Fight when necessary Have a life marked by a pattern of prayer Relentlessly and faithfully build for the future By John Moody We are working through Daniel as a family. We have spent a great deal of time the past few years in the OT historical books - Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah. I love these books because few books in the Bible describe what I would call “every day godliness” like these. Books full of faithfully caring for your family and people. Full of day and in day out average ho hum doldrum work and life. Now first, let’s start with something important. These books are selective snippets of these folks lives. By this I mean, when you are reading Daniel, the lion’s den and fiery furnace and giant stature and standing before the king giving a prophetic word… those are the exception, not the norm. It is 1/1500 of his life. But those books make clear, that exceptional day was made possible by all the mundane, faithful, ho-hum days in between. All those days where no one could find fault with Daniel and he was studying the Bible. All those days Mordecai faithfully took care of his niece because her parents were no longer in the picture. All those days Nehemiah was making sure the stones and bricks and similar things were being done right. I think you can learn a great deal what our lives should look like from these books if you read them right. Build. Pray. Fight. In that order. None of these folks turned down a fight… when it was necessary. But they didn’t go out of their way to look for one (and they had plenty of opportunity…). Daniel served across two empires and multiple kings… and openly confronted them just twice. Mordecai wouldn’t bend the knee to Haman, but he was otherwise known as a wise and good man at the city gates and didn’t pick a single other public fight we know of his entire life. All these stories show a good life is marked by a pattern of prayer. Pray protects us in the fight and empowers us for the slow, grinding work of building. But prayer isn’t a place these people hide. They are known for their pattern of prayer, but like in the NT, the amount of time they spend in prayer is quite small, their prayers shockingly short (like the Lord’s prayer). As Spurgeon put it ““If you are very busy, think and pray all the more, or your work will wear and weary you, and drag you away from God. For your work’s sake, break away from it, and give the soul a breathing time. “ At the same time, Spurgeon as a general rule never prayed for more than five minutes… but quipped he never went more than five minutes without praying. Then, build. In all of these stories, this is the gem most miss. Daniel faithfully served across kings, kingdoms, and almost a century to help see the day when his people could return to their place. Nehemiah spend decades preparing for and then years rebuilding the city of his people. Their lives are the lives of builders - the slow, unremarkable, dulldrum, brick by brick, stone by stone, day by day, week by week lives of faithful people who truly fear God. Another eight hour at the job. Another sink full of dishes and load of laundry. Another set of homework for school. Another forty minutes in the gym. Another having some friends over for fellowship. A good life is a life spent building. This also means you can quickly get a handle on someone by if their life is marked by a biblical balance of the above. Is their time, energy, priorities slanted and tilted towards building. Fight when you have to have (But its far less often than most admit) Have a life marked by a pattern of prayer And relentless build for the glory of God.