In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of making wise choices in life. He uses the example of Daniel from the Bible, who chose to follow God and was rewarded with wisdom. The speaker also shares his personal experience of choosing to follow Jesus and how it transformed his life. He encourages the audience to evaluate their relationships and the influence they have on their faith, as well as to prioritize prayer and spending time with God.

Let's go to Daniel. Can someone read from verse 1? Chapter 1? Yep. Has everybody found it? Daniel, I'm supposing this is your favorite book in the Bible. It's good. Maybe you should be the one preaching this message today. Can someone read verse 1? Okay. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiachin, king of Judah, into his camp, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. Then the king ordered Ashkenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility, young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well-informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service. Among these were some from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names, to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel. But the official told Daniel, I am afraid of my lord, Dakin, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? Dakin would then have my head because of you. Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Please test your servants for ten days and give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days, they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. To these four young men, God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning, and Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word that is alive. Father, we ask that you would speak to us, O Lord, as we go to it. Lord, let your word come forth with transforming power. Let it come, O Lord, with a power that transforms, that breaks the yoke, that tears the veil and opens the eyes. Father, we pray, O Lord, that in these last days you will find some people who are faithful to you. In the midst of Babylon, Father, I ask that you do this, O Lord, even as we hear your word. In Jesus' name, Amen. There is no mention of Daniel in Israel. This man was a Jew in Judah of the royal race, but there is no mention of him over in Judah. Daniel became famous when he went to Babylon. What's Babylon? Babylon is this city. There is in the Bible two cities that are in constant contrast to each other. It's Jerusalem and Babylon. There is the earthly Jerusalem and there is the earthly Babylon. There is the spiritual Jerusalem and there is the spiritual Babylon. And Jerusalem is this place where people serve God and where the temple is, where those who are hungry for God go to. Babylon is this place that people who thought they were smarter than God built. It was these people who said, you remember in Genesis, they said, let's build this tower that goes up to heaven. Let's make a kingdom. Let's make a name for ourselves. Babylon is this place where people are trying to make a name for themselves. And erect towers and monuments that bears witness to their intelligence, to their power, and to their, I don't know. It's where people show off, this is what our brains are produced. It is this place where people are seeking for their self-interest. It's the place of worthiness. It's the place of sin, the place of idolatry. So Daniel was not known in Jerusalem. He became known in Babylon. What does that mean? It is when you are away from the religious circle. When you are outside the church. When you are right out in the middle of the world. That's where God tests a man. That's where God tries to see what's really in your heart. Maybe you are at home, and at your home everybody goes to church, and everybody knows you're a good boy. And it's easy for you to behave well. But it's when you go away. Let's say you go to college. And mommy and daddy are away, you're a pastor or what not. Whatever kept you from misbehaving is not around you. That's where God knows what's in your heart. Or where God begins to show you what's in your heart. Because he knew it in advance anyways. But that's where you start seeing who is who. At church everybody is well dressed. Just look at me. And look at you. At church everybody is nice and well behaved. I've learned how to act like a church boy since I was little. I've gone to church since I was like 11 months old. And I learned the whole thing. I know when to say hallelujah, and when to say amen. When to raise my hand and put it down. And how you greet the brothers and the sisters. When I was little, I had just been saved. And I was just happy in God. I had stopped going to Sunday school. Even when I did one. You know at the end of church, there was this huge auditorium that the church met. And at the end of it, people would come out at this particular exit. And the pastor stood there shaking everybody's hand, you know, as they left. And then I usually go stand next to the pastor. And people would greet the pastor and greet me too. Next to him. And I shook hands with lots and lots of people. I remember one time, my cousin or someone took him and dragged me away from there or something like that. But at church, everybody can act like the pastor. It is when you're out in the world amongst heathens, amongst atheists, amongst those that don't believe in God. That's where the heart of a person comes out. I've often said that your Christian life is not what you do on Sunday. It's what you do between Monday and Saturday. Especially on Friday and Saturday night. That determines much of whether you're a Christian or not. And Daniel goes to Babylon. And he goes there and they bring them to the king's palace. And they're supposed to feed them whatever the king gives them to eat. Now Daniel is a Jew, of course. And he knows the word of God. He knows that the Bible says you will not eat pork. You will not eat food that might have been offered to idols. So Daniel is not sure what this food they're giving him is made of. And so he had two choices before him. He could have said, well, you know, it doesn't really matter. I mean, God said that, but I don't have to be so religious, you know. I don't have to really follow God's word so strictly. After all, by the way, it's like, it's just one tiny verse. It's not even a whole verse that says that you will not eat pork in Leviticus. But Daniel knew God's word and he knew that even that one little verse was important. And so he didn't want to eat what was impure, unclean. He did not want to defile himself. And so he told these guys, the Bible says in verse 8, Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine. And asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. He resolved in his heart, he made a decision that no matter what everybody else does, no matter how, what everybody else is doing, he's not the only Jew there. There were lots of people with him, including these three guys. And nobody else resolved not to defile themselves. Daniel looked around and saw all these people going and eating the food of the king, defiling themselves with his unclean food. But Daniel said in his heart, I will not defile myself, I'll remain faithful. We're surrounded with a lot of uncleanness today. You're surrounded by a lot of uncleanness. If you've been in college, you know what I'm talking about. You're surrounded by people that tell you, let go to this party, let go drink over here. Why don't you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend? Why are you not sleeping with them? Why are you not being so cool? Why are you being so religious? Why are you not doing what everybody else is doing? Daniel made a decision, I will not defile myself. Now, uncleanness today is not pork. Jesus said that it's sin. It is the sexual immorality, the bitterness, the anger. The jealousy, the foolishness, the drunkenness. That's the uncleanness. It is walking, it is living a life that Jesus would never have lived. And you today live in a Babylon. Boston is a modern Babylon. It is this place where people have said, we're so smart. And this is what our hands can produce. If you go around here on Achillean Court, you see the name of scientists and researchers lifted high up. Those are modern altars. We've worshipped what these men invented and discovered. And we've put God aside. And by the way, a judgment came on Babylon because of that. Because of sin. That's a message that I meant to preach today. But it will be postponed to another time. Daniel asked for permission from the chief official not to defile himself in this way. You need to make a decision. You need to make every true walk with God. Every profound walk with Jesus starts with the man making a decision. I will not defile myself. It doesn't matter who follows, who doesn't follow. It doesn't matter who comes along and who doesn't come along. I will follow Christ and I will not defile myself. I made that decision several years ago. That it doesn't matter how corrupt the society becomes. It doesn't matter what even all the other Christians are doing. I will walk with God. It doesn't matter if everybody else gets tired. And listen, I look around. And I see people who used to love Jesus. Who used to walk with Him. People who came to MIT, then they were on fire for God. They didn't last one year. They started turning the way of everybody else. They started saying, well, that is some people came to them and said, listen. You don't have to follow just one verse. The Bible has many verses. It's just this one verse says don't do this thing. Right? You can just forget that verse. After all, you know God understands. He will forgive you. His blood will wash you. And all these sort of things. And that's what they followed. And they've lost their fire. They've lost God. I think of the day when they stand before God. And I think of the day when I stand before God on judgment. And I look at what could have been if I had stayed faithful to Christ. And I'm going to get to that later. I've asked myself, I mean, how many people they could have blessed if they stayed faithful. Now you meet the same people. And if you're spiritual, you can tell just by looking at them that God is gone. I know one young man. He's been to one of these meetings. Some of you know him. He came here his freshman year. He was on fire. I took him to church, to one of the local churches here. Because Sunday was in the Bible. He met me at a barbecue that Fred was organizing. And he just came there, grabbed food really quick, and told me, Hey, I want to go to this church. I said, Yeah, I know where it is. I'll take you there. And we went there with him. After a year or so, he was in my Spanish class. I saw the guy. He had a t-shirt that said, I have sex on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Sunday. I mean, it wasn't the t-shirt, but you could tell that the man had turned into another person. I sent him an e-mail. I said, Dude, what happened to you? He said that, Well, to tell you the truth, I have been so busy doing things with my friend, running after girls, that I haven't given the slightest thought of what Jesus wants me to do with my life. I still have the e-mail. I was shocked out of myself. But I wonder what could have been. And to this day, he hasn't recovered, so far as I can tell. Listen, it's better for you never to lose your fire. It's harder to have it back once you lose it. I mean, he's tried. He's tried going back to church. He's tried going back to this Christianity that says, you know, you can follow Jesus, but still do these other things here. And that hasn't worked for him. It's easier to maintain your fire than to lose it and then seek to gain it back again. Now, what happens when a person decides, I'm going to follow Christ, no matter what everybody else does? Now, let's look at this. It says Daniel resolved. It doesn't say Daniel and these other three people. It started with one man. It started with Daniel. One person resolved not to defile himself. And these other three guys looked at him and said, hey, we want to be like that. We don't want to defile ourselves either. There's one man who has the courage to follow God, even in Babylon. We're going to follow him. It wasn't the majority. It was just three people. But this holy band of people gathered around Daniel, when you're walking with Christ, when you make a decision that I will follow Jesus, no matter who follows me and who doesn't follow me, some people whose hearts are right, but who just need someone to encourage them, will see that in you, and they will begin to follow you. It might not be a large crowd, but just be three people. Maybe people in your family. Maybe people at your job. Maybe people in your dorm. I don't know. But someone is going to see the fire in you and is going to say, I also don't want to defile. Maybe these other guys defiled themselves for two days. Then they saw Daniel and they said, hey, who's this guy? Now, by the way, these people were teenagers. From all we can infer from history, they were in their teenage years. I'm amazed at how young the people were in the Bible that served God. And we're going to talk about that in the coming weeks. The young people of the Bible and how they walked with God and what made them stand out. And this is the first of them. It's Daniel. He made a decision not to defile himself. And out of that, God drew people around him who also did not want to defile themselves. Listen, people know the truth. Even people who are not Christians know the truth. I was at, I was somewhere, I won't say where. At one of my jobs, let me put it that way. And we were with a group of people and somebody said, yeah, I go to church on Sunday. And one of the people, there was not a Christian, told him, you go to church? He said, yeah, I go to church. And he turned to another guy who was there. He said, look at this. This is very amazing. Here are two people that goes to church. He goes to church and he goes to church too. And one of them follows the teachings and the other one doesn't follow the teachings at all. He said, but they both read the same Bible and they all are being taught the same thing. I told the guy, well, it's another question if they actually teach the same things. But this non-Christian, this person who doesn't claim any following of Jesus, could tell that there was something not right with this person who said he was going to church. People know the truth. The most unspiritual person can tell who is walking with God and who isn't. And Christians can also tell. And those whose hearts are right and who are really hungry after God, when they see you walking with Christ in purity and holiness without compromise, they will rally behind you and they will want to have what you have. And you will begin growing with them together. Now, if you are going to be like Daniel, you are going to also have to be willing to do things that are unpopular. Verse 9 said, The official told Daniel, When you decide to follow Christ, not just people around you, whoever it may be, somebody, it might be in your family, someone will say, look, this is not good for you. This whole thing about your being so extreme about Jesus isn't too healthy for you. Has somebody told you that? Somebody has told you that following Jesus was unhealthy for you? Some people have told me that. And they'll say, look, you're in this world, you got to function. I mean, this guy was basically saying to Daniel, what should you be different from anybody else? What should you suffer? And why should I suffer? Because you're following Jesus. And there will always be somebody who will tell you that. Why should this following Jesus keep you from the good things of this life? They will make you believe that your following Jesus is causing you to miss out on something, and is putting you in trouble, and is putting them in trouble. Almost always it comes from your family at first. But people will tell you, you're following Jesus, you mean, there are other things you got to do, you need to make money, you need to, you know, be successful, you need to think about this whole thing of your being so extreme, we kind of don't like it. It was like that at first in my home too, when I first started following Christ in this way. When I resolved that I will not defile myself any longer. When I decided that I won't sit down and watch the filth on TV. Now, not everything on TV is filthy. But a lot of it is. It used to be my drug. Some people, their drug is marijuana, and some of them it's heroin. For some people it's TV. They can't turn the thing off. Once they sit there for half an hour, they'll sit there for an hour, then they'll sit for two hours, then for three hours, then for four hours, then for... I used to spend hours and hours and hours But when I started following Jesus, the desire for those things started going away. I didn't see it fun to sit down anymore and watch MTV or BET showing scantily clad people shaking around. It wasn't fun anymore. I'll come from school and see that thing and pass by and go to my bedroom and usually go listen to Pastor Ray. His radio broadcast was conveniently slotted at 2.30 when my school bus dropped me back home. But, I mean, when I started following Christ, I mean, people started saying, Whoa, wait, this is kind of strange. Why isn't this man doing what everybody else is doing? And they got concerned. And, you're reading your Bible too much. Are you studying? Are you... I don't know. And... But Daniel told the man, Don't worry, we'll be all right. Don't worry, we'll be all right. No man is... Let me tell you this. And... Write it... Let God write it on your heart. No man is a loser for following Jesus. No man is a loser for following Christ. No man is ever a loser. God is indebted to no one. No one will ever say to God, God, I lost and I was a loser because of you. God is no man's debtor. Daniel put his career at stake. He knew he was in a competition. That the king would select the top people. And if he didn't look good, if he didn't look good by eating this meat and was just feeding himself on these veggies, he'd look pale and he'll lose. Might not win the contest. But he put his career at stake. And God rewarded him. The Bible said that when they tested him after 10 days, after some time, in verse 15, at the end of 10 days, they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who had the royal food. So that God took away their choice food and wine. They were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. This man, pagan man, could now see that the God of these young people was real. He was true. Listen, God is real. Prove it to the world. Allow God to use your life to prove to the world that there is a living God. Allow your life to become a testimony. I challenge you. When it's between obeying God and putting things at stake and losing your career, follow what God is telling you. You will not be the loser. We know that there was what's his name? Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor was a young man way back in the early in the 1800s. And he felt the call to go to mission, to go as a missionary to China from England. It was in the 1800s. And his brother, his older brother, told him that he had disgraced the family by deciding that he would become a missionary and go off to China. But he went to China anyways. He was a teenager when he got this call and he founded the China Inland Missions. That planted lots of churches. One of the greatest missionary works ever done. If you read in this book, his older brother went ahead and became a justice. Something like a Supreme Court justice or something. But today, if you read in Who is Who in England, there is a whole huge entry about Hudson Taylor and his China Inland Mission. Then there is his brother also. For him there is one line. That says, So and so Taylor, brother of Hudson Taylor, the missionary. Who was the most successful of the two? And that is now published by Christians. It is a worldly publication that talks about the famous people. No one is a loser because they follow Jesus. Let your life be the testimony on that. I am going to move on here. Not only did they prove to this man that God was real, but they also won the contest. The Bible says that, in verse 19, The king talked with them and he found none equal to Daniel, Ananias, Michael and Azariah. So they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king has questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. Not only did they prove that there was a God who was real and acts in the lives of his servants, but they also showed this king that intelligence and wisdom comes from God. And they won the contest. When you decide to follow Jesus, God will begin to show you things that he has not shown other people. There will be a wisdom about you. There will be... It's as if everybody else in life is staggering in the dark, but you seem to be just walking straight. If you know what I mean. I was talking with my mom a few days ago. She was one of those people who used to be concerned. Now she doesn't anymore. Now she is one of my fiercest supporters. She was telling me and asking, how do all these things happen to you? She was telling about certain things that are happening with me, that happened with school. How did these things happen to you? It's just like you have one miracle after the other. And she said, it has to be God. I said, yeah, it is. It's like everybody... She has four children. She knows the other ones are struggling in one way or the other. I'm not putting them down, but people make choices. Listen, the choices you make today will determine what your life will be like 20 years from today. The choices that you make when you're 40 will determine what you'll be like when you're at 60 and so on. And that's why it's good to start walking right with Jesus today. And there was a wisdom. Daniel knew what to do. Beginning with this one verse, don't defy yourself. He decided to follow God. And from then on, he remained a man who obviously read the word of God and lived by it and obeyed it. And as he obeyed this one verse, God gave him more wisdom. And as he obeyed what God showed him, God gave him more wisdom. And you will see that as the book goes on, his wisdom only increases and increases till God reveals to him marvelous things. Some of which are still yet to come and some of which have come to pass already. This wisdom came over Daniel. A word came to him. Everybody else was confused, but he wasn't. When nobody else could give an answer, Daniel knew what was going on. When the world was in panic, when even the king was in panic, Daniel was at peace. There was this promise of God that there will be a voice behind you saying, here is the way, walk in it. And because of this man walking in obedience, having said it's hard to follow God, there was this wisdom, this light about him. Everybody else is confused, but Daniel is not confused. He knows what to do. And the same thing was true of these friends. That came out there. Have you ever, have you seen how much people are confused? Let me tell you the world is confused. Even those who seem to have their lives together, don't have it all together. They are confused. They are wondering what's up. Businessmen who are the most successful are some of the most, they are some of the most troubled people. They don't know what's going to happen to their finances in two weeks, in three months, in one year. They are living in constant anxiety. Some people have everything right, but there is no peace in their lives. They seem to be troubled left and right. But now with Daniel, there was this wisdom about him that even this king acknowledged. He was not confused. Now, I'll end by saying this. Two things. It's much more to say, but I'll end with these two things. Daniel was a man who made sure he stayed with the right crowd. Your friends will determine, there's this saying in French that says, qui se ressemble, s'assemble. Those who resemble, assemble. Those who resemble, gather together. And you will more or less become like those you hang out with. Who are your closest? Now, I'm not saying that you become a super holy man who stays in your room and you don't interact with anybody ever. No, no, no. Daniel worked at the king's palace. He dealt with these officials. He dealt with pagans. He served this pagan king. He wasn't living in a monastery. And this is what a lot of people have misunderstood. They think to be spiritual and be separate means living in a monastery. If that was the case, Jesus would have locked himself in a cave for the three years. Jesus went to people. He went out. He talked to the prostitutes. He went out in the street, talked to the tax collectors. He was out there to save the world. He was not locked in a monastery up on the top of a mountain. But, who was Daniel's closest buddies? Who was his inner circle? His inner circle were these three people. I like to call them by their Hebrew names. These three men, these three young men, and Daniel formed this holy group and they were that inner circle. And Jesus' inner circle were those who were hungry for God. It was these people who were hungry enough for God, they left everything and they followed Him. Yes, he went out and talked to everybody. He wasn't withdrawn at a monastery either, but he wasn't at this other extreme either where he was going out and partying with the wrong crowd. His inner circle, those that he spent the intimate time with, were these people who had set their hearts to follow God and were around Him. Men, women, people of all kinds, but they had set their hearts to follow God. And so Jesus said, the Bible says His mother, who, by the way, I hope nobody here believes in Immaculate Mary, she was the one who came with Jesus' brothers and said he must be out of his mind, the Bible says. When Jesus started doing what His father had told Him to do, His mother said, Hey, he's going around, this man, we knew him for 30 years, now he's suddenly going around talking to everybody, saying he's the Messiah. Something must be wrong with him. So they thought he must have gone out of his mind. And they went there to take him. And somebody goes to Jesus and says, Hey, your mother and brothers are here, they want to take you, they think you're crazy. He said, Who is my mother? Who is my brother? He said, Look around here, you see this? This is my brother, my sister. For whoever hears the word of God and obeys it, he is my brother, my sister, or my mother. She was the first person to call Jesus crazy. So far as I can tell from the Bible, it's recorded. She was a sinner like everybody else. Now, she also changed their mind. After some time, both her and Jesus' brothers realized that, you know, he wasn't crazy. He was actually preaching the truth. And they all followed him. And one of his brothers wrote one of the books in the Bible, the Epistle of James. However, this inner circle of Jesus were people who had set their hearts to follow Christ. Some of you have ties that you just need to cut and drop off. People who have been not so good an influence on you, and you know it. And you know that continuing with them is going to keep on bringing you further and further and further from Jesus rather than closer. And that's how I evaluate everything. I ask myself, will this thing bring me closer to God or further from God? Some people ask themselves, OK, is this thing bad or good? No, no. Ask yourself, does going to this party here bring me closer to Jesus or further from Him? When I come back, will I have this deeper wisdom of God upon me or would I be filled with the world, with the sights and the sounds of the world? If I go watch this thing, this particular movie here, is this going to bring me closer to Jesus or will I come back thinking about this man and this woman who were kissing themselves in the movie? If I go ahead and I go to this concert, what will be the effect on my relationship with God? Will it make me rich with God or will it rob me of my love for Christ? And that's how you should evaluate your close relationship with people also. Because whether you like it or not, sooner or later, they will influence you for the better or for the worse. The second thing I want to say is that Daniel was a man of prayer. The Bible tells us in chapter 6, you can read it later for yourself, Daniel was a man of prayer. The Bible says in verse 10, three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just like he had done before. These people wanted to, you all know the story, they wanted to trap Daniel and they thought they could not see anything wrong with his work. But they said, ok, the only chance we have to get at this man is to attack his relationship with his God. Daniel was a man who scheduled time with God. The Bible said that three times a day Daniel prayed. Three times a day. Daniel made time. Now, it wasn't like Daniel was a man who had nothing to do. He had a job. He was working as a high official in the king's palace, in the government. He was very powerful. He had responsibilities. He will be as busy as a prime minister is today. But he scheduled time three times a day to pray. If you are going to walk with God in the middle of a modern Babylon, you will have to pray. You have to make time with God. Now, some people say, I just pray, you know, as I go, and on the bus, and I've heard people tell me, I just pray when I'm on my way to class. Jesus says, when you pray, enter your room and lock the door, right? Is that right? Jesus said, enter and lock the door. In other words, he was saying it's not just, yeah, it is true. The Bible says pray continually. But Jesus said that because he knew that it was necessary for a man to withdraw and spend that time alone with God, to keep your fire burning. It's not coming to church once every week, or even twice or thrice a week that will keep your fire for God burning. It is that relationship alone with God. And it doesn't just happen. There are lots of things in your life. There are people giving you phone calls. Maybe you have instant messenger over here also, and you have email, and you have people that come to see you, and then you have a job, and then you have all these other things. You have to make a decision, I will spend time with God. Maybe at some point, you need to drive people out of your room and tell them to leave you alone so you can spend some time alone with God. But in one way or the other, you need to make a decision to spend time with God. You have to schedule it. I don't know, whether it be 10, 15, 20 minutes, an hour, set a time that this is my time with God. And then that's my time with God. There is nothing that interferes with it. Nobody, I turn the computer, you turn the computer off, you turn your cell phone off, you say this is my time with God. And you spend that time with Him daily. That's what keeps the fire burning. The reason for this is this. The reason why Daniel walked with God so faithfully in this compromised world is ultimately because of this. He loved God and he feared God. He loved God enough to be willing to endure persecution for His sake. He feared God enough to be willing not to defile himself even at the cost of losing his career. It was love for Jesus and the holy fear of God that kept Daniel straight, that kept him pure, that kept him in integrity. How do you get that fear for God? How do you get that love for God? By spending time alone with Him. I can say that there is nothing, the number one factor in my life that has kept me burning for Jesus. It's not preaching, and I do listen, I love to sit down and listen to godly preachers. But there is no substitute for that time alone with God where you lock yourself away, you take your Bible, you take, I don't know, some of you have notebooks. If you need help on this, I encourage you to read Daily Dynamic Encounters with God. It's a very excellent book and practical book that might help you and give you some suggestions on how to structure your time alone with God and make the best out of it. But it is that time of spending alone with God that causes you to maintain and to grow your love for Christ and a godly fear of Him. You are not the same after you sit down and read your Bible and just talk to God. You come out of it with something on you. You come out of it with a light and a presence of God over you. That makes you different from everybody else. And that makes you see sin as God sees it. And see the world the way God sees it. And gives you the strength to say no to the suggestions of the enemy. Those are two things I want you to keep and remember. Check the crowd that you hang out with. And make time with Jesus. As we shared on the prayer night here on Friday, we know that King Rehoboam did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the Lord. He did not set his heart to seek the Lord. And that's why he did evil. He started well. But he did not continue along that path of making time for God. And for those of you who are in school, this is very challenging. You need to make up your mind before the semester starts that you are going to spend time with Jesus no matter what. During my undergrad years, Pastor Ray and his wife were praying. There are some of the people that pray for me. They constantly told me this was their prayer for me. That at scheduled time, three times a day. Now you don't have to do it three times a day. But the point is spend time with God. So this was their prayer. That I'll spend time with God. And like I said, no man is a loser. No man is a loser for putting God first. My academics have not suffered for following Jesus. I graduated and I was able to get into the Master's program also. There's nothing I've ever lost. But some of you who have known me for a while know that this was no easy thing to do. Spending time with God and doing all these other things that the Lord had me do. Many people my senior year were telling me you better leave this whole thing of leading this group until after you've graduated. Her father told me that. He said I was in school so you can't fool me on that one. I know it's busy and you should. He told me you'll be more useful to your cause. He's not a Christian yet. But he told me you'll be more useful to your cause with your degree than without it. They were telling me go get your degree first. And this thing of God is taking so much of your time you might not be able to graduate. But God is no debtor to any man. No man will say I lost my degree because I was following Jesus. Amen. I will stop preaching here. Let's pray. There's a king who is greater than Ibu Kadanzer. It's Jesus. He's the one who should be served. He's the one who should be feared. I want us to pray and set our hearts and commit ourselves that we will not defile ourselves. If God spoke to you through what I was saying today, talk to God. Tell Him that now forget the past. In the past you might not have walked as faithfully as Daniel did and you might have strayed away. But God always gives new beginnings to those who want them. God always gives a new beginning to those who are hungry for Him. God will wipe the past away if you're willing to from now on walk right with Him and make Him the Lord and the King, the King that you love and the King that you fear. There's nothing more that God will want at this time than to give you that fresh start and that new beginning. He loves you. And in these last days, in this modern Babylon, God wants to use you and He wants to make you a light. For you must come to Him and say, O Lord, here is my life. I give it to you and I set my heart to follow you.