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Daily Strength Blog

Daniel 1—2, 1 John 4 • Key Verse: Daniel 1:8

In any newspaper of any size you will find a sports section. The larger ones devote an entire section to the subject and at times even have more than one. With the focus on performance and results, sometimes its lost on the reader what it took for athletes to reach their level of competitiveness. Saying it took diet and exercise is a very simplistic summary that leaves out an intangible, without which no athlete can excel. That intangible is resolve.

Resolve essentially is determination. It means that a person has a fixed purpose. The successful athlete has a determination that will enable him to endure the rigors of training in order to achieve at the desired level of performance.

If we are to excel in Our spiritual lives, we need resolve as well. Many Christians are content with a low level of “performance” in the spiritual life. Their discipline is poor, inconsistent at best, and they fail to develop the maturity that God desires.

Daniel was a man of resolve. As a young man, promoted to the kings palace, tapped for success, he “resolved not to defile himself with-the royal food and wine” (1:8). He had a fixed purpose and the determination to accomplish that goal. Without resolve, the enticement of the delicacies would have entrapped him. He would have been defiled. But he was not, because he was determined.
Are you determined to be all that God wants you to be? It will mean refusing those things that defile you spiritually. Satan will test your resolve, as he did Daniels.

The spiritual resolve we need is not temporary like most Mew Years resolutions. It must be the consistent character of our lives. Watch for times today that your resolve is tested, and then ask God to help you be like Daniel.

Woodrow Kroll & Tony beckett
www.backtothebible.in

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