One of my perennial resolutions in every new year is to read more deeply and profoundly about both faith and the world around me. However, given my suggestion in an earlier letter, I am moving from resolutions to building habits - they tend to be much more permanent.
This week is our first full week with the students after winter break, and it is starting with a bang. This weekend we are heading to Refreshing Mountain near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a weekend retreat. Nearly 50 students will be seeking the Lord’s presence and renewal, and we are hopeful for a filling of His Spirit as we worship, pray, and fellowship.
It has been a spiritually rich month here in Princeton as our students have returned from break with a desire to seek the Lord. As you may know, Princeton’s usual academic calendar means that January is the month of final papers and assignments for the students. During this time, we have developed a tradition of hosting our daily prayer meetings at the Melrose Center. In the midst of exams and assignments, our students have been faithful to pray. Over this month, we regularly had groups of well over a dozen students praying together. Overall, we sense our students are showing an increased desire to seek the Lord and we praise God for this.
We have begun our second semester at Cornell as students have come back from winter break. After a period of transition, we now have a new director on our staff. Greg Ray has come from Madrid, Spain, where he was doing missionary work to lead our team. As we move into this new stage, we look forward to seeing how God is going to work through the team on this campus.
I pray that you are having a blessed start to the new year.
Christian Union at Columbia started 2020 with a new Ministry Director and some faculty transitions. The students recently returned from vacation after Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and we are truly excited for this upcoming semester.
College students often share a common blind spot that we all fall prey to: the tendency to think of life through a very narrow and individual filter. I don’t blame the students—the schools cultivate that brand of individualism, and we as a society certainly model it as well. So even as we draft our own personal goals and resolutions for the new year, allow me to offer some perspective from C.S. Lewis:
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
— 1 Timothy 4:13
Stand Firm and Take Action
Wednesday, January 29
He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant,
but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.
- Daniel 11:32 (ESV)
This passage refers to Antiochus IV who dominated Judah for a period in the 2nd century BC, forbidding Jews to worship God as the law prescribes, and desecrating the temple. All who refused were put to death. It was an incredibly difficult and dark time for those who loved the LORD and sought to be faithful to Him. America has had its ups and downs spiritually but has never seen anything like what the Jews experienced at that time, and there’s no guarantee that this won’t happen in America at some point. This is why we fast! To seek favor, forgiveness, and blessing from God so that He will have mercy on the nation and bring increased freedom and blessing.
Resolve to be Undefiled
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.
- Daniel 1:8
Daniel was just a teenager when taken as an exile to Babylon and inducted into the King’s service. He was no doubt scared and resigned to the fact that he would probably never see his homeland again. Yet his faith in God was extraordinary, even as He and his devout friends started to learn the literature of their adopted homeland and began preparation and training to serve the king in the administrative state. As the book of Daniel reveals, young Daniel would grow in skill and stature assuming a very high role in the kingdom in his later years. Yet, from the very beginning, he would not compromise his walk with the LORD.
Honoring God at All Costs
Monday, January 27, 2020
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “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 3:161-8 (ESV)
Fearless. Brazen. Reckless. Foolhardy. How else might we describe Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Faced with the prospect of death by fiery furnace for not bowing to the golden idol made by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, the three Jewish men refused to compromise their worship of God. Furthermore, they didn’t plead for leniency. They didn’t run and hide, either. In fact, they boldly and unapologetically defied the powerful king, declared their allegiance to God, stated their faith in His ability to save them, and made known that nothing--not even death--could stop them from honoring God’s law.
Set Aside Time to Draw Near to God
Sunday, January 26In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.
- Daniel 10:2-3
By grace we are living in the precious gift of time. Yet, as fleeting as it is slow, time is also the one commodity that is taken for granted by too many of us until it’s too late. The reality is, we appropriate and squander time in different ways, but within the same measure of 24 hours we each prove what we value most by what we do with our time; we prove where our allegiance is by how we allot our time; and, we prove where our true affections are by how we steward our time. Which means, as individual Christians, who love God sincerely, there is always time to draw near to God.
Prevailing Prayer
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
- Daniel 9:3 (ESV)
Charles Finney defined prevailing prayer as prayer which secures an answer. Daniel, who lived in constant prayer and communion with God, exemplified prevailing prayer. In an Old Testament book saturated with prayer, Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9 deserves special attention for believers wanting to better understand the process of prevailing in prayer. Giving Daniel 9 high praise in his 1884 book specifically on Prevailing Prayer, D.L. Moody called this "one of the best chapters on prayer in the whole Bible."
Citizens of an Everlasting Kingdom
Friday, January 24, 2020"I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
— Daniel 7:13-14
You signed up for this fast because you have a heart for God’s glory in our nation. Like you, I am fasting these ten days because my soul longs for America to return to God. I want to see millions of my fellow citizens discover the pearl of great price and the name of Jesus lifted high above all names. We yearn for God’s righteousness to guide our government, our schools, our media, our entertainment, and on and on. Our spirits faint within us when we see the degrading effects of the decline of Christian influence on our society. Have mercy on us, O Lord!
This is Devotion to Prayer
Thursday, January 23, 2020
When Darius became king over Babylon and its vast empire, he acted as one might expect a prudent ruler to do: he “set over the kingdom 120 satraps [i.e., provincial governors], to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three high officials … to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss” (Dan 6:1–2, ESV). Among these officials, Daniel became the most distinguished—noted for the “excellent spirit” in him—and Darius intended to appoint him as his prime minister (v. 3).
None Can Stay God's Hand
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
- Daniel 4:34-35 ( ESV)
Revelation of God’s Presence
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Daniel answered the king and said, ‘No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.
- Daniel 2:27-28 (ESV)
An impossible task: tell the king his dream. Any clues? None. Any context? Not really. All right, go!
Crickets.
But God. God does something. He reveals to Daniel the king’s dream, and in so doing Daniel’s life is saved. Pagan wisemen are saved. Death was foretold by Nebuchadnezzar. But God brought life. But God. Possibly the two greatest words in all of Scripture. In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul writes “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” An impossible situation. Death. The end. Yet Paul continues: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us…made us alive together with Christ.” Life! Hope! God’s grace in Christ Jesus!
How to Find the God of Wisdom and Might
Monday, January 20, 2020To you, O God of my fathers,
I give thanks and praise,
for you have given me wisdom and might,
and have now made known to me what we asked of you,
for you have made known to us the king's matter.”
— Daniel 2:23 (ESV)
Daniel was guided by a deep-seated conviction, a belief that “God is the rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). This exiled Hebrew knew unequivocally that God opens to those who knock, He reveals to those who seek, He answers those who ask.
Monday, January 20 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Christians across America participated in a ten-day fast (fasting from food). Participants followed the example of men and women of Scripture who humbled themselves and sought the Lord through fasting. Our country needs the spiritual renewal that only God can bring.
From Monday, January 20, 2020, participants sought God through the biblical practice of fasting. Some fasted from all foods for the entire ten days—drinking only liquids—or you may choose to fast one or two meals each day. For some, health limitations will require a different type of fast (see fasting resources).
CU New York Forum with Dr. Os Guinness
On Friday, January 17, 2020, CU New York had the privilege of hosting esteemed author and friend of the ministry, Dr. Os Guinness, for a forum on his most recent novel Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times. Dr. Guinness challenged the audience to consider the true meaning and significance of time, our own mortality, and how intentionally we choose to live out our callings for God’s purposes. These biblical ideals about time stand in stark contrast to many common perceptions of time in today’s cultures, especially those in the west.
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods.
— 1 Chronicles 16:25
