COUNTER CULTURE Part 6: How To Remain Strong Under Pressure

How can we live strong in our faith in a culture of compromise? timestamp 1:44

If you take on a name that God hasn’t given you, you will miss the life God has for you. timestamp 2:10

If you take on a name that God hasn’t given you, you will miss the life God has for you.

There is a battle for your worship. timestamp 2:17

If you take on a name that God hasn’t given you, you will miss the life God has for you.

There is a battle for your worship.

If your goal is restoration, you’ll always confront with humility and hope. timestamp 2:27

If you take on a name that God hasn’t given you, you will miss the life God has for you.

There is a battle for your worship.

If your goal is restoration, you’ll always confront with humility and hope.

Stay God-dependent, not self-sufficient. timestamp 2:40

If you take on a name that God hasn’t given you, you will miss the life God has for you.

There is a battle for your worship.

If your goal is restoration, you’ll always confront with humility and hope.

Stay God-dependent, not self-sufficient. 

A life not numbered and out of balance is eventually divided. timestamp 3:14

Daniel 5:29 timestamp 3:42

Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom. 

Daniel 5:30-31

That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

Daniel 6:1 

It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. 

When pressure is applied, we have to be antifragile.

1. Integrity

Daniel 6:3-5

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. 

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.”

Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC)

Belshazzar (556-539 BC)

Darius (539-537) 

When pressure is applied, we have to be antifragile.

2. Consistency

Daniel 6:10

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. 

3. Grace

Daniel 6:18-22 t

Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep.

At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?”

Daniel answered, “May the king live forever! 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.”

Grace without Truth = Meaningless 

Truth without Grace – Mean

Daniel 6:25-26

Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth: “May you prosper greatly!”

“I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever…”

Darius – Daniel 6:26 

Cyrus – Ezra 1:2

Nebuchadnezzar – Daniel 4:34

4. Humility

Daniel 7:13

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.”

When pressure is applied, we have to be antifragile.