Cultivate | Faithfulness | Brian Myers

Welcome everybody. Hey, my name is Brian and I get to serve here on staff at Compass Church where our mission is navigating people to God. Do you recognize where I'm at right now? The set that I'm sitting at is actually where we film our Gaining Ground podcasts where Drew Sherman and Landon Sherman are leading men in a whole new way, in a really great way, where men are making a commitment of getting just 1% better each and every day. If you don't know about the Gaining Ground podcast, you need to know about the Gaining Ground podcast and you can find that on the Pando app right here where you found this video, okay? Right under Compass Church you're gonna see it there. It is impacting maybe thousands and thousands of lives to be quite honest. So the idea of getting better 1% at a time lends a little bit into what we're gonna talk about today, but first I want to back up and ask you a question. It's a really deep theological question. Do you remember the Charlie Brown cartoons? One of the greatest running jokes with Charlie Brown is, is Charlie Brown trying to kick the football? Do you know about that scene? Like if you remember that when you're a kid maybe? So Lucy holds the ball for him and says, come on Charlie Brown, come on, I promise, like you know this time I'm actually gonna hold it. I'm not gonna whip it away from you, and Charlie Brown knows better. He remembers what happened the last time, the time before, and the time before, and the time before, and he knows Lucy's history, but somehow she convinces him that this time is going to be different. So Charlie Brown, he backs up, he looks at the football, starts running as hard as he can, and he swings his leg, and as soon as he swings his leg at the very last second, Lucy pulls that football away, and he flies up into the air, and it lands flat on his back, and somehow the funniest part is that that happens time and time and time again. He falls for it again and again and again. He thinks something's different is gonna happen, and it's the same result. Charlie Brown, he keeps placing his faith in Lucy in the moment, even though Lucy has never demonstrated that she is faithful over time. And I think sometimes we get those two ideas confused. We think faithfulness is what happens in one big moment, one

decision. We think, oh, when the pressure comes, like, I'll be faithful. When life gets hard, I'll trust God. When temptation comes, I'm gonna make the right decision. But faithfulness is bigger than one right decision. Faithfulness is bigger than what you decide just in a single moment. In fact, faithfulness is what you've been cultivating long before that moment ever even came. Sooner or later, each and every one of us has what we claim that we believe in get tested by what's happening around us, and we're all going to experience changing circumstances, seasons that are easy, seasons that are difficult, victories and disappointments and hills and valleys, right? The question isn't whether our circumstances are going to change. The question is, will we remain faithful to what we believe when everything changes around us? So what does it really mean to be faithful? Like, that's a word that I'm gonna say a lot here over the next few minutes. At its most basic level, to be faithful means being dependable, loyal, consistent over time. It means your actions can like always match your commitments, right? And even when your circumstances change, everybody knows what you're gonna do. So we call a friend faithful when you can rely on them, they're dependable, and when you have something and you need something, like you know that you can rely, they have your back, right? We call that a faithful friend. We call a spouse faithful if you're going through all the challenges of marriage and that spouse remains committed to that marriage. That's a faithful spouse. We call someone faithful when their words still mean something tomorrow, not just today. Tomorrow, what they said still holds true. So how do we know then that somebody is faithful? Well, faithfulness is proven by how you live over time. And today we're gonna talk to you about a guy named Daniel. We're gonna see what this looks like in the life of a man who had learned to build his life on the faithfulness of God. God. But before we get into our main text, we're going to be in Daniel 6. Before we get to the to the main text, I want to tell you a little bit about his background. When Daniel was a young man, his hometown was completely overtaken and he was captured and exiled to another land. And so here in this other

foreign land, he built a life for himself and in a culture that did not worship God like he did. But he stayed obedient to God and he didn't compromise his faith. When his life was threatened, he prayed. When God gave him wisdom, he gave credit to God. He gave all the credit to God. So he was brought into royal service and eventually rose into positions of government leadership. That was his job. And he always told the truth. Even when the truth was very, very hard to tell and very difficult to say or very dangerous to say. So by the time we reach Daniel 6, decades have passed and he's been living his life. He served many bosses, many kings. Empires have risen and fallen. He's seen all that. He's experienced captivity, political upheaval, threats on his life, and a whole lot of uncertainty. Daniel spent most of his life living in a place that he never chose, working for people that he didn't choose. But through all of it, he had continued trusting and obeying God. Faithfulness to God had become the pattern of his life. So now in Daniel 6, he's working for another king, King Darius. Darius is appointing a hundred and twenty governors to oversee different parts of his land. And then he is assigning three administrators to kind of oversee those hundred and twenty. And one of those three is Daniel. So let's read Daniel 6 verse 3. Daniel distinguished himself above the administrators and satraps, like governors, okay, because he had an extraordinary spirit. So the king planned to set him over the whole realm. So here we have a good guy, works hard, honest, trustworthy, but he's a foreigner. And he's getting a promotion to be the boss over everybody. Those guys don't want him to be the boss. Like, not just because he's a foreigner, but probably because he's going to hold him accountable to a lot higher standard than what they're used to maybe being around and maybe even doing. They didn't want those goody two-shoes to be promoted before they were promoted. So they began to look for something wrong with them, right? You know people that do that, maybe you've done that. Like, they investigated his work, they investigated his character, and try to see how he handled responsibilities, but they can't find any corruption in his history, any negligence or dishonesty in

the way that he had been leading. So what are they going to do now, right? Well, let's read in verse 7. So since Daniel was known for praying to God in all circumstances, they devised a plan to use that against him. People know how to manipulate people, right? Like, Daniel's enemies manipulated the king to create a law that was designed to trap Daniel. And they did so by playing into the king's ego. Hey, you're so awesome. If anybody needs anything, they should just ask you for the next month. Like, they don't need to go anywhere else. You take care of us. Like, that's how I see this conversation happening. So they make sure that he writes this law. They talk him into writing this law, and he doesn't know, the king, that it was going to affect Daniel in this way. But he also made sure that he couldn't revoke it, revoke this law or change this law. Daniel finds out about this new law, and so what do you think he does? Does he abandon God? Does he give up on his faith now because it's too hard? Is he going to hide his faith, maybe, and lie about it so that he doesn't get in trouble? In Daniel 6 verse 10, it reads, When Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house. The windows in in its upstairs room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before. as he has done before. This is what he's been doing for a long time. The law changed. Daniel did not. And I think that's what biblical faithfulness is, a consistent life of trusting God and obeying him over time. So Daniel's enemies, you know, they catch him and in the act, of course, and they report it to the king, hey, king, this foreigner that you've been trusting is deliberately disobeying your laws and your orders. He's disrespecting you. Right.

And the king didn't want to kill him. But his enemies tricked him. Right. And made sure that, hey, you're not going to back down from this new law where, you know, I would think that word we get out. Right. So so they took Daniel and they threw him into the lion's den. Daniel's obedience to God led to him directly to the lion's den. Here's something I want you to think about when you when you hear and think about the lion's den, I don't want you to think about like a children's story. Right. I know that's when I first heard about the lion's den and some of this. I think it can make it sound kind of mythical. Right. But in real life, lions were very real in that world. At that time, ancient kings captured them and kept them in royal enclosures and released them for royal hunts. So it was not uncalled for for there to be lions in in an enclosure. OK. And here the lions are being used as an instrument of execution. Daniel wasn't being sent somewhere to, like, scare him and teach him a lesson. He was being sentenced to die. It was an execution sentence, and everybody that knew about it expected the lions to kill him. Here's the thing, sometimes faithfulness does not keep you out of trouble. Sometimes faithfulness costs you something, and in Daniel's case, this looks like right now that it's going to cost him his life. Many times in our lives. We're going to feel like we've been thrown to the lions and we're going to have to face the lions. Have you been in a situation like that where you felt like you were just thrown into a lion's den?

Maybe you're in one now. I want you to notice this. Daniel could not control what happened next. All he could do was remain faithful to God that he had trusted for decades. He chose to lean into his faith, not fear, not fight. Let's continue reading in verse 19. God shuts the lion's mouths and Daniel is rescued. Now, understand this being faithful does not mean God will remove all your problems. The point is that Daniel trusted God before he knew what the outcome was going to be. He trusted God before he knew what God was going to do. And that's what faithfulness means. That's what faithfulness says. I will obey God and trust him with what happens next. Daniel was faithful before the law changed. He was faithful when the law changed. He was faithful when obedience cost him something and he trusted God with the outcome. The lion's den only lasted one night. But the faithfulness that carried Daniel through that night has been built over a lifetime. So. What does that look like for you? How do you develop that in your life? The first thing is build rhythms that keep you close to God. Daniel clearly was a great example of prayer. The ability that we have to communicate with our maker on a regular basis and stand by him. in contact with our God? Are you reading the Word? Are you reading the Bible? You

can access the Bible on your tablet. You might have a Bible. You can ask your chaplain for a Bible. You might have a celly or a friend in there that has a Bible. Are you hanging out with people that, men and women, that are going to point you to Jesus? We can talk about some of the Bible. Worship is another way. Like, finding ways that you can worship God is a wonderful way of staying connected with God. And then, of course, repent quickly when you get off course. See, you do those things when life is going well so that they are already deeply rooted in you when life is not going well, when you're in that valley. You don't want to wait until you're in a pit to decide you need God. You need God now. So, number two, obey God and leave the outcome to Him. And I think this is the hardest part. Daniel could not control what King Darius would do. He couldn't control the enemies. He couldn't control whether he'll be thrown into that pit. He couldn't control if those lions were going to devour him or not. Daniel could only control one thing, himself. Whether he obeyed God and stayed obedient to God. The outcome belonged to God. There are so many things in your life and in my life that we cannot control. So, faithfulness is not just one heroic decision made in the valley. It's a lifetime of ordinary decisions that you make day in and day out to trust God and obey Him, whether you're on the hill or in the valley, so that when you're in that pit, it's not new to you. Obeying God is the one thing that you can control. Number three, decide who you belong to. You remember that Charlie Brown picture that you saw just a minute ago that we were talking about? Are you trusting in a Lucy that is always going to pull the ball away? Are you trusting in something unreliable and you know it's unreliable? It's always been unreliable. It has a track history of being unreliable. Daniel didn't wait for a crisis to decide who to trust. He chose God long before the crisis. And if we're being honest, some of you actually believe that you belong to the state. Some of you still believe that you belong to a gang. Some of you believe that you belong to your addiction. Some of you believe that you belong to the culture around you. But the truth is, when you find yourself in a pit of lions, none of them are going to help you. The state

may have custody over you, but the state doesn't get to define who you are. A gang does not get to define who you are. Your addiction does not get to define who you are. Your past does not get the final word on who you are. Who do you belong to? You know, you can actually settle that right now today. You can settle that argument and you can say, I belong to Jesus. And then tomorrow you can say, I belong to Jesus. And then again the next day, and the next day, and then all day, every day. You can say, I belong to Jesus. I will follow Him in the good. I will follow Him when times are bad. I will follow Him when obedience costs me something. Listen, Daniel, he was a faithful man, but Daniel was not perfect and neither are we. We've all failed God. We've all failed others. We have all broken trust. But Jesus, but Jesus was perfectly faithful. He remained faithful to the Father through rejection, through suffering, through betrayal, and all the way to the cross. Jesus took the punishment our sin deserves. He died. He was buried. And on the third day, He rose again. And because of His faithfulness, we are forgiven. lives can be made new and his spirit can begin producing faithfulness in our lives. Did you catch that? His spirit can begin producing faithfulness in our lives. You see, faithfulness begins with surrendering your life to Jesus. You turn away from sin. You turn towards Jesus Christ. You trust in Jesus. You remember Lucy at the beginning? Like she had a long record of being unfaithful. Jesus has a perfect record of faithfulness. He will not fail you. The question is not whether he is perfect. The question is, will you run to him? Will you trust in him and surrender your life to Jesus Christ and then allow his spirit to cultivate his faithfulness in you for the rest of your life? So you see, we're in this series called Cultivate and that's what it's about. You cannot manufacture the fruit of the Spirit by trying harder. You surrender your life to Jesus and his spirit begins cultivating in you what you could never produce on your own. And for some of you, that might begin today where you decide you're going to turn away and repent from your sins and trust Jesus and surrender your life to him and let his spirit begin cultivating faithfulness in you. Wherever

you're at right now, will you bow your heads and pray with me? Father God, I thank you so much for the faithfulness of your Son, Jesus Christ. The faithfulness of your love for your creation and your people. That faithfulness where Jesus, an innocent human being, a perfect track record, died for our sins. And when he died and defeated death and then rose again, he defeated sin, he defeated death. Father God, some of us right now listening to this, we don't really know what that means but we just feel a nudge that maybe today is the day to say, yes Lord, I surrender to Jesus Christ. I want to begin a life of faithfulness and I recognize I cannot do that without Jesus. Father God, I thank you for all you've done for us and all you're doing in the prison ministry, through God Behind Bars, through Gaining Ground, through Compass Church, and at our Allred campus. The work you're doing is beautiful. We thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you very much for being with us today.