The mama-in-me wants my people to get along. Squabbling over the TV or the menu or who-said-what-and-how brings me down. I want to push a magic “do-over button” that rewinds us to where we were before the trouble got started, to hold up signs that say “abort” when somebody gets too close to somebody else’s raw spot.

But I can’t.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after 40 years of parenting and 43 years of marriage, it’s that I’m not anybody’s Savior. I can’t fix myself, let alone anyone else. The best I can do is care while we’re all struggling to find our way and figure it out.

It’s relieving to remember I’m not Jesus, rather than look for that magic do-over button. Remembering we’ve already got a good-and-kind Savior, who is for us and doesn’t need my help, takes the pressure off. I can relax and love a little more than I did before.

This is what today’s passages point out.

Daniel 2:24-chapter 3

The king of Babylon has grown forgetful. If the book of Daniel is written chronologically, then the furnace incident happened after the king’s dream was revealed to Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar had said that “the God of all gods, the Master of all kings” is Daniel’s God. These are his own words after Daniel told him his dream and interpreted it, Da 2:46-47 MSG.

But by the time of chapter 3, he’s busy building his own 90-foot statue of gold and commanding everybody to bow down. Daniel said the gold head of the statue in his dream represented him, so it’s likely the gold statue he erects does, too, which meant that the worship he required wasn’t so much of the statue, but of himself, Da 3:1-2.

When Daniel’s friends get wind of the statue and the order to worship it, they refuse. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are ratted out by fortunetellers, and the king is furious. He demands the friends be brought to him, and he gives them another chance to worship after explaining the rules. Maybe they’re just confused? Neb slips in the consequence about getting fried in the furnace for refusing and asks, “Who is the god who can rescue you from my power?” Da 3:9-15 MSG.

Turns out, God can—and he does. And here’s where Neb has a memory lapse: God had told the king what he’d dreamed years before through Daniel, a feat none of the king’s magicians or wise men could do. The king was impressed enough then to “fall on his face in awe before Daniel,” but he didn’t fall on his face in awe before God himself. Big difference. Fast forward to the furnace, and he’s obviously forgotten this God-of-gods, who is Daniel’s God, Da 3:46-47 MSG.

Even after the men are thrown in the furnace, are seen walking around with a fourth, (who the king says looks like “a son of the gods”), and are brought out unharmed, the king still doesn’t quite get it. He praises their God, he acknowledges that their God rescued them, he says that from that day on, no one can say anything against their God and get away with it, Da 3:24-30 MSG.

But he never says that their God is his God. For all of his astonishment over the fiery furnace fail, he doesn’t bow his knee and worship God himself. It would take another miraculous event to break thorough his denial, so that he finally worships God as his God from the bottom of his heart (Da 4:34-37, see tomorrow’s reading).

I’m intrigued to see how God comes after this pagan king, who Daniel said was the most powerful king on earth, the king who got his “rule, power, strength, and glory” from God himself. He’s the king who built up Babylon to be the center of idol worship, erecting so many temples to gods that this is what’s best documented about him, so that visitors stream here in a kind of one-stop-Bucee’s-shop for worship, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_II. Da 2:37 MSG.

You know, Nebuchadnezzar’s not an easy sell. He’s so open-minded, he can’t imagine just one God, let alone just one way to come to him. He gives God credit for being “the God of all gods, the Master of all kings,” but he doesn’t believe he’s the only, One True God or that the rest are only frauds.

It’s not enough to know about God. It’s not even enough to praise him. Even a genuine experience with God Almighty can turn into mere lip service when a heart doesn’t humble itself and repent. The king’s heart is so caught up in himself, he thinks getting folks to worship him makes him god.

But true faith requires believing God alone is God, that he exists and that “he rewards those who seek him,” He 11:6. God isn’t content to be The Top God, implying that there are others who are legit along with him. God is the God who says, I AM the only God there is. Neb doesn’t know him like this yet, but he will.

Why does God bother? Why does he care whether or not the top dog of the day bows his heart to him, this king who really has no clue of who God really is? God has his reasons that only he knows.

But here’s a reason I find encouraging: if God can take a world power like Nebuchadnezzar and turn him into a God worshipper, there’s no one too far gone for God to turn around. There are a few folks I worry over, so this is fortifying: no one, anywhere, is beyond God’s power to save.

Not even myself. 

Sometimes the enemy reaches out and shakes me, “You’re a poser. You’re trying to prove yourself with all these devotionals.  That’s not real faith—it’s works.  You write about the perils of bootstrapping your faith, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.”  

But this is what settles me: I agree, and I repent. “It’s true, I can’t believe rightly enough, Abba. Give me faith to trust you only. Jesus’ work gives me a free pass, not anything I do.”

This is where your faith gets a restart, remembering it’s God alone who saves, not perfect faith or trust. Regardless of who you are—pagan or believer—saving is God’s gift to everyone who wants it.

1 Peter 5

The enemy is poised to pounce, Peter reminds, so be on the alert, “keep a firm grip on the faith.” God himself restores us after we struggle and makes us “strong, firm, and steadfast,” 1 Pe 5:8-10 MSG and NIV.

Satan knows where we’re weak and where to strike. But be encouraged: he doesn’t have the last word, God does. And here’s a little proof, tucked right here inside 1 Peter, “She who is in Babylon sends you her greeting…,” 1 Pe 5:13 NIV.

Babylon might’ve been a world power, full of idol temples and the latest free-thinking trends, but it didn’t snuff out faith in Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews. Somewhere a seed was planted and watered and cared for that Satan couldn’t wither. “She…who sends her greeting” is evidence more than 500 years later that God’s kingdom won’t be stopped, even though all hell tries to. (Some translations sub “church” for “she,” see MSG, NIRV, AMP).

Psalm 119:81-96

The psalmist is suffering.  His enemies are “godless tormentors,” who push and push and don’t let up.  They “try to throw [him] off track.”  They “harass [him] with lies” and “lie in ambush to destroy [him],” Ps 119:84-86, 95 MSG.

Waiting for God to come through for him, he’s weary and his “soul faints…his eyes grow heavy.” But he’s not hopeless. He knows God will deliver. His hope while he waits is in what God promises. “[He keeps] a steady gaze on the instructions [God] posts.” He doesn’t let go of God’s words that guide him, Ps 119:81-82, 87-88 MSG.

Why? Because God’s words don’t expire; they last. The truth he spoke to folks thousands of years ago, he still speaks today to us, “dependable as ever.” The wicked may threaten, the enemy roar, but the writer’s only concern is with what God’s got in store, Ps 119:89-91, 95; 1 Pe 5:8 MSG.

God’s words are a fortress to stand on and hide in, not just for the saving we need one day, but for the saving we need all day today.

Prayer

God, let the dearest news be that Jesus saves me. If Jesus saves, I get to yoke in with him and find life easy and light, not hard and heavy. Thank you for giving me power against the enemy, for helping me see where he’s prowling. Thank you for your words that support me. Give me faith to trust them and love them like the psalmist does.

In Jesus’ name.

Proverbs 28:15-16

A wicked leader oppresses the poor.  The leader who loves uprightness is rewarded. 

Bible passages in Daniel, 1 Peter, Psalms, and Proverbs come from today’s selections in The One Year Bible.