Influencer: Daniel Study (Part 2)
What comes to mind when you hear the word "influencer"? Whether you have a positive or negative connotation to the word, you might not realize that you're also an influencer – just maybe not to a large social media following. If you're a Christian, our influence becomes even more important since we can impact what non-believers think of God. Everything we say and do can have an impact on someone. For this month's blog, we're going to look at Daniel 2 and see how Daniel used his position and influence to show how powerful God is.
At the beginning of chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar was having disturbing dreams and didn't know what they meant. In ancient times, dreams were thought to be shadows of future events, and dreams of the kings were especially important – understanding the dreams would allow the king to be prepared to take action of these potential future events.
King Nebuchadnezzar called all the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and Chaldeans to help him interpret his dreams. These are the people that should be able to interpret dreams; however, in verse 10, this is what is said:
"The Chaldeans answered the king and said, 'There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.'"
This angers Nebuchadnezzar, and he responds by wanting them all (all the wise men – which would include Daniel and his friends) killed.
When Daniel heard that Nebuchadnezzar wanted all the wise men killed, he requested that the king give him more time to interpret the dream. Afterwards, Daniel urgently prays to God for help, telling his friends to pray as well.
"Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven." (v 19)
God answers Daniel's urgent prayer, and Daniel responds by praising Him and giving all credit to God's empowerment.
When God answers your prayers, do you praise God like Daniel did? Do you give God the credit He deserves when He answers your prayers? It can be so easy to just keep going in life and forget to thank God and praise Him for all He's done.
Daniel interprets the dream
Daniel’s humility and faithfulness to God is incredible. When Nebuchadnezzar asks Daniel if he could interpret the dream, he gives credit to God – saying that no man could do what Nebuchadnezzar wanted, it's only the power of God that could reveal such mysteries (verses 27-28). Going further, verse 30 says that God made known the interpretation of the dream so that Nebuchadnezzar would know that this true God controlled future events (unlike the Babylonian gods).
In order to keep this blog from being long, I'm just going to briefly summarize Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Daniel explains that there will be four successive kingdoms (beginning with Nebuchadnezzar). These kingdoms will eventually be replaced by the kingdom of God – which will never be destroyed.
Daniel Promoted
After hearing the interpretation from Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, recognizing and honoring Daniel's God. Daniel's faithfulness to seek God's help and humbly point to Him as his source of wisdom caused the mighty pagan king of Babylon to fall down and worship. This shows the incredible influence you can have, even if you don't have the power of authority over people. Daniel stepped out of the way and let God work through him – giving God all the glory through everything!
How do you use your influence in your life? Do you stand firm in your faith and humbly go to God, giving Him all the glory? While you might not notice it at the time, God will put us in certain places and circumstances to serve His purposes. We just have to be ready to remain faithful when we are given these opportunities. This makes me think of the verse below in Esther (which we will discuss her story when we finish going through Daniel).
"And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14b)
As we continue through this month, I encourage you to take more time to pray to God and recognize when He puts you in different situations of influence. Let's use Daniel as an encouragement for when we're put in tough situations to remain faithful to our almighty God!
Cornerstone Impact Update
Last month, we started a brand new series: Objections of BRI. Through this series, we will be talking about some of the common objections people give us with Biblically Responsible Investing and our Cornerstone Portfolios. We will talk about an objection each month and the rebuttal or how we respond when we receive these objections. We hope that through this series it'll help our readers either become less skeptical of BRI or help give advisors ideas of how to talk to their clients about BRI.
It's fitting that our first month was focused on the most common objection we receive, performance. If you missed the blog last month, you can find it here:
Kingdom Advisors
This week, some of the SEM team and our BRI partners were attending the annual Kingdom Advisor Conference in Orlando, FL. This is a conference for Christian Financial Advisors to gather to learn and encourage one another to make an impact for God's Kingdom. Make sure to check out our blog later in the month for a short recap from SEM employees on the impact of this trip.
Eventide
In Eventide's quarterly CIO update, Dr. Finny Kuruvilla shared his perspective on the evolution of ChatGPT. Watch the short segment on ChatGPT here: