Daniel came to God in great weakness. From the Lord, Daniel received great strength.

DANIEL

10:1-11:13  –  Daniel came to God in great weakness – ‘I am helpless… My strength is gone…’ (16-17). From the Lord, Daniel received great strength – ‘The One who looked like a man touched me and gave me strength… When He spoke to me, I was strengthened…’. Daniel’s strength came from the love of God and the peace of God. God assured Daniel of His love for him. He called Daniel a ‘man greatly beloved’. God spoke His Word of peace to Daniel: ‘Peace be with you’. As God revealed His love and peace to him, Daniel came to realize that there was no need to be afraid. He could ‘be strong’ in the Lord (18-19). When we are weak, let us come to God and receive His strength – ‘His grace is sufficient for us. His strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12:9).
11:14-45  –  We are to live for God – ‘The people who know their God shall be strong and do great things’. We are to stand against Satan – ‘The people who know their God will firmly resist him’ (32). Living for God and standing against Satan, we must ‘put on the whole armour of God’. ‘Strong in the Lord’, we ‘take our stand against the devil’s schemes’ (Ephesians 6:10-11). ‘Soldiers of Christ, arise and put your armour on, strong in the strength which God supplies through His eternal Son… From strength to strength go on, wrestle and fight and pray, tread all the powers of darkness down and win the well-fought day that, having all things done and all your conflicts past, ye may o’ercome through Christ alone and stand complete at last’ (Church Hymnary, 441).
12:1-13  –  We read of two very different futures – ‘everlasting life’ and ‘everlasting contempt’ (2). We receive ‘eternal life’ through ‘believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’. Through faith in Him, we ‘know that we have eternal life’. God gives us His promise: ‘He who has the Son has life’. To those who ‘overcome’, through ‘believing that Jesus is the Son of God’, God gives this promise: ‘I will never blot his name out of the Book of Life’. Alongside His promise, there is His warning: ‘He who does not have the Son of God does not have life’. To those who refuse to come to Christ for salvation, God gives this warning: ‘If anyone’s name was not written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire’ (John 20:31; 1 John 5:5,11-13; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 20:15).

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