The Faith of Daniel

Faith does not come with age or church membership; faith comes from exercising your ask. It comes from believing God can and does work on your behalf. Faith moves in the unseen realm and manifests in miracles and answered prayer. God is waiting for you to petition Him for your need and request. It just takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move the mountains in your life.

It takes extraordinary faith to experience sweeping change in our lives. There is no better image of the kind of radical trust we are invited into than the story of Daniel. As you read this familiar story, ask where you find yourself in it today.

Then Daniel said to the steward, whom the master of the officials had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days, and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before you, and the countenance of the youths who eat of the portion of the king’s food. And as you see, deal with your servants.” So he consented to them in this matter and tested them for ten days.

At the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter than all the youths who ate the portion of the king’s food. Thus the guard continued to take away the portion of their food and the wine that they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. As for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in every branch of learning and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding in all kinds of visions and dreams.

Now at the end of the days that the king had set for them to be brought in, the master of the officials brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. The king spoke with them, and, among them all, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they served before the king. In all matters of wisdom and understanding which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm. Daniel continued even to the first year of King Cyrus.

—Daniel 1:11–21

It took faith for Daniel, at the age of seventeen, to approach the king’s steward and request to be tested and not eat the food from the king’s table. It took faith to fast from the delicacies and wine that the king offered and eat only vegetables and drink only water, seeking his God for wisdom and revelation rather than the king’s favor. It took faith to challenge the king’s steward that if after ten days Daniel was not healthier than the king’s men, the steward could do with him as he pleased.

This kind of faith is available to us all—but no one is born with it. Walking in faith is a spiritual decision, like that of salvation. You must receive it; you must believe it. You must act it out as though you are already walking in the reality of what you are believing God for. Your faith can be placed only in God, no one else. If you are looking for any other way to exercise faith than in the true God, you will be sorely disappointed. Faith is not hoping or wishing for something to be so; it is believing so. It is expecting so.

Passage Question: Are you walking in the fullness of faith in God? What could you do to grow your faith?