MONDAY, JANUARY 11
Scripture: Daniel 1:3-4

How do we “…be in the world and not of the world?” The life of the prophet Daniel provides us with a model. Daniel, per church tradition was carried off to Babylon likely in his early teens, and was already well-educated. Daniel was taken into a foreign, pagan, culture which could not have been more different than that of the Israelites. It included polytheism, human sacrifice, worship of the ruler of state as a God-King. Daniel and three of his friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were taken to Babylon to serve King Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians wanted the best and the brightest from each conquered society, both to inculcate those children in the ways of Babylon, and also to serve as hostages to discourage any survivors in the conquered provinces from rising up against them in rebellion. Daniel and his friends were to be educated in a faith and tradition which was not their own. Having already had a firm foundation laid for them, presumably by their parents and relatives and rabbis, each one of them would hold firm in the faith. Our obligation is to sow the foundation, power and anointing of the Holy Spirit in younger years, to help instruct them that God is bigger than government and culture.