During summer, when Bible studies at church or BSF have ended for the year (typically running from September to May), I tend to pick up studies I have around the house and study a book of the Bible myself, using that study to go along with it. My husband previously worked for a Christian publisher who published a number of excellent women’s Bible studies, and I have copies of most of them to pull from. This summer, I’ve been looking at Habakkuk with Dannah Gresh.
After I posted my last post on Daniel, the day’s lesson in my Habakkuk study was about Daniel! Dannah Gresh wrote about similar themes, and I thought I’d quote some of what she said which might reinforce my last post:
“It seems the plan of Nebuchadnezzar was to bring all the influencers to his capital so he could indoctrinate them. Rather than the back-breaking slavery the Egyptians used to put the Israelites into bondage, Babylon would use education, opportunity, and good food as seduction. That doesn’t sound like captivity. (It sounds like college.) It was what you might call friendly captivity. There’s nothing more dangerous! The king of Babylon sought to keep his captives living and breathing, but very dead to who they were in God.”
Dannah goes on to write about the change of Daniel’s, Shadrach’s, Meshach’s, and Abednego’s Hebrew names:
“These four golden exiles had Hebrew names that identified them with God. Daniel’s name meant ‘God is my judge.’ Hannah meant ‘God is gracious.’ Michael meant ‘Who is like God?’ And Azariah meant ‘God has helped.’
One of the first things the king’s eunuch did was change their names. Belteshazzar meant ‘protector of the king.’ Shadrach meant ‘commander of the Moon God.’ Meshach meant ‘What is what Aku is?’ Abednego meant ‘Servant of Nabu.'”
She concludes:
“My friend, we live in a proverbial Babylon. Oh, the names of the gods are different but be sure of this: the city that claimed our captives is a word picture and lesson for us…. The enemy has a plan for your time in Babylon, surely as God does. His is to steal, destroy, and ultimately to kill you (John 10:10). But he seems to always start with renaming you.
“The enemy does not just want you to forget who God is. He seeks to create so much amnesia in your life that you aren’t even sure who you are.”
Dannah goes on to share some of the ways Satan has tried to change her name and identity, encouraging the reader to do the same: ask God to show you any names the enemy has given you and begin to replace them with God’s truth.
The enemy really does strike at our identities, using all that culture offers, to try to rename us, remake us, and attempt to keep us from knowing who we are in Christ. Let’s stand on God’s Word and truth.
Have you heard the new Brandon Lake / Nick Jonas song, The Author? They ask, “Who am I. Who am I…” Don’t we all need to know who we really are? In Christ, it’s something beautiful! (See Ephesians 1-3.)
When life is going well, it’s not hard to live lives of faith. Everything is happy! It’s not hard to believe in a good God.
But when life is hard, when suffering enters, when hardship comes, when challenges emerge (as we are assured they will this side of heaven) — this is when our faith is really lived, when “the rubber meets the road” of our faith. In the testing, in the suffering, God refines us, shows us where our faith lacks, and if we trust Him, makes us stronger in Him and in faith through it. This is when the journey walked with Christ becomes real and exciting! This is opportunity.
And here’s the clincher: the outcome of these trials and hardships, though important, do not matter as much as the faithfulness of God to us in them and our seeking to be faithful to Him in response. In these moments, we can declare that God IS good, no matter what comes to us, because He is in fact good and is faithful.
We have an example of this in Daniel 3. You may know the familiar story. The pagan king Nebuchadnezzar builds a golden statue and commands that all worship it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse. (Cue the children’s song in many of our minds!)
Note: their real names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (Daniel 1:6-7). When taken into captivity in Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, they, along with Daniel, were given names intended to honor the false gods of Babylon. The intent was to change their identities, to have these men assimilate into this Babylonian culture. They were trained for three years in the Chaldean language and literature to serve in King Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. They were chosen as ones for these roles of serving in the king’s palace because they were “some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility….”
Let that sink in for a minute. They were selected for these roles, targeted if you will, because of their royalty. The enemy, the Babylonians, were looking for the best of the Israelites to bring under their tutelage and instruction, to assimilate them into their ways. Does this sound familiar?
As Christians, we are royalty, a royal priesthood, a chosen people of God’s own possession (1 Peter 2:9). There is an enemy who will target us (John 10:10; 1 Peter 5:8). Ephesians 6:10-20 reminds us that our enemy is not against flesh and blood, but “against the rulers, the powers, the world forces of this darkness, the spiritual powers of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And the enemy today seeks to bring people under his delusions and control, using all kind of forces for training them up, from media to worldly ideology. We must be aware of these schemes if we are to stand against them.
Let’s also take a moment to be thankful for faithful preachers and teachers who not only teach God’s Word, but live it, who have not capitulated to the demands of our culture, but who stand firm on the Word of God. Encourage and pray for them.
Right from the start of their captivity, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah refused to be like the culture around them (Daniel 1). And the Lord blessed them. God gave these four young men knowledge and understanding and wisdom. (Daniel 1:17)
Back to Daniel 3, King Nebuchadnezzar made this 90-foot gold statue to which the people were to fall down and worship when music played. Some took the occasion to maliciously accuse Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who would not worship the statue. They were brought before the ungodly king Nebuchadnezzar and told they would be thrown into the furnace of blazing fire if they did not worship it.
Maliciously accused. Brought before an unjust king. Thrown into the fire. Things weren’t looking good.
King Nebuchadnezzar asked, “Who is the god who can rescue you from my power?”
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego give this beautiful reply:
“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18).
In his fury, Nebuchadnezzar charged that they would be thrown into the fiery furnace, set 7 times hotter. The strongest soldiers who threw them in died from the flames. When Nebuchadnezzar looked into the flames, he saw four men walking in the fire unharmed. When they were brought out of the furnace, “the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them” (4:27). Nebuchadnezzar ends up blessing God who had delivered them!
These godly young men stood strong in the Lord and in their faith in Him. They didn’t waver, even when circumstances looked bleak. They were able to do this because they had earlier resolved in their hearts (see Daniel 1) to follow and serve the only true God. When the moment of testing came, they were ready. They didn’t decide He wasn’t worthy of trusting when these bad times came. Instead, they knew He was absolutely worthy and declared that even if this didn’t turn out like they would hope, they nevertheless would serve no other gods or bow to them.
I hope none of us are ever maliciously accused, brought before an unjust ruler, or thrown into a fire! But it’s actually quite possible when there is an enemy after our faith, our souls, the “accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10), who deceives and seeks our harm, our callings, and our influence for Christ in the world. This is not flesh and blood, but the world forces of wickedness. We must learn to stand up. To believe. To trust. For Christ Himself will stand with us, as He stood in the fire with them, and fight our battles. Think of the story they had to tell when they emerged from the fire! A story we are still telling today.
Let this encourage you, no matter what you are walking through, to trust your worthy Savior. To praise Him in and for the opportunities, the testing of your faith, to prove His worth and faithfulness, to give glory to His name.
“Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials,knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” James 1:2-4 (NASB)
This past year (2025-2026) in Bible Study Fellowship (BSF), in the “Exile and Return” study, we studied 8 books of the Bible, including Daniel (Lessons 3-8 in Fall 2025). I’m going back to record some of my observations from the study. If you are interested in studying the Bible with others in BSF, go to bsfinternational.org to find a group for next year (2026-2027). They will be studying Romans. There are in-person and online options available, and registration is now open.
What do you do when you can’t sleep? Sometimes I simply wait it out, eventually falling back to sleep. While I suppose that keeps me in a restful state waiting on sleep to return, I also later feel those were wasted hours! Sometimes then, I’ll get up to read or pray, in hopes it will make me sleepy, so at least I can feel like I was being productive!
Last Saturday night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up to pray. Three verses came to mind:
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:5-7).
“Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8a).
I don’t remember how I arrived at thinking about those verses and the nearness of the Lord. I think I was praying for friends who had lost a loved one, grieving with them, praying for the nearness of God to their broken hearts. My mind probably then took off on the theme of God’s nearness and where else we find that word in Scripture, those being familiar passages to me.
When I got up later that Sunday morning, I started reading “Preparing for the Lord’s Day,” a weekly post our church puts out to prepare us for worship. In it, it said, “To prepare for worship, spend time reading and meditating on… Psalm 34:15–22, Philippians 4:4–7…, and James 5:13–18.”
Two of those passages contained the verses I had pondered in the night, and the third one was one chapter later, but only a page away in my Bible. The sermon focus was not on the nearness of God, but on how God calls every Christian to pray. But it was interesting to see those three Scriptures again being reinforced.
Yesterday, I was looking up a devotional book at Amazon, glancing quickly at the sample pages. The sample devotional started with, “The Lord is near….” quoting after it those verses from Philippians 4:5-7. This sample devotional page from the book was in the context of anxiety: “if the Lord is near, everything changes. You aren’t alone, and the one who is in control, to order and provide, he’s near and he cares for you and he is involved.” (David Powlison).
Today, I opened my photos to go back and find a photo with a friend from a visit I remembered in 2018, and beside those photos was this random one I had saved 7 years ago, not even remembering it, nor now knowing its source:
What do we make of times where the Lord keeps bringing a repeated message? I’m not sure, but one thing, if nothing else, is simply encouragement. We can be encouraged with the message that comes to us through God’s Word and in prayer. We may or may not see an exact application, but we can remember it and hold on to it.
Who couldn’t be encouraged with the thought that, in all of our circumstances, the Lord is near. He sees you, He knows you, He knows what you are going through, He knows your joys and your sorrows, and He is near. Not distant, but right there with you, drawing near to you when you draw near to Him. The Lord is near; we have no reason to fear!
That’s a message I can go with today! Perhaps it will encourage you too.
“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.” Psalm 73:28
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 (NKJV)
Most mornings, I wake up with a song in my head. It’s surprising how often the song is exactly what I need. A little bit of manna to start the day!
This morning, Katy Nichole’s Song “My God Can” was ringing in my mind. It reminded me of Philippians 4:13 at this part of the song:
I can do all things, all things, through Christ who gives me strength. I can do all things, all things, cause His Spirit lives in me.
I came down for my coffee and came across this mug (pictured at the top of this post) that I had pulled forward from the back of the cabinet a day or two ago. On April 25, 2012, I spoke at the Women’s Bible Study brunch that wraps up our yearlong Bible study at church. It was my testimony of Christ as our strength, my Rock! That same day was “Administrative Professionals Day,” which I didn’t even know existed! But my boss and his wife had a gift on my desk that morning that included this mug with Philippians 4:13 on it! As my friend would say, it was a “God wink”! Christ my strength, the focus of my talk, now highlighted on the mug, encouraging me for the talk I was about to give.
Walking with my coffee then to get my Bible and read this morning, singing the song, holding the mug, I found myself out of the blue repeating the five statement pledge of faith from Beth Moore’s Bible study Believing God that I did back in 2005. I haven’t thought about those words in a very long time, but they say, “God is who He says He is, God can do what He says He can do, I am who God says I am, I can do all things through Christ, God’s Word is alive and active in me, I’m believing God.” I wondered why I was saying that. And I realized “I can do all things through Christ” is the verse from Philippians 4:13!
I always loved that pledge of faith because it first tells me who God is and what He can do, then who I am and what I can do through Him, then gives a reminder that His Word is alive and active in me as I study it, and concludes that based on those things, I can trust and believe God. I will believe God because He is trustworthy and able to be believed. It strengthens my faith to believe Him more.
Whatever we are going through in life today, we can believe God for those situations, every single one of them: “I’m believing God.” Based on that testimony of faith, I can bring Him all my needs and trust that, as Katy Nichole sang, my God can! And I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. Rest in this truth today!
These are just some quick thoughts as I wrap up the last week or two that have been on my mind.
I heard a lady on the radio yesterday giving her testimony. She had been living a really rough life, and she wanted to know if God was real. She shared how God revealed Himself in this moment of crisis in an unmistakable way. At the end of the call, she threw in this statement that has stuck with me: “I wasn’t looking for God to change my life; I only wanted to know if He was real. But once I knew that He was real, my life was changed.” I loved that thought. When we experience the reality of who God is and what Christ has done for us, we will be changed!
I went to a cross country match to watch a family friend run. What I loved was seeing him at the end, even though he was surely tired, sprint to the finish, even overtaking another runner at the very last moment. This running with the end in sight, with a focus on the finish, was a picture to me of how to run the life of faith which is compared in Scripture at times to a race:
Hebrews 12:1-2: “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
This week we celebrated the day that my daughter came home from the hospital 14 years ago ago after a three month stay. She was born three months prematurely (27 weeks along, 2 pounds) and came home on her original due date. It’s hard to pass milestone moments like these without pausing again to remember and give thanks to God for her life and His protection over her and for the many miraculous ways we saw His hand at work during those challenging days. These are indeed stones of remembrance.
Then finally we wrapped up the football season for my son this week. It was a great season, and I am glad to see his hard work and discipline in the sport, his great coaches who use the sport as a means to bring gospel truths into their lives, and the friendships he has developed.
Praise Proclaimer 