. And uh sure enough, two transactions into the day, it was about a $300 transaction, this person hands me fake $100 bills. As soon as they hit my hand, I knew that they were fake, and so my training kicked in, right? The pressure was on, and I was like, wait a minute, I know what to do. So I informed them that any bill over $50 has to be uh checked to make sure it's real. I held it up to the light to find the little strip that was inside the 100. Some of you remember that too. They gave me this little marker, I put the marker on it, and as I did my process, you could see the patron becoming noticeably sweaty. To which I just had to tell them, I'm sorry, but the money you've handed me is counterfeit, I cannot complete your transaction. Well, you can imagine that when you have a line of 25 people behind you and you've got all your presents that you got from that super cheap dollar bin, and you're standing there and you want to get your items, this person was not happy. But they also knew that they were wrong. And so I was able to keep it cool because I had my training. I was told that I couldn't complete the transaction. They're welcome to talk to a manager if they want to do that. And you know what they said to me? You know what, this is ridiculous. Give me my money. And they reached over to grab their money, and I was told to give it back. So I gave it back, and they took their money, they stormed out of there, probably to go try it at a different store. Right? But when the pressure was on, I fell to the level of my training. Now, this is not just true in life's circumstances, whatever your job is, whatever uh uh circumstances you find yourself in, it's also true in our spiritual life. When pressure comes on in your spiritual life, you will fall to the level of whatever your spiritual habits are. So if you have a consistent spiritual habit in your life, when the pressure comes on, that's where you're gonna go back to. That's where you're gonna find your comfort, that's where you're gonna find your success. Without the training involved in your life during a time of comfort, when times of trial come, your first thought is not gonna be to fall back into God, it's gonna be to fall back on yourself. And so when we have these times in our life, when a trial comes, it was really how we handle our day-to-day life living with the Lord that's gonna determine how we act when the pressure is on. So when trials hit, these are things that happen in our life. They're permitted by God, they're not always caused by God, but they are permitted by God, and they're permitted to call us into a deeper dependence on Him. This life you live was never meant to be lived by your own physical strength. It's not just your life. Your life is a gift to you given from God Himself, and He promises you His very Holy Spirit, He promises you his very presence to walk with you, to guide you, to encourage you, to give you wisdom on how to live this life so that when trials come, you find yourself being dependent on his wisdom, his solutions, his power, and not on yourself. And you're gonna see that play out in the life of Daniel. Daniel quickly moved from self-reliance to dependence on God because he had habits in his time of comfort that were already focused on the Lord. So here's what happens in Daniel chapter 6, verses 3 through 5. You learn that Daniel is a distinguished man. He's in fact, he's become distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because there was an excellent spirit within him. I want you to pay attention to those two words. Excellent spirit. We're going to talk about that in a minute. There was an excellent spirit within him, and the king planned to seat him over the whole kingdom. Then the other high officials and the satraps sought to find ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom. But they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, We shall not find any ground to complain against Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. Daniel was a man of excellent spirit, which means he was a person of integrity, a person of character. When he went to work in his day-to-day life, he operated according to God's revealed will of what is right and wrong in the world. He had excellent spirit. And so the first thing I want us to see this morning is that an excellent spirit supports our obedient faith. If you can develop an excellent spirit, you will find that an excellent spirit will support your obedient faith. Now here's what you should know about Daniel at this moment. Daniel is 80 or 85 years old. He's not a young man, he's not a teenager, he's not middle-life, he's not even an aging older adult. In fact, 80 to 85, many people would say he's a senior. Okay, he's lived some life at this point in time. And so if you are approaching that age or you're near that age, I should remind you, as this text reminds me, your age does not discriminate against trials. You can enter into the worst trial of your life at the latest stages of your life. So just remember that. It's not the main point, but it's something to keep in mind. But Daniel had an excellent spirit. And as he's now 80 or 85 years old, he's entering this entire this trial of his life. What we find by the phrase excellent spirit is that it's really a spirit that has the power to rule over the flesh. That's what this word actually means. Now, what you might not know about Daniel is that Daniel's written in Aramaic. Okay, certain parts of Daniel are written in Aramaic, not Greek or Hebrew. And that's because this is a Babylonian text written by Daniel or maybe one of Daniel's friends at that time that Daniel lived. But this is a Babylonian text. So it's written in Aramaic, and the word behind excellent spirit is a unique word called Yetir. Okay, it's Yetir. He's a man of Yetir. In other words, his spirit, his internal self, was of such great resolve that he could discipline his flesh through the choices of his spirit. He was a person of incredible discipline. And you see that early in Daniel's life. If you look at Daniel chapter 1, you see the same phrase that kind of pops up in Daniel 1 8, except it says this time that Daniel had resolve. Okay? Daniel was a man of resolution. Daniel is a man of conviction. Daniel is a man of deep internal character that allowed him to make up his mind and with his mind rule his own passions of his flesh. Now in Daniel chapter 1, verse 8, you should know that Daniel at that point was 15 years old. A 15-year-old with extreme resolution. You know what that tells me? You're never too young to begin developing an excellent spirit. To begin training your mind and your character and your will to take precedent over the impulses and passions of the flesh. That begins at a young age. Daniel became a person who was resolved. Now here's what he was resolved to do. Some of you know the story, some of you don't. Daniel was captured from Jerusalem, brought to Babylon as a captive. He was then going to be put into a Babylonian training system, and part of that system is that he was going to be fed the greatest food and the greatest wines. Tough. That's tough life. The greatest foods and the greatest wines and the greatest education. That's a hard life for a captive. But at 15 years old, he knew that the greatest food, the greatest wines, probably wouldn't adhere to the Mosaic law in terms of dietary restrictions. Remember, Daniel's Jewish. He believed the Mosaic law. They had a very specific guideline on what they can and cannot eat. And because Daniel had no idea of knowing if the food would be prepared in the way the Mosaic law suggests, that the only way to be a person of discipline over his body would be to restrict himself more than the law even says. And so Daniel said, Give me the vegetables and give me the water. Why? Because I know how that's made. I can guarantee that that is made and edible in such a way that doesn't violate the Mosaic law. Now, he is not a brilliant young guy. He's just a 15-year-old, surrounded by all kinds of opportunity. But he was committed, committed to the Lord. So he further restricts himself in order to be able to be obedient to the faith of God in Daniel chapter 1. His deep conviction allowed his spirit to rule over his flesh. Now, this is not uncommon. You live in a world filled with people that are people of resolve. They have excellent spirits, and they're able to use their spirit to rule over their flesh for all kinds of goals and accomplishments. Has anybody here ever seen anybody hit the gym five days a week? They have incredible physiques, their health is on point, they restrict their diet, they restrict their activity, and all of a sudden this person is a specimen among specimens. You know these people? One of them goes to our church, his name's Corey Pickle. You know him? Mr. Beefcake, sorry, Corey, I wasn't planning on calling you out, but I couldn't help it. I mean, if you spend time in conversation with him, he restricts everything in his life for the sake of physical fruit and physical discipline. This happens in all kinds of careers. In fact, many of you have learned how to go to bed on time at a certain time of night to wake up at a certain time of day to be successful in your work, right? That is a way of taking your spirit to rule over your flesh, an internal resolve so that you'll be successful in the world. We do this with all sorts of small things. You can do this with really physically demanding things, but you can absolutely train your internal self to control the physical self. And if we lived in a world where nobody could do that, there'd be utter chaos. So we understand how to use our soul, our character, our spirit, our integrity to dictate and overcome everyday impulses around our flesh. We know how to become people of resolve in all kinds of things. But when you are resolved to be a person of excellent spirit in holy things, things that please the Lord, things that are revealed throughout the text, when you're resolved to have an excellent spirit with what is righteous, it produces an excellent spirit in the world that influences people for Jesus. So, yes, we can have an internal resolve that has personal benefit for our daily lives, for our physical personage, for our families, but the best kind of daily internal resolve that we can possess is the resolve to be obedient to the Lord because it produces a spiritual transaction here on earth where God is uplifted and you become a person who's living by righteousness. One of the personal spiritual disciplines that uh has fallen away in the North American church is the discipline of fasting. Daniel is a really good example. He restricted his diet further than what the Mosaic Law even required because he could not know if the food would be applied or uh prepared appropriately. Here in our day and time, there is a real discipline taught in the Bible, this discipline of fasting. It is a gift to you by God to help you learn how to use your internal spirit to control the impulses of the body. It helps build your self-control in partnership with the Holy Spirit. Now, I'll be completely honest with you. There are many people that are like, hey, you know what? I fast, but I fast from technology, I fast, I fast from social media, I fasted from fasting, you know? The word fasting in the Bible is very intentional about food. It's food-based. And the reason for that is because your stomach has far more control over you than you think. My stomach, at least, has way more control over me than I would like. And so there's a discipline that we can practice as a church. If you want to grow and having an excellent spirit, begin exercising the spiritual discipline of fasting. Take 24 hours of your life. If you medically are able, take 24 hours of your life, refrain from food, just drink water, and use the physical pangs of the body to push you closer to Jesus. You will find that your resolve to refrain from food produces a spiritual outcome of intimacy with God Almighty. Yes, you can get there through daily prayer and daily Bible study, but if you want to fast track it, try fasting from food for 24 hours. If you want to go even further, fast until the Holy Spirit releases you from your fast. Find out how long the Spirit will keep you there. And the reason I say that is because the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days for prayer and fasting. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into his fast. It wasn't just Jesus' decision. So if the Holy Spirit of God is getting a hold of your flesh right now and you want to internally develop this character of self-discipline to have more intimacy with God and choose things that are more holy, fasting is a fast track approach to that. And if you build that into your life, your intimacy with the Lord Almighty will go tenfold. So I challenge you, church, go and fast 24 hours from food for the sake of experiencing the person of Jesus Christ more closely than you have in a long time. Produce this excellent spirit of self-control in one area, one area that is holy, and you'll see it play across the rest of your life. Now, Daniel's excellent spirit, as you see in Daniel chapter 1 till Daniel chapter 6, by the way, that was all free. I didn't mean to talk about that, so we might go longer on the message. I got more to get to. The thing we see in Daniel 1 and Daniel chapter 6 is that Daniel spent a lifetime cultivating small moments of having an excellent spirit. Moments of subduing the passions and the pursuits of the flesh for the sake of choosing something a little more holy. That's how he developed this excellent spirit so that when the trial came, he could be found in good standing. I want you to think about Daniel for just a moment. Eighty-five years old, he's been a public servant in a very corrupt nation called Babylon. Fifty years, he's in a high-ranking official in a very powerful government. And when all the other governors and the satraps, in other words, when Congress decided to look at his books, they could find no fraud, they could find no scandals, they could find nothing to bring against him in any way that the civil law would remove him from his position. Because he lived faithfully through small acts of having an excellent spirit over the impulses of the flesh. How many of you have gotten in trouble because you allowed the impulse of the flesh to overcome what you knew to be right in your spirit? Anyone ever had that happen?

unknown 18:18

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

You ever tell a lie? That's what that is. You ever steal five bucks out of your mom and dad's wallet because you saw it on the counter? There's all kinds of these little impulses of the flesh. When you follow those impulses, especially when you do them at work, they there's all there's all kinds of ways to do this at work, by the way, in the world. You become somebody who might become wealthy or somebody who might become important, but you're absolutely a person of no integrity. You have no excellent spirit within you. But Daniel 6, 4 says, no matter what they looked at in his life, this is a miracle, by the way. This guy, 50 years, public official, no, no, no uh track record of having anything wrong. He was faithful. So as you develop this excellent spirit, an excellent spirit creates faithfulness in your responsibilities in the world, and it creates obedient faith to the Lord. When you choose to be excellent in spirit with what is righteous, and that's the next slide, guys, when you choose to be excellent in spirit with what is righteous, it creates this faithfulness in all your other responsibilities because you have a spirit of self-control over the impulses of the flesh. As a result, then you are able to be responsible in the world and you're obedient in your faith to the Lord. Now, they can't catch Daniel in any other way. The only way they can catch Daniel is by creating a civil law that contradicts with God's moral law. Does that sound familiar from Daniel chapter 3? Sure does. When the world wants to trap righteous people, it simply creates civil laws that are contrary to God's revealed religious law or moral law. And so now what happens is they create a law where nobody can pray to any other God or any other deity except for King Darius, the current king of Babylon that Daniel is serving for 30 days. And all the satraps and all the governors created this law specifically to trap Daniel to make sure they could get him out of office. Daniel has now entered a trial. Am I going to obey the law of man or am I going to serve God? That's a pretty common trial that many of us are going to find ourselves in. And here's what happened to Daniel, Daniel chapter 6, verse 10. When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks to God, or that and thanks before his God, as he had done previously. I want to show you that last slide. You ready? As he had done previously. Daniel had a habit in his life. His habit was to go to his window in his apartment, to open the window that faced Jerusalem, and to pray three times a day, morning, noon, and night, over to God Almighty, giving thanks for the things that he has inside of his life. Same window, same posture, same prayer of thanksgiving, because it was his habit. Here's what we find about our habits, our spiritual habits. Your habits in times of comfort become your comfort in times of trial. Daniel knew exactly what to do. He went right back to the habit that brought him the most comfort, the spiritual discipline that was the most righteous. When the trial was on, he didn't go into a rambunctious, I've got to solve all the problems. He simply kept about his routine of daily prayer. Look, I don't know what your habits are in your life, but I can promise you one thing, and you've seen this to be true in your life. If drinking alcohol is a regular habit of yours, when trials come on your life, you will drink more. You don't drink less. If escaping to your phone is a habit in your life, when trials come on in your life, you're not gonna Put your phone down and go seek God, your habit will be to go to your phone. Whatever your habit is, if you use food to cope with stress, when stress comes on through more trials, guess where you're gonna go? The buffet line. This is how our flesh works. Whatever your habit is in times of comfort will become your comfort in times of trial. So if you are a workaholic or a shopaholic or an alcoholic or you're addicted to your phone, and that's what you do in times of comfort, when the stress is on, you will go to that thing. It's your security blanket. Remember if you have babies, they get these little blankets, they attach to them. Well, eventually they give up their security blanket and they attach onto something else. It's a behavior. We learn coping mechanisms. It'd be better if we kept our blankets. Can you imagine us all walking around? Just it'd be better for us, honestly. In fact, if anybody got a blanket, just keep it with you. It's probably better for you. Daniel's routine was a routine of prayer and thankfulness. That was his habit. When temptation came, when trial came, he fell back into his habit. Now I want to bring you into Daniel's unique temptation. There is no law in the Mosaic law that requires a Jewish person to pray three times a day. There is no law requiring it that it be at an open window looking towards Jerusalem. That was simply Daniel's practice. Now, because that was his practice and not the law, the temptation for Daniel would be to self-preserve, to not be thrown into the lion's den, because after all, who's going to know if he decides to just not pray? He could have closed his window and prayed. He could have opened the window and gazed out the window towards Jerusalem without opening his mouth and saying anything. There's all kinds of behaviors Daniel could have adopted that would make it look like he wasn't praying and yet still maintain a posture of prayer towards the Lord. But this was his habit. And if he simply changed his habit, while nobody would catch him, he would find himself in quite the predicament. Because in order to appear as if he's not praying to God Almighty, it would look like he has to abandon his God and therefore choose Darius as a temporary solution or a temporary person of prayer. In order to privately save his flesh, he would have to publicly do something that discredited the person of God Almighty. Everybody knew Daniel's habit. Everybody knew it. So if he just stopped doing it, he would discredit God in front of all these people. So he didn't have much of a choice unless he wanted to defame the name of God. He had to persist in his habit. And he finds himself in this trial because there's no way out of this situation using human cunning. And that's really important. Because if you find yourself in a trial and you've got to go through all these mental gymnastics on how to figure yourself out of that trial, all somewhere in those mental gymnastics, I promise you, is a bunch of sin and temptation. But trials and of themselves are not meant for you to be able to deliver yourself from them. They're meant to deepen your dependence on God. They're meant to show you that God can deliver you and that you can't deliver yourself. So if you've ever find yourself in a spiritual trial, spiritual trials require spiritual solutions. There's no man-made solution for these problems. That's what we see in Daniel 6.14. You see, the king was Daniel's friend. He actually really liked Daniel. He was going to promote Daniel. They were colleagues, they got along great. And he was so misled. He just, for whatever reason, he didn't even think about Daniel his friend worshiping another God. He was just like, yeah, whatever, make the decree. So when the king finds out that Daniel is disobeying the civil law, he's in great distress. He tries to find every human possible solution to rescue Daniel. Says the king, when he heard these words, was so distressed. He set his mind to deliver Daniel. This king wanted to deliver Daniel. He labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Now look, on the surface, all of Daniel's trials look like political ones. Right? He had political enemies who wanted to maneuver to take him out. But what we will see in life is if you could see behind the events, behind many of these permitted trials is actually a spiritual battle. It's a battle set forth by Satan to steal, kill, and destroy your faith and to damage the kingdom of God. So behind these permitted trials are these spiritual battles. There's something behind the curtain. If you ever read the book of Job, you get this peak behind the curtain, behind the veil. What's really happening in the spiritual world that's impacting your daily reality? There's a battle back there. There's something going on. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 6 we fight a battle that is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and powers and thrones and principalities. There is a spiritual world. You are a spiritual being. You're also a physical being. So you live in this physical world. But make no mistake that there is something happening you can't see. It is powerful, it is strong, it is cunning, it has real plans to harm you, to steal, kill, and destroy your faith, and to bring damage to the kingdom of God. That is his plan. And what you see with the satraps and the governors, that's not the real enemy. They're the presentation of the enemy. They're the flesh and blood that looks like the enemy, but they're not the enemy. The enemy is Satan who's trying to discredit God Almighty. And this is why human solutions can't overcome spiritual problems. In this story, you see that the most powerful man in the world, King Darius, his power has a ceiling. Even he can't deliver Daniel. He made the law. Couldn't he just undo the law? No, because we know that by fault nobody's above the law. So even the king can't get himself to rescue Daniel in this situation. All the options were exhausted. When the king exhausted all his human options, he then did what most people do. He fell back on the spiritual one. Look at Daniel 6, 16 through 17. Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. And here's what the king said to Daniel Daniel, may your God, whom you serve, continually deliver you. Why did he say that? Because he couldn't. When human solutions don't work, people come to the realization that the only possible solution is a divine one. And that's what the king realizes. And so they bring the stone over the den. It was laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. How many of our trials stay sealed? The stone is still sealed over the life of our trial because we keep reaching for human solutions to spiritual problems. So many of us find ourselves in these repetitive, broken cycles that are deeply spiritual in nature, but we fail to see the spirituality. We just look at the flesh and blood, and so we try flesh and blood problems every time. We strategize, we work harder, we manage better, we try to find every human solution, yet the stone over our personal lion's den stays sealed because we have not yet fully depended on God. We've not let the trial take us into deeper dependence on the Lord. Let me tell you why that is. The hardest part of a trial is that we don't understand the most powerful solution we have. Because the most powerful solution we have looks like the weakest solution to the world. When you go in prayer before God Almighty, this world you live in treats that like a last resort. It's just a last resort option. Go to God last. Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, solve your own problem. You just figure this thing out. Maybe you got yourself there, maybe somebody else put you there. It's your problem to solve. Try all the human things you can. And you do that, and you do that, and you do that, and you do that, and you avoid going to God in prayer because, quite frankly, total dependence on God's delivery looks like the weakest possible solution for the world in which you're in. And we are told, don't even bother praying, it's not gonna help. That's the world, that's the message. And yet, that is not at all what we are taught throughout Scripture. All throughout Scripture, we see this modeled in Daniel's life, we see it modeled in Jesus' life, but prayer is the habit we form in our comfort because it's the source of comfort that sustains you and it overcomes the enemy. This is the only spiritual habit that you can build and develop that places you in total dependence because that's what prayer is. Prayer is this posture of dependence of the soul on God Almighty to intervene in your life in a way that you can't do on your own. It's an act of humility for all of us to go before God in prayer. I want to take you to Jesus' habit of prayer. Jesus is a man of excellent spirit, we'd agree with that. Personal self-control over the impulses of the flesh. One of his habits was to go off to the Garden of Gethsemane and pray. When Jesus entered the trial where the cross was before him, look at what happens in Luke 22, 39. Jesus came out of the upper room and he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives where he knelt and he prayed. Jesus had a custom all throughout his life. Go ahead and read it. He would disappear to pray. He would go to the Mount of Olives to pray. He would find himself on a boat where he would go and pray. After he would pray, he'd then take a nap. It's part of his habit. But he would pray and he would sleep and he would pray some more. Here it was his habit in the greatest trial that ever stood before him, which was the cross. He went back to his habit of prayer, where he found the comfort and the spirit necessary to overcome the impulses of the flesh and run, instead, subdue the impulse of the flesh, put it in alignment with the spirit, and walk himself to the cross. He goes back to his disciples because he invited his disciples this night to pray with him, Luke 22, 45 through 46. And when Jesus rose from prayer, he came to the disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. And he said to them, Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation. What is the temptation? The temptation is to avoid being obedient to God when the trial is upon you. And the only thing that keeps you obedient in the trial is a spirit that is comforted through prayer, where you hear the voice of the Lord, your soul is encouraged, you walk away knowing the will of God, and you step into it. Peter could not stay up and pray. Do you know what happened in Peter's story? Jesus is arrested. A couple hours later, Peter is following Jesus when somebody in the crowd says, Hey, you, weren't you with Jesus? And because Peter wasn't in prayer before the trial, what happened? He lied. He gave in to temptation and denied that he was with Jesus. He didn't do it once. He didn't do it just twice. He did it three times before the next morning because Peter failed to cultivate a habit of prayer that kept him in alignment with the spiritually revealed will of God. If we fail to have the habit of prayer in our life, if we fail to encourage our soul through the ministry of the Spirit of God in prayer, when trials come, you will follow the impulses of the flesh instead of subduing the flesh to the leading of the spirits. Now there's two ways you can develop these habits in your life. The first is intentional training. Through intentional training, you can cultivate an excellent spirit. You can read the Bible every single day. You can pray every single day. You can fast on schedule as the Holy Spirit puts inside of your monthly schedule if you'd like to. You can take a Sabbath and rest 24 hours a week. You can gather together and worship in a church service. Those are intentional training habits. As you do them, you have seen in your own life your excellent spirit grow. You can understand right from wrong and choose right more often than what is wrong. The second, though, is what we call ambient training. Ambient training is the community that you belong to and the values that they instill in you as a result. Hey, church, I'm gonna let you know something. Ready? Summer's almost over. Okay? September 13th, we begin our all-church journey with our Back to Grace Sunday. Your regular engagement with the family of God is critical to helping you develop an excellent spirit of God. It's critical. You can't come to church whenever you feel like it. In fact, that's part of having an excellent spirit. Part of having the excellent spirit is waking up saying, gosh, it's just a beautiful day out there. The humidity is low, perfect for a motorcycle. I don't have to go to work, but it's Sunday, church is at nine. What is good for my soul and what is worthy of your time with the Lord, you subdue the passion and impulse of the flesh with the spirit to do what is right, and you go and you worship with the people of God. Because it's good for your soul. I'm not saying you don't take vacations. I think you can read the subtext of what I'm laying down. The habit of the American church is one in four Sundays. That's our current model, 1.6 times a month. That's all the surveys. 1.6. Which means if you're here more than 1.6 times a month, you're a super attender. Okay? The goal is not to be a super attender or even a regular attender. The goal is to be in a place where your spirit is nurtured by the word of God, the worship of God, and the people of God. That is the goal. Because when you leave this place, then on Monday, when the trial comes and you have to have an excellent spirit, you've been in a place where you've picked up the values of having an excellent spirit that follows after God. Alright, with this, I'm done. Ben, come on out. Sorry, I'm preaching too long. But I'm feeling it today. I woke up zesty, okay? Daniel goes into the lion's den. While he's down in the lion's den, what you find is that the Lord does not let the lion have him. Listen, Daniel 6, 21 through 22. The next morning when the king shows up, Daniel says to the king, O king, may you live forever. God sent his angel and he shut the lion's mouth, and they have not harmed me. Because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm. Church, I want you to hear this. Ready? In Christ Jesus, the lion Satan cannot have you. In Christ Jesus, the lion Satan cannot have you. Daniel was found blameless before the eyes of God in this particular matter. Not in his whole life. That's what the text tells us. Daniel says to the king, I was found blameless before God in this matter. And so God shut the lion's mouth and spared Daniel's life for his faithful obedience to the Lord and his disobedience to man. But that doesn't mean that Daniel was totally blameless. Daniel had plenty of blame, plenty of sin in his life, just like you, just like me. And while Daniel had an excellent spirit before God, he did not have a perfect spirit. He was not totally blameless. Now, 1 Peter tells us this about our enemy. That we, you and I, are to be sober-minded, to be watchful because your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. That imagery is not an accident. There is a real enemy. Daniel's enemy was a lion. It was down in the den. He was facing it, but God shut its mouth because he was blameless in that matter. You have a real enemy, his name is Satan. He wants to devour you, he wants to destroy you, he wants to steal, kill, and take your faith. He wants to damage the kingdom of heaven. He is a roaring lion. He's very loud, he's very powerful, and he will devour those in the end who are not found blameless before God. And the only way to be found blameless before the Lord is through Jesus Christ. For everyone here in this room that has placed your faith in Jesus Christ, the lion of this world has no claim on you. Jesus Himself has shut the mouth of that lion on the cross, and you stand blameless before God Almighty, sharing in Jesus' righteousness. It's not what you did. It's not because you have an excellent spirit all the time, it's because you have a blameless spirit in you, the very spirit of Christ, who lived a blameless life here on earth. This is our hope, this is our strength, and this is our testimony. And if you are here in this room and you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, listen to me now. There's an enemy who wants to take your soul and take you to the pits of hell and is happy to leave you there. But Christ Himself loves you so much, He died on a cross so that you wouldn't have to. So that if you place your faith on him, you would be found blameless before God Almighty, and on resurrection day, you would come up out of the den and you would stand in freedom with Jesus. That's your future hope if you want it. That's your future hope if you call in the name of Jesus.