How to be Bold | Week 2

Get Strong

The wicked run away when no one is chasing them,
 but the godly are as bold as lions.  Proverbs 18:1

It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Daniel 6:1-3

1. EXPECT OPPOSITION

At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”    Daniel 6:4-5

2.    KNEEL AND PRAY.

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Daniel 6:10

Prayer is our First Response not our Last Resort

3. TRUST GOD WITH THE RESULTS.

My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.” The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God. Daniel 6:22-23

Discussion Questions

When you hear the word BOLD, what comes to mind first: personality, action, faith, or conflict?

Can you think of a time when doing the right thing brought resistance instead of applause?

What practical rhythms of prayer could help you stay spiritually strong throughout the day?

Where do you struggle most with the “what ifs” of faith?

Where is God asking you to be bold instead of blending in right now?

 Want to go deeper this week? We’ve created a simple Bible reading plan that follows today’s message and helps you carry what God spoke on Sunday into your everyday life. www.relatecommunity.com/soap

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Transcript

Theme: The Righteous Are Bold As Lions

From Flannel Board To Fierce Lions

Court Intrigue: Daniel Under Darius

Message Aim: Get Strong To Be Bold

Strength Step One: Expect Opposition

The Decree And Daniel’s Decision

Strength Step Two: Kneel And Pray

Posture, Practice, And Perseverance

Strength Step Three: Trust The Results

SPEAKER_00 0:28

All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to church. Tell somebody next to you, welcome to church. And tell your second choice also. Welcome. I'm glad you're here too. I'm also glad you came to church. Welcome, everybody. This is the house of the Lord, and I'm super excited that you are here and that we get to kick off a brand new year together with a new series and a new word. And uh somebody asked me last year our word was stretched because I felt like God was stretching us. And just because we went to a new year, does that mean that God's not stretching us? No, God's still stretching us. So we're still growing, we're still reaching, we're still pursuing and uh stretching for the things that God has for us. Um, however, I think that as we go into this 2026, there's some things specifically that God wants us to be very bold about. And I don't just mean uh most often when we say the word bold, we're just saying, well, I'm supposed to share my faith. Listen, there's some there's some things that require you to be bold that have nothing to do with you sharing your faith. There's some decisions you need to make, there's some ideas that you need to challenge yourself with, there's some things you need to cut out, some things you need to inject and put into your life, uh into your faith, into your walk of God. And um, I'm looking for 2026 to be a really, really bold year for us as a group, for us as a congregation, and I'm excited about it. So we're in week number two of how to be bold, because I thought we'd kick off the year with just a really uh pragmatic, just really rubber meets the road. How do how do I walk in boldness? What is that supposed to look like? And so uh I think no one shows us that more than um well, a lot a lot of people in the Bible show us that, but I thought, what better place to start than with Daniel? And so we did last week, and this week we're gonna we're gonna take it to another level and dive a little bit deeper. So, how many of you guys came ready to grow, came ready to ready to learn, came ready to dive into God's word? That means you need to pull out your notes because we are a note-taking church. If you are new to the church, if you're new to here, or maybe this is your first time, then I would say welcome to you. First off, I'm glad you're here. I know it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of boldness to just get out of the routine or the house or the car and make even walk up into a new place with new people. And uh it it it I know that that is that takes courage. And so we thank you for doing that. I'm glad that we get to have this Sunday together. If you're watching online today, I'm gonna look at the camera and say that we're we're so glad that you chose us this morning. And I know it's easy to feel like you get isolated or feel like you're forgotten about when you're at home or can't come to church service for a couple weeks for whatever reasons, for traveling, for uh issues. But listen, it matters to us that we get to be together, even if it's just through technology. And we look forward to seeing you again in this room. Amen. We love being together, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, working through God's word. So, real quick, I want to give you our uh theme verse for uh Proverbs chapter 28, verse 1. It says, The wicked run away when no one's chasing them. There's a lot to unpack there. I wish I had time to do it, but we're not going to. The next line says, But the godly are as bold as lions. So we're looking for God's boldness to get planted in us, get put in us. And we want to be bold in our thoughts and our decisions, in our faith, and our actions, and uh how to be bold. Today, y'all ready? Yeah, five. I got five people who are ready. Let's try again. Are y'all ready? There we go. There we go. I was a youth pastor for 10 years, and I would remember asking if they were ready, and then I have to go and like sneak up on a few of them in the back row for sleeping and try to wake up, or I would, if if anyone was sleeping during service, I'll just get them up and make them part of the message. So I'm not beyond that now. If y'all go to sleep, I might pull you up here. I won't embarrass, I'll try not to embarrass you, it won't be that kind of thing. All right. Today we're looking. Uh Daniel goes from being last week. His his city, Jerusalem, is taken captive by the evil uh nation of Babylon and the evil King Nebuchadnezzar. Thank you. All right, y'all are already doing better in first service because first service was way, they were asleep during that. I had to. Y'all pass the test. All right, that's good. We're we're booing for Nebuchadnezzar because he is okay, all right. That was a little sneakier, but you still got it. He was an evil guy and um was not living for God. In fact, he destroyed and mocked and stole things out of the out of the temple and made a mockery of their God and indoctrinated and brainwashed these young guys. The youngest, brightest. Um, Daniel was one of those young guys, and he was uh, according to theologians, probably 12 to 13 years old. In chapter one, we started in Daniel chapter one. Today we're kind of skipping ahead a little bit in his life and looking at another um another situation where boldness becomes a uh a critical point, and Daniel's no longer 12 or 13 years old. He's much older now. Uh, this is most believe he's around 80 or so. So I just want to challenge a little bit, probably most of our uh notions, preconceived ideas and the thoughts that I grew up in church in um in the 1980s. How many of you guys lived in the 1980s? Come on, it was it was a good time, I think. Uh but our Sunday school classes were a little bit different than today. We didn't have tablets and we didn't have uh screens and videos and AI to tell us what the Bible stories looked like. We had a little flannel board where they put a little cut-out piece of cloth on a board and taught us what the lions were like when Daniel faced them. And so I think that we all, if you grew up in church or have ever heard the term Daniel in the lion's den, you probably have this idea, and it probably comes into alignment a little bit with this picture that I found online, which is Daniel in the lion's den. This is not Daniel in the Lion's Den. Lions are fierce, lions are uh they strike terror into the hearts of men and women and children and anyone, they're the king of the jungle, and they've become uh almost animated because of the Lion King and all of the videos and movies and even videos we see online. But when you see an actual lion, how many of you ever been camping or out around a campfire in the woods somewhere and you hear like a bobcat in the in the wild? If you've never heard that, you don't really want to hear it because it's like one of those things that you're like, now I might believe the ghost stories I've been hearing around the campfire a little bit. This is not good. Um a few years when the kids were little, my kids are in their 20s now, but when they were kids, probably like five years old, we went to the zoo and we had uh usually when you go to the zoo, um you're lucky if any of the animals are moving. Um we went and it was a brisk uh spring morning. It was very nice, beautiful outside and cool. And we went about 10 o'clock in the morning, and within about five minutes, we were still kind of at the front of the zoo. We were just into the entrance, kind of figured out what direction we're gonna go. All of a sudden, we heard a sound that was it took me a second to figure out like, oh my gosh, there's something that something's loose. This is I don't, whatever that sound is, it was like a terrible sound because it was so deep and so loud and it was like all echoing all over the zoo, and we figured out that it was one of the lions toward the middle of the zoo. If you've been to the Houston Zoo, it's a big place. This this roar what he this lion, like every couple, every minute or so, he was like roaring, and I had never heard that before in person, and it was enough. The sound was enough to like really strike fear into my heart to think that there's something something's wrong. And that was just the sound unseen later on when we actually got to the uh to the little lion's pen there. They have a glass wall, and this was one of those I we didn't have YouTube then. This was like uh where the lion he was up and walking around and like just letting everybody know that he was in charge and roaring and like growling, and every breath was just like this is incredible. Once I find I thought it was incredible once we finally got up to it, but then when my kids got out and they're like standing up by the the glass, this line becomes very intent, and he's looking at the kids and like following them back and forth. And I thought, all right, let's go. Our time done here. Something happens in us whenever we feel that and hear that. And I think we're gonna see this also in Daniel that there's a decision, there's this moment of decision where we're faced with terror, we're faced with fear, we're faced with a challenge, and then our instinct is to protect, our instinct is to take care of ourselves and our kids. And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna take myself out of this situation. Whatever I I'm gonna I'm gonna remove myself from the situation. Um, I felt that that day at the zoo, but it's something that we feel often whenever we're in, whenever we encounter the fiercest things in life. And Daniel faces something very fierce. And I think that the fiercest thing, the common thing is not, we don't all face lines every day, but we do face challenges, and we do face there there there is a moment of decision that requires godly boldness. We talked last week about the the having the right kind of boldness in the right way and how that changes our life. Or if we have the wrong kind of boldness in the wrong way at the wrong time, it it can hurt us very deeply. And so I want to talk about how to be bold and I want to talk about uh Daniel for a little bit, but first I want to let you know that we are no longer he's no longer serving King Nebuchadnezzar, he's serving King Darius, and he serves probably at least four major kings in his in his time. He's he served for a very long time. God uses him for incredible things. This is the third king that Daniel served under, his name is King Darius, and he's placed in a position of an administrator because Daniel is like an administrative genius. God gives him talent, God gives him ability, God gives him uh uh an incredible way to shine. Uh because like Joseph in the Old Testament, like almost everything he touched succeeds. And so the king sees this, and um it it advantages Daniel, but uh in in a moment we're gonna read in chapter six, verse one, it says that the king puts in charge of all of the land 120 satraps, which the the term they use is satraps, but really what it is, it's like a governor over a region, and the 120 over all of Babylon, it says, over those 120 governors or satraps, the king places three administrators to oversee and make everything, make sure everything goes well. And one of those three is Daniel, to prevent rebel rebellion, make sure the taxes are done, make sure that the national national uh financial issues are correct. So let's read in Daniel chapter 1, verse 1, uh chapter 6, verse 1, it says, It pleased Darius, the king, to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the kings might not suffer loss. So they're watching every they're like overseers over the whole kingdom. Now, Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators that the satraps and satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Now we've all been in positions where we uh we kind of hear things coming that haven't happened yet, but oh, did you hear the king he's planning on putting Daniel in charge of everything? Or maybe the king just mentions it a few times, like, man, you keep doing that well, I'm gonna put you in charge of everything. He starts getting favor. He starts um he he he starts getting into a good position with the king and the other people around him, they don't like it very much. So Daniel automatically has 120 of the governors and the other two administrators, they all start looking at Daniel like, uh, we don't like you getting all the advantages here. We don't like you getting in good with the king. And then so they start to become jealous and they start to decide that they're gonna take him down. And so we start to this story is about lions and Daniel and Lions, but it's also about betrayal. It's also about backstabbing, it's also about jealousy and ego and and people's desire for power, and people who think, oh, he's got too much power, I'm gonna take his power. So all of a sudden, to me, I don't know what you guys think about AI, and I'm still a little bit on the fence. I I don't know what to think of AI, but I decided this week to to use AI, and I said, I asked AI, make me a movie poster that's something between Daniel and the Lion's Den and Game of Thrones, and this is what it came up with. I thought that's much better than what the other picture we had where the Daniel's laying around with the lions, because this story is full of like court intrigue and people trying to take down Daniel and backstabbing and all of the uncertainty that Daniel, this guy who's been taken out of his land, put into a new land. Now you got 120 people to overlook, but they all want to kill you. You got one guy who kind of likes you, and he's the king, and you got all these other people talking bad about you, and he's he's in a bad position. So he's leaning on God, he's he's reaching for God, he's praying to God every day. God, keep me right, keep for 80 years. And so today, I thought, what better way to quantify how to be bold? Then this might not sound exactly attainable. This might not sound very easy, but I'm gonna tell you that the title of today's message on how to be bold is get strong. And you might think, well, I can't just get strong, right? You can just get strong. There are things that you can reach for, there are things that you can tap into, there are things that you can do that make you much stronger than if you don't do that. In fact, in Joshua, someone who was very strong had to be very bold for God. In Joshua 1 9, it says, be strong and courageous. In other words, be bold and strong. But you know it's a lot easier to be bold if you're strong. Think about it. If I if I'm a strong warrior, I'm gonna boldly walk out onto the battlefield because I'm strong. If I'm not very strong and I'm weak, then I'm like, uh I don't I don't want to go out there today. I don't want, I don't know if I can face that challenge. I don't know. I love the bumper going into this video. It just shows different um different aspects of life where we have to take boldness, where we have to challenge ourselves and we have to stand up and be strong. And in our case, and in our faith and in our walk with God, the case is that we are not strong. The Bible says that when I am weak, he is strong. Then I am strong because he makes me strong. So we're looking for God's strength as Daniel does. He takes a hold of God's strength to be bold. So I'm gonna give you guys three things today that make us strong. Three things that we can reach for that give us strength that will uh enable us to walk in boldness. Number one, number one, I'm going to expect opposition. Everybody say expect opposition. What does that look like? That look like that looks like God is uh raising us up, and there are going to be those 120 satraps, those other administrators who want to just pull us right back down. What does that look like in our lives? We make a decision, we're doing well. Maybe you get promoted at work. You get promoted at work, and then everybody else and uh that you work with, even co-workers, even people that you love and they love too. People, they might even be family members. What happens is they start looking at, well, why did he get the promotion? Why did they pick her? They should have picked me. Uh, I gotta show. And then they start scheming, even well-meaning people, that something happens that we just we tear each other down. Maybe it's God blesses you, and then someone else next to you that you sit with every Sunday on Sunday morning, they start, well, why did God give them a new car? Why did God give them a baby? I've been praying for a baby. God, why did you answer their prayer? Why does their little uh post-it note on the bold prayers board have an answered stamp on it, and mine doesn't have an answered stamp on it? And all of a sudden we start to try and pull down all the other people. That's that's the way the world works. And you might be one of those Christians that's thinking, well, if I just start serving God, if I just start going to church every week, then my life will be perfect. If I can just get things to a certain level, a certain degree, if we do we just have this um perfectionist. We think if I can just attain this certain level, if I can just, if I could go to church every week for a month, then my life would be good. And I know God would take care of me. And we think, here, this is y'all, y'all hear me. This is one of the biggest problems in the church. We think that God's gonna fix everything for us. We think we're not gonna have opposition. We don't think that any we think no one's gonna mess with us and God's gonna answer all my prayers. If I'll just do good enough, then God will see me. If I just fast good enough, this if I just if I suffer enough through 20 21 days of prayer and fasting, if I pray enough, then God will answer all my prayers, and then I'll never have opposition. That's a big fat lie. That's not how it works, that's not how it works at all. In fact, uh in Roman times they called it the tall the tall poppy syndrome. That is uh I actually found a picture from an old piece of art where they're they they they're cutting down the tall. In fact, one of it's it's referencing a moment where one of the Roman rulers was asked, what are we supposed to do now that we've taken charge of this area? And he takes a stick and swipes across the top of all of the tall, uh all the flowers that were the tallest got cut off. And what he was saying is that we're gonna cut down all of the most influential people. We're gonna cut down those people who have advanced, those people who are doing a little bit better, we're gonna cut them down. In modern times, we would uh you could probably relate that to like uh a crab pot. Whenever you got all the crabs in a pot, and then one starts to crawl out, you really don't have to put them back in because the other ones that are in there, they'll pull them back in. We do that to each other. It's not a good thing, but it's the way the world works. And if we don't start expecting that bad things can happen, expect that when my ministry grows or that when I make a decision to follow Jesus, or whenever I decide to dedicate something to God, my kids, my family, my finances, once I make that decision, if you don't expect that there's an opposition coming, Then you're just Pollyanni, and you're just, oh, my life's gonna be perfect because God's gonna fix everything for me, and God's gonna answer all my prayers because He loves me. Okay. Good luck. God does answer prayers, but bad things happen. In fact, Jesus said that in this life you will have what? Trouble. You're gonna have trouble. Watch this. It says that in verse 4, it says, At this, the administrators and the satrapes tried to find grounds for charge against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. He was so good at what he did, they couldn't find any problems. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. They couldn't figure out any problems with him. Finally, these men said, We will never find any basis for charge against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God. Unless it's something to do, and they started to strategize how can we take this guy down? If you think that nothing can go wrong when you're serving God, I promise you. If it's not the people around you just being human, if it's not the people around you just picking because that's what they do and they're jealous, then it's the devil because we have an enemy. Why don't you just gently tap your neighbor, your person sitting next to you, just touch them right on their knee or their shoulder and tell them, hey, you have an enemy, and it's not me. You have an enemy. His name is Satan. The Bible says that he prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour. He has the power that we give him. He can scare us, he can take fear, but he can also attack us. And if you're not ready, the thing is, you become so much stronger if you just expect the attack. Hey, devil's coming, but I'm not gonna let him get me today. The devil is he he he's probably been scheming for for weeks, days, weeks, months, years. He's been planning and strategizing, and he's coming at me with his best, but it's not gonna work. That's a different kind of boldness that doesn't come from me thinking I'm somebody. It's it comes from me believing that God's got my back. It comes from me believing that the opposition will come. Last week we talked about uh we we talked about putting on the full armor of God. If it why would I need to put on the full armor of God if I didn't have an opposition coming against me? He's got fiery darts, he's got attacks that are gonna come, so I have to be ready for them. And a lot of times just being a lot of times being ready is just knowing they're coming. Hey, this that this doesn't surprise me because I can tell you that what I get a lot of times we're having, hey Pastor, can you pray with pray with me or Pastor, I gotta share something with you. Listen, when you start pouring out to me, I I want to have, I want to have the softest heart and tell you, brother, I'm with you, sister, we're together, let's walk through this. But I also want to tell you, buck up. I also want to tell you, hey, stand back up, let's go. Because what I often hear is I hear, I can't believe they did this to me. I can't but I can't, I I never thought that they would do this to me. They would, they would do it. And when we start thinking that it can't happen and that those people would never do this, and let me tell you, the people that will hurt you the most are the people you care about the most, the people you've done the most for, the people that you've helped get promotions, they're not gonna like when you get a promotion. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's good, I'm saying that's the way the world works. And if we can just stand up and say, hey, I know the opposition is coming and I don't hold it against you. I love you, and I'll still fight for you, and we can still fight arm in arm, but I know people are people. The enemy is gonna use all kinds of things. The true enemy that you're fighting is not the people you work with who will throw you under the bus to get themselves out of trouble or get a promotion. The true enemy is not the people who just said something that hurt your feelings. The true enemy that we have, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. But principalities and powers, we wrestle against an enemy who's already been defeated, but he keeps fighting. So we learn to expect it. And so, real quick, before I give you the other two things, that we have to not just expect opposition. I feel like in this point, in the in this conversation, I don't want you to think that I'm giving you permission to blame everything on the devil. Because some of you will walk right out of here today and you'll go live your life, and tonight before you go to bed, you'll stub your toe and you'll say, I know that devil was trying to get me. The devil did not stub your toe, and he didn't put that thing in the middle of the floor that you stub your toe on, and you don't need to tell your kids that the devil is using you to get me. I hear that sometimes. The devil's using my kids, the devil's using hold on. We also have to live out live the harvest of the decisions that we make. So if you decide to eat pizza at 11:30 tonight, you might not sleep very well. I'm just saying, the devil's not attacking your dreams, it's just heartburn. So don't blame everything on the devil, but you can know that he's out to get you. And that while probably not as much, not everything is coming from the devil, but it's probably a lot more than you give him credit for. So we're gonna expect opposition. And in challenge to that opposition, what did Daniel do? Daniel, they schemed behind his back and asked the king, uh, king, if you're so powerful, I think that anyone who worships anyone else other than you for the next 30 days, we should throw him in the lion's den. That'll make your power stronger. That'll make everybody recognize you as a deity. And even though he wasn't, the king thought, oh, I guess I am a deity. I guess I I should be powerful. We should throw everybody in the and he got caught up in this, even though he never thought about Daniel, who he liked, who he didn't want to hurt. And so he passed the law. If anyone worships any other gods, if anyone bows down and worships anyone other than me for 30 days, you get thrown in the lion's den. And they thought, okay, we got Daniel now. And so Daniel had a choice. Daniel had a decision to make that I think you and I have the same decision whenever we're challenged with that heart-gripping, like, what am I gonna do? I gotta get my kids, I gotta take myself out of this situation. We have to we have a decision to make. Like Daniel had the decision to make. The first thing he could have done, I think, is very simple. He could have just stopped praying. Well, I've been faithful for 80 years, I've been doing all the right things, I've been living right, I've been praying three times a day. Everybody knows I pray, everybody knows I'm faithful. God knows I'm faithful, and I'm just gonna take a 30-day break, God. Because at 30 days, in fact, God, it's probably better for you too, because if I take a 30-day break, I don't have to die in the lion's day, and then I can come back and pray even more. We start negotiating with God on uh God, I won't go to church for these three days, but then I'll do much better next month. Or he could have just decided to stop praying. He's earned a break. The second thing I think I relate to a little bit more than I say, I think this probably would have been me. Faced with uh a lion is like definitely gonna eat me, or I could I could just pretend to stop praying. I could just fake it and then no, I'm not praying. Anybody praying? I'll I'll help you look for them. I'm not praying, I'm just I'm just over here doing me. And then when everybody's not looking, just be uh, God, we need to do something. I need your help, God. God help me fix this, help me be a light that shines in the darkness. But it's a lot easier to just pull back a little bit, pretend like nothing's happening. Or the third thing, which Daniel actually does, he keeps praying and risks death. I think all of us have kind of a similar uh decision to make. And so what does he do? He has audacious faith. He steps out and he decides to continue to do the thing that he's been doing, which gives us our number two, and that is that there are often times where we just need to kneel and pray. That's why 21 days of prayer, because the rest of my life is gonna bow down to God at the beginning of this year. Food is gonna bow down, time, bow down. It's all gonna be humbled before the Lord. I'm putting him first. I heard someone say that 21 days of prayer and fasting is like tithing our year to God. It's like just giving him the very, the very first part. God, I'm gonna give you the beginning of it so you can bless the rest of it. That's what Daniel does. He just continues to pray and fast, and he continues to get down on his knees and live how God asks him to live, because when I'm weak, then I'm strong. Let's keep reading in verse 10. It says, Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God just as he had done before. He didn't change a thing. But it also shows us that he had already been doing that. It was predetermined in his mind. He'd already pre-decided, I'm praying three times a day. I'm gonna get down on my knees and I'm gonna pray. What happens for us a lot of times is that we default to panic or we default to oh, get everybody, we're getting out of here. Or we we default, and our first response should be prayer, not our last resort. It should be our first response. And what we do is we just throw our hands up and say, Well, all we can do now is pray. That's not what Daniel does. And he doesn't walk around like he's got a spiritual chip on his shoulder and uh tell everybody, well, I will not quit praying because I am super spiritual. He doesn't treat everybody, well, I have always gone to church and I always will go to church. He just keeps on doing what he what he's always done. I think there has to be a predecided thought as believers that we pray, it's we don't just pray when we wake up and pray when we eat and pray when we go to church. We you we you have to learn, we have to learn to walk in prayer. Paul says we should pray without ceasing. That's me, every day, all day long. We should be, God, I ask you to bless these people who are cutting me off in traffic. That's what I want to say, but that's not always what comes out. Or God help me with my kids, or God help me with my marriage, or God bless these people that I work with. God, it has to be a constant conversation that continues as we draw near to God, He's drawing near to us, and we're communicating with the Lord all day long. Prayer, I think, is not a uh a moment of discussion. It's an all-day discussion because I got the presence of God with me all day long. And there's something about kneeling before God. I don't have enough time to talk about this, but I think your posture in worship matters. I think your posture in prayer matters. And it may not be that you get down on your knees to pray every time, but if you've never gotten on your knees to pray, there's something that happens whenever we humble ourselves. Something the there's a there's a Hebrew word for prayer and worship that means prostrate, face down on the ground, just fully laid out before the Lord. There's that that that's a posture of our heart. That's a posture. Sometimes I can tell you I see a the opposite. I don't turn around during worship. I just try to worship God and let it be between, let me pour out my worship. But sometimes I turn around and some of you guys are like, I don't like this song. I don't like when that person sings. I don't like whenever this uh it's too loud or it's too soft or it's too too whatever. Sometimes, listen, your posture in worship is not good. If that's not you, then you don't have to. I'm just laying it out there. You don't have to pick it up. Just I'm just saying it. But for some of us it is. Some of us we say our prayers like we just do everything like we do it, and then we lay down and oh, good night, God. That's not that's not a good posture either. What is your posture whenever you're standing before God, whenever you're coming into worship? Mary sat at the feet of Jesus while Martha worked. She had the right posture, sitting knelt before the Lord. So I think that God's given us a challenge to be bold. I think that's why our word uh God woke me up in the middle of the night in December. The word is bold. And I think that it's because there's a time coming when we have to be bold. No, that it's pressed into boldness. I think it's more than just uh, hey guys, we should try to be a little bit more bold this year. That's not I think that there's a time coming when you're going to have to make a decision. When you're gonna have to choose. Joshua said, choose today who you will serve. You got a choice. You can do it that way, you can do it the way everybody else is doing it, or he said, as for me in my house, we're gonna serve the Lord. You're gonna have to make a decision. And that decision, you the the decision to be bold is going to come whenever either a bad health report comes, you're gonna have to decide. Am I gonna be bold or am I gonna lay down on this? When a bad financial decision comes or a bad financial report comes, and then you get that piece of mail that comes and you open it up and you're like, you're gonna have to decide. Am I gonna blend in? Am I gonna fold here or am I gonna be bold? Whenever my kids are faced with, hey, coming into a new school year, uh, coming into a new session, coming into a uh a new season of sports, am I gonna let my kids play on this team or this team? Well, one of these teams is gonna take my kids out of uh church for six months, three months, two months, a year. If I take this class, if I take this job, it's gonna take me further away from God. If I you're gonna have to make a decision. I don't have to be timid on that at all because my kids are in their 20s, and for years I had to explain to them why they couldn't be on this team, they could be on this team. Why they could take this class and not take this class because this one would take them out of church, this one would take them out of their Sunday school, this one would take them out of the program. A boldness that you're gonna have to decide which way am I gonna go. Because what we like to tell ourselves is it doesn't matter. There's no opposition here, this is just life. I just uh just whichever one works, doesn't matter. It does matter. Daniel could have said it doesn't matter. I'll just take a break. Daniel was faced with the same questions we face whenever we're looking at those decisions, and it is, what if the lions eat me, God? What if this doesn't work out the way I want it to? What if my job doesn't, what if the finances, what if this health things go the wrong way? What if my kids? What if my wife? What if my family? We're all faced with the what ifs. The question is, what are we gonna do in the face of those what ifs? So we're going to expect opposition, we're gonna kneel and pray. I think there's a lot of decisions that need to be made in both of those areas today. You need to set your set your head, set your your mind against or for some things and make some decisions today. And here's the final one, and that's we're gonna trust God with the results. Because even after Daniel does everything he can, he does all that he can do, then what's left is that he just has to trust God. Because God's not always gonna give you what you want and what you ask for. God's not a wedding registry where you just say, God, I want this and this and this. Could you just please get me this one? And then get mad because he didn't get the one you like. He's been faithful to Daniel for 80 years. And I think what we see with Daniel is that Daniel decides that uh if God saves me through this, okay, I'm gonna trust him. If he doesn't save me, I'm still gonna trust him. If it goes the way that I hope it goes, maybe there was a thought in uh in Daniel's mind that God, you can save me and do something amazing here, and we could be a great example to the king and all the whole nation if you'll just save me. But there was also the thought in his mind that it might not go that way. And either way, whichever, whatever happens in life, I'm still gonna trust God. Well, what happens is they sit by they catch Daniel praying, they bring Daniel before the king. The king is devastated. King Darius is devastated, drops. He has to put him in the pit because he can't back up on the rules that he set. He made a law, he has to live by it, or else it makes him look bad. So he throws him in the pit, devastated. He prays and fasts for Daniel, hoping that something, some miracle, some way that Daniel will be able to survive this. He doesn't know what'll happen. We don't know what actually happened in that lion's den. We can only imagine what it would look like, but I can tell you this we don't know what did happen. Maybe uh Daniel did lay down with the lion and used him as a pillow, and maybe the the or the the lions may have growled and roared at him all night, and Daniel could have cowered over in the corner and peed his pants. I don't know. We don't know what happened, but we do know what didn't happen. We know that he did not get eaten by the lions because the Bible says that the God shut the mouths of the lions. They weren't able to eat him. Maybe they wanted to. I don't even know what that means. I just know he didn't die, and God saved him. And so the king, so distraught, wakes up the next morning and runs out. It says that he the first question he asks Daniel is, Did your God rescue you? And Daniel's response is so amazing. Watch this. He says, My God sent his angel and shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in his sight. Now Daniel gets to preach to him a little bit, nor have I ever done any wrong before you, your majesty. The king was overjoyed, gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den, and when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him because he had trusted in God. Ultimately, the king gets so upset and he he has vengeed, he throws the other guys that pulled that little trick, the other advisors, he throws them into the lion's den and issues a decree, sets a tone for the rest of the nation. He issues a creed the decree that everyone in the kingdom should fear the God of Daniel. So, what ultimately was meant to crush and mock and destroy the true God meant it what it ended up doing was magnifying him. We can expect that. We can trust that God has an agenda and that if we'll seek him first, acknowledge him in all of our ways, he's gonna line things up. It might not go the way that we want it to, the way that we prescribed it to. But we can trust that God has a will and God has a way and God is powerful and he gives us so much more strength than we have on our own. And that when we take his strength, we can walk in boldness. We can walk proudly because of who he is, not because of who we are, because we're anything special. No, but because he's faithful and he's merciful and he loves us and he cares for us. So today, I don't know where you are in being strong. Maybe you need to change your thought process on opposition and start to realize that we have you have to expect some opposition, or maybe there needs to be a posture of kneeling and praying, humbling yourself. Maybe tonight you need to get down on your knees. When 21 days of prayer is not just about giving up TikTok or Netflix or food meals here and there, but it more than anything, it's about pointing our hearts toward Him and seeking Him and getting building an appetite for the things of God, building an appetite for the Word of God, building an appetite for our time in prayer, setting aside. And ultimately, the third one is to trust God with the results. Today, we're gonna trust God. I want to pray for you as we get ready to close. Would you just close your eyes right where you are? Lord, we thank you for leading us and directing our paths. That these 21 days are a time, God, where we can humble ourselves, we can align ourselves, and we can point our hearts and our minds, our thoughts toward you. God, help us to align every other part of our lives to where they've come into alignment with your will, your desires for us and our children, our families. God, we want to say, just as uh Joshua said, that as for me and my house, as for me, God, and this church and our small groups, God, we will walk with you, we will worship you, we will serve you with all of our hearts in Jesus' name. Today, before I let you go, if you're in the room and you have never surrendered your life to God, maybe you're watching online and you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, to put your trust in Him and to serve Him, to follow Him, that's the first step. Then you start to see what God's faithfulness looks like. Then you start to see what it truly looks like to have God lead you and walk with you through life. So if you've never made that decision, I just want to invite you to say that prayer, to make that decision today. With every head bowed and every eye closed, if that's you and you want to make that decision, I will not embarrass you or call you forward, make you stand up. I'm just gonna ask you, would you say this prayer with me? Would you repeat these words and let's choose to follow Jesus? Would you say these words? Father God, today I give you my life. Today I choose to follow you. So I ask you to forgive me of my sin. I ask you to wash me clean. I want to trade in my old life for a brand new one. So give me a new heart. Breathe your spirit into me and make me new. And from this day forward, I'll follow you with all that I am. And as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let's put our hands together. The worship team is coming, the prayer team is coming up to the front to join me right here. Um, would you guys stand up on your feet? We're gonna close in worship. If you want to pray with someone before you go, I know that they are ready, they are prayed up and full of faith, ready to believe God for that situation that you're carrying. Otherwise, I love you. God bless you guys. I'll see you Wednesday for our one-hour prayer service. God bless you.