And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, - Daniel 1: 9 (ESV)
God is in control of the favor in our lives. All good things come from Him. Nothing we have is our own or of our own merit. The deeper meaning here though is that it does not matter what the circumstance might be. God is still there and God can still give us favor. The question is if we can see God in our suffering. Often times we cannot because American Christianity has turned God into a genie in a bottle or a spiritual busboy, serving our whims. As such when things go bad we often attribute everything to the devil and spend our time trying to get out of a valley God Himself may have placed us in. Character is developed in the fire. A refiner heats up silver to remove the impurities and so God will heat our lives up as well to remove our impurities. When all we are taught is that God wants to bless us, we never pick up our cross.
The back story here is that Daniel was supposed to take his share of the kings food and wine but he did not want to defile himself. God gave him favor in the eyes of the chief of the eunuchs, who was in charge of him. Daniel cut him a deal. He asked for ten days of eating nothing but vegetables while everyone else ate the king's portion and then we will see who is doing better. Because of the favor of God, the chief of the eunuchs agreed and God did the rest:
At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. - Daniel 1: 15-16 (ESV)
I was listening to an excellent sermon this morning by Alastair Begg and he pointed out here the sheer lunacy of some Christian leaders and what lengths they will go to in order to make money off of the Bible without handling it correctly. The Book in question here is Rick Warren's "The Daniel Plan." This of course had accompanying workbooks and cookbooks. The notion proposed is that there are spiritual truths within this story that can be leveraged to lose weight in our lives today. There are two major problems with this notion. The first is the actual Daniel Plan here caused him to gain weight, not lose it. Re-read the verses above! They were fatter in flesh! Secondly and more importantly is that there was no "diet." There was no "plan." This story is not about Daniel. It is about God. To take this story and create a cookbook is to be blind to the supernatural favor God showed to Daniel. If you eat nothing but vegetables you will not be healthier. People just choose to see what they want instead of what God is actually showing us. How many? Well over 36 million people bought the Daniel Plan.
Yet we wonder why we remain so Biblically illiterate and spiritually apathetic.
