“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.” - Daniel 1:8
Is developing Biblical, Christ honoring character important to you? Not only is it just important, is it the primary goal in your life? Are you willing to allow the Holy Spirit to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ? As I see Christians in all facets of life I notice many times that our character is not of great concern, we tend to think selfishly and walking with Godly character doesn’t become all that import to us. This is a problem and is why many “Christians” are walking around acting like children.
We recently completed a two week tour to 5 different states exhorting our brothers and sisters in Christ to seize the summer, to allow Jesus to seize your heart so you can help others meet him. Having 16 people traveling together you quickly find out who is focused on God and who is focused on themselves. We were all guilty at times of taking our eyes off of Jesus and onto ourselves. We did a poor job of purposing in our hearts to walk with Godly character, to bring God glory through our character. Through it all we learned a lot, grew a lot, and God used the tour in a mighty way to impact people.
We must understand there is a high cost of bad character. People pay for the sins and bad character of those before them. As the people of God, living with the character and mind of Christ must be of utmost importance. Manipulation, bitterness, gossip, slander, jealousy, anger, conceit, and much more we read about in the Scriptures are evidences of bad character. My prayer for myself and for you is that we would search our hearts, that we would ask God to remove it, to purpose in our hearts to have Christ centered character at all costs. Hard choices are part of what it takes to develop good character. Daniel and his friends felt the pressure to conform, their names were changed to the names of cult gods against their will. Through all the difficult trials they were able to stand in the character of Christ.
“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation” 1 Peter 2:1-2
Further Reading: Daniel 1, 1 Peter 2
