CHAPTER EIGHT
HOPE
Beyond Wishful Thinking
Daniel’s suffering prepared him for Babylon. But it was his hope, humility, and wisdom that enabled him to thrive in Babylon. They gave him courage, credibility, and perspective.
Take away these three powerful traits and he would have been just another victim. But with them he was not only able to thrive but also to wield incredible spiritual influence in the most unlikely of places and circumstances.
In the following pages we’ll look at hope, humility, and wisdom in detail. We’ll define them, see how they affected his response to the people and evil that surrounded him, and explore what we can do to increase their measure in our own lives and walk with God.
We’ll start with hope. It was the unmistakable source of Daniel’s incredible confidence and courage.
One Word, Two Dictionaries
Daniel was a man of hope. Unfortunately, whenever I talk about the importance of his hope, most people have no idea what I’m talking about. They immediately think of something that has nothing to do with the kind of hope that Daniel had.
It’s not that they’re stupid.
It’s not that I can’t communicate.
It’s that we’re using different dictionaries.
If you haven’t noticed, the same word can mean different things to different people. When my parents said a musician was bad, they meant he was not very good. But when my friends tell me, “That dude is bad,” they mean he’s phenomenal.
When a high schooler tells his parents that everyone will be at the party, he means most of his friends will be there. But when his parents protest that there’s no way everyone will be at the party, they mean the entire student body.
Same words. Different dictionaries.
Language changes over time. Always has. Always will. That’s the main reason we periodically need new and updated translations of the Bible. The original biblical text never changes. But the words used to translate the original text into our native tongue morph over time. If we fail to keep up with their subtle shifts in meaning, we’ll end up with a Bible that no longer says what it was intended to say.
For instance, the famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 reads rather differently in the old King James translation. The entire passage sounds like an exhortation to help the poor. It stresses the importance of charity. An uninitiated modern-day reader picking up a King James Bible would have no idea that it’s a chapter extolling the importance of loving others.
That’s because the Shakespearean English of the 1600s (when the King James translation was originally published) used the word charity to speak of a sacrificial love that puts others first. The readers of that day knew exactly what the passage meant. But today, centuries later, charity has come to mean something much more narrow—helping those who are less fortunate by providing them with food, clothing, or the money they need.
And therein lies my problem with the word hope. It has come to mean something completely different than the kind of biblical hope Daniel had. Today, the word hope has primarily come to mean either wishful thinking (“I hope you have a great vacation”) or the mental gymnastics of positive thinking and visualization (“Don’t give up hope, you can beat this”).
But Daniel’s hope had nothing to do with wishful thinking or positive visualization.
He didn’t wish that everything would turn out okay.
He didn’t visualize everything working out okay.
He knew (as in knowing a mathematical fact) that everything would turn out okay. He knew that God was in ultimate control of who was in control, as well as everything that was happening to him. And if God was in control, there was no need to panic—even if he sometimes had no idea what God was up to.
Biblical Hope
In other words, Daniel had hope in the biblical sense of the word. He had a deep-seated confidence in God’s character and sovereignty. He staked his life on it. It was the lens through which he evaluated circumstances, made decisions, and determined his actions.
This is the same kind of hope that the apostle Paul refers to when he calls the return of Jesus our “blessed hope.” Paul doesn’t mean that we hope Jesus returns in the same way a lottery ticket purchaser hopes he hits the jackpot. He means that we are so certain that Jesus will return that it’s become the organizing principle of our lives, influencing our priorities, moral standards, and even our willingness to be persecuted for his name.1
The apostle Peter uses the word hope in much the same way. When he admonishes us to always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason for the hope we have, he’s not suggesting we compile a list of reasons we’re hopeful Jesus might be the Messiah. He’s exhorting us to be ready to explain why we’re absolutely certain he is the Messiah.2
It’s a Process
This kind of hope isn’t acquired overnight. It’s something we grow into the longer we walk with God. It doesn’t come from studying the Bible, knowing theology, or having the mental acuity to block out negative thoughts. It comes from obediently walking with God and experiencing firsthand his character, power, and faithfulness.
Hope starts with a simple step of faith. When we reach the point that we believe God exists and know he rewards those who diligently seek him, and then begin to act upon our convictions, God shows up.3 When we step out and trust him enough to do what he says, he comes through. And each time he does, we walk away with a greater confidence in his power and faithfulness.
At first glance, it might appear that Daniel’s confidence in God was rock solid from the beginning. The first few verses of his book start out with a powerful statement of God’s sovereign control over the affairs of men and nations. His description of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege is almost serene. There’s not a trace of panic. No hand-wringing. No questioning of what God is up to, just a simple statement that God placed Jerusalem into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God.4
But it’s important to note that Daniel’s book isn’t a diary.
It’s a book written near the end of his long life. The opening verses aren’t excerpts from a contemporaneous journal. They describe his perspective many decades later, as he looks back at events through the crystal clear lens of twenty-twenty hindsight.
When the Babylonians first showed up to put a stranglehold on Jerusalem, Daniel was probably as freaked out and despondent as you and I would be if a foreign power conquered our town, ransacked it, and then put us in shackles to cart us off to learn a new language and serve an evil ruler.
It’s highly unlikely that as a young teenager Daniel was able to see the hand of God anywhere near as clearly as he saw it in his latter years. But with each step of obedience, Daniel’s confidence in God grew. By the time he was thrown into the lions’ den he was an older man (he was not the strapping teenager most Sunday school curricula portray him to be), spiritually mature enough to realize that God had a plan. And though he didn’t know if it was life or death, he knew that no matter what happened, God’s will would be done and evil would lose.
It All Starts with What We Know
In Daniel’s case, his journey to steadfast hope seems to have begun with a simple act of obedience—his decision to stick to a kosher diet no matter what the consequences. It led to his first experience of God’s miraculous intervention.
Frankly, we have no idea how much of God’s law Daniel knew. He was raised in a time of great spiritual darkness. The priests, prophets, and people were far from God. That’s why the Lord turned them over to the Babylonians. It’s likely that his knowledge of Scripture and Mosaic law was rather limited. Prophets and priests don’t tend to teach the Scriptures they ignore.
Yet there was one part of the Old Testament law that was widely known even in the darkest seasons of Israel’s rebellion. It was the Mosaic dietary laws. And since Daniel knew them, he determined to obey them, no matter what the cost.
Upon arriving in the city, Daniel and his three friends were chosen for a special three-year training program designed to prepare them for service in the king’s court. That meant they would be well cared for. It also meant they would be served from the king’s table, which was decidedly nonkosher.
Daniel and his friends decided not to eat the forbidden food. They weren’t jerks about it. They didn’t cop an attitude. They politely asked the chief eunuch for an alternative. When that proved fruitless, they asked their personal guard if he would be willing to test them for ten days with a diet of vegetables and water.
Ten days was no big deal. God had given Daniel and his friends favor in the eyes of their guard, so he agreed.
That’s when God showed up. At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his friends looked healthier and better nourished than everyone else, so the guard continued to serve them an unauthorized diet of vegetables and water for the entire three years of their training.5
But God did more than just give them physical health. He also gave them wisdom and insight into the things they were being taught. So much so that at the end of their three years of training they graduated at the top of their class. No one else was close.
Imagine what that must have done to build Daniel’s confidence in God’s power and faithfulness. It was a huge hope-building experience. One of many he would have during his lifetime. By the end of his life, there was nothing that could shake his deep-seated optimism and confidence. He knew firsthand that God was in control, no matter how things appeared.
It’s exactly the same with us. When we obey the light we have, God shows up. And every time he does, our hope grows stronger. We begin to experience biblical hope—the deep-seated optimism and confidence that comes from knowing that God can be trusted even when we have no idea what he’s up to.
The good news is that biblical hope is not the sole prerogative of hard-core, type A, front-of-the-line Christians. It’s the birthright of everyone who knows and follows Jesus. All we have to do is step forward and claim it. And we claim it by simply obeying the light we have, taking small childlike steps of faith in obedience to what we already know.
We don’t have to worry about what we don’t know. Because when we obey the light we have, God will not only show up, but he’ll also give us more light. It’s what I call the dimmer-switch principle: when we obey the light we have, God gives us more; when we ignore the light we have, he gives us less.6
And with each step along the way, our hope and confidence grow. Every time he solves a problem, walks us through a valley, or stands with us in the midst of a valley, we grow a little bit more like Daniel.