 Good morning, Radiant Church, how's everybody doing? Good, we wanna say hello to those at Portage, as well as those who are joining us online. And we wanna say a special hello to all the meteorologists, false prophets, prophesying ice on Saturday night church, causing me to come under the influence and cancel Saturday night service. So how many know if I would have kept it going, we would have gotten a half inch of ice. It's just the way it goes. But so good to see everybody this morning. You guys doing good? Welcome to 2020. And Jane and I were with you last weekend in spirit. I was on the screen, but our bodies were on the other side of the planet. We were in Myanmar and then also in Hong Kong. And we were on one of our impact trips with a group of people from Radiant. We were helping to serve in one of the orphanages in one of the most closed nations, poorest nations on the face of the earth, Miramar. And we're happy to report God's just on the move in Southeast Asia. And we had an incredible time. Also stopped in Hong Kong for a couple of days and got to meet with a pastor in Hong Kong who's on the front lines of what's going on over there. So we had a great time. So glad to be back with you. And I wanna invite you this morning, if you have your Bibles, to open it with me to Daniel chapter two. If you don't have a physical Bible, the verses are gonna come up on the screens or you can look at our app as well and follow along. But this is part two of our series entitled Stronger. And we're looking at the life story of Daniel in the Old Testament. And the subtitle for this series is Living Beyond Status Quo. Living Beyond Status Quo. And while you're turning there in your Bibles, let me just remind you that even tonight during seek, 6.30 p.m. at the Richland campus, we have a prayer meeting every day at noon in Portage, every day at Richland at 6.30 p.m. So if you haven't been to one, join us. And then this Wednesday night, you're not gonna wanna miss our great friend David Perkins is going to be here. And this last Wednesday night when we kicked off seek, we had our largest crowd that we've ever had during seek. We were at both campuses. It was packed out and just a powerful, powerful time. Hopefully you can join us this Wednesday at 6.30 at both of our campuses as well. So look with me at Daniel chapter two, beginning in verse number one. We'll read the first 10 verses. It says, in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. His spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. And so they came in and they stood before the king and the king said to them, I've had a dream and my spirit is troubled to know the dream. And then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, oh king, live forever. Tell your servants the dream and we will show you the interpretation. The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, the word for me is firm. For if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb and your houses shall be laid in ruins. But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards in great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation. And they answered a second time and they said, let the king tell his servants the dream and we will show you its interpretation. And the king answered and said, I know with certainty that you're trying to gain time because you see that the word for me is firm. If you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the times change. Therefore tell me the dream and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation. And in verse 10, the Chaldeans answered the king and they said, there is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demands for great and powerful is the king who has asked for such the thing of any of their magicians or enchanters or Chaldeans. So as we discussed last week, Daniel, the book of Daniel is all about these, specifically these four Hebrew young people who are of the nobility, the royal family of Judea who've been taken captive in about 603 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar who's the leader of the most powerful empire of the world, Babylon. And so after a series of wars against the city, they've been taken captive, their nobility, their influencers and they've been brought back to Babylon where they've been put through a three and a half year reeducation process. They've been put in the University of Babylon, they've been given Babylonian names, they've been given Babylonian clothes. They are positioned in the king's courts and the purpose of it is Nebuchadnezzar wants to take all of the Jewish people that he's brought as captives and assimilate them into Babylonian culture. But as we saw in chapter one, Daniel, as well as Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, the other three that are spoken of primarily in the story made a decision. And the decision was that even though we find ourselves in Babylon, we're not going to become Babylonian. We're going to decide and purpose in our hearts, we're gonna make a decision that we're not going to be corrupted, we're not going to be defiled no matter what they do to us. And that one decision that they made and the test that they went through on the other side of that decision is what actually has promoted them to a place of incredible influence. Chapter two, we see now this king Nebuchadnezzar who is the most powerful man literally in the world at that time has dreams that trouble him. I don't know if anybody in this room has ever found yourself kind of half awake in the middle of the night because you woke up and you've had dreams, but you can only remember bits and pieces of the dreams. There's nothing that will drive you crazy more than trying to remember a dream that you believe or think was significant or that really impacted you. And you try, how many have ever done this where you have a dream and you kind of wake up and part of you thinks I should write this down and then you talk yourself out of it by saying I'll remember it. And then you wake up in the morning and you don't remember it, but you know that you should have remembered it and you should have written it down. Nebuchadnezzar finds himself in that same situation. He has this dream, now realize this, Nebuchadnezzar is not only powerful, not only is he wealthy, but he's religiously speaking, he's not a worshiper of the one true living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's not a, he's not a worshiper or a theist. He's a polytheist. The Babylonians have their own kind of pantheons of gods and deities that they worship like most cultures have this own, but in this particular moment, he knows that there's something about the dream that is supernatural in its nature that somehow the gods or God is trying to speak to him. He just can't remember what's going on. And so he calls for all of his influencers, all of his spiritualists and his supernaturalists to come in before him and he gives them this challenge. It's interesting that the king of Babylon actually had on retainer an entire group of people who are spiritual advisors and influencers. He lists what they are. He talks about the sorcerers. He talks about the magicians, the enchanters, and the Chaldeans. Now you probably have never prayed a deep dive into what a Chaldean is, but a Chaldean was unique to Babylon. They were a group of people that were specifically skilled in all disciplines of all known religions and how to engage and worship those gods. They were trained in seances. They were trained in black magic. They were trained in astrology. They were trained in all kinds of things. So Nebuchadnezzar pulls all of these spiritual advisors together and he says, guys, here's the challenge. I had dreams and they're messing with me. So, since I've got all of you on retainer here, here's my challenge. You're going to tell me my dream and the interpretation of the dream or you're all gonna die. How many know that would up your prayer life immediately? I mean, that's not, I mean, there are a lot of people who want to interpret your dreams. There are a lot of people who, in fact, if you were to Google or you were to jump on a search engine and punch out dream interpretation, there are tens and hundreds of thousands of sites that are on the internet from all different kinds of backgrounds, numerology, symbolism, different religions, even Christianity, people who love to interpret dreams. But it's a whole nother level when somebody says, I don't want you to just give me your best shot at what my dream means. You also have to tell me the dream. And they all said to him, we just read it, they said, look, nobody, none of the most powerful kings on the world stage have ever demanded that. You tell us the dream, oh king, and we'll tell you what it means. Everybody wants to do that. When I was growing up that before there was the internet, there was this thing, it was the psychic hotline. Anybody remember that? The old psychic hotline. It was, you know, 1-800 dial a psychic and you could call up and for 1499 an hour or a minute, they would tell you your future or interpret your dream for them. Psychic hotline. And then immediately they went out of business suddenly. If they're real psychics, you would have thought they would have seen that coming. But they didn't. And you know, there's all kinds of people, you can go all kinds of places, people want to interpret your dream. It's a whole nother level, you find somebody and you say, you're gonna tell me my dream or I'm gonna cut you up in the pieces, send your body parts to the different parts of the kingdom of the world. I'm gonna burn your house down, kill your family, steal your car. I'm gonna, I mean, this is the challenge. And we find in the middle of the story, Daniel. Daniel who has been positioned by God at this particular time and this particular place to be an influence in a culture that is diametrically opposed to who he is and what he stands for. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego have been positioned in a culture of Babylon that is not just any other culture, it's a wealthy culture, it's a powerful culture. Babylon had the largest known library in the world. It had the strongest economy, the most powerful military that the world had ever known up until that time. As these Jewish kids walk into Babylon, they would have been awestruck by the hanging gardens that were designed and engineered by the greatest minds of their time. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world that would have been visible from even a mile away from the city of Babylon. Sidewalks, running water, all kinds of things that they had never seen before. It would have been easy for Daniel and these young people from Judah to be overwhelmed by this culture and to actually lose their convictions about who God is and about who he's called them to be as they get swept up into this vast sea of Babylon. But in this particular chapter, what we find is instead of them losing their influence, Daniel actually gains influence. And so that's why I've entitled this message Poised for Influence because I believe in many ways the story of Daniel, especially in chapter two, what we see here, how Daniel comes on the scene and interprets the dream for the king. Not only does he come and give the interpretation, he actually tells the king, this is your dream. And here's what it means. And it's bigger than you, Nebuchadnezzar. It's actually what's taking place is the God of heaven, the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who's greater than all the other gods that you worship. He's speaking to you. He's trying to get your attention. He's created attention. He's created a crisis in your life so that you will listen and you will seek him out and you will search for wisdom. And in the middle of this whole serendipitous situation where God has spoken to you in dreams that have become riddles and problems that you can't solve on your own with all of your wealth, with all of your wisdom, with all of your resources, with the massive library that you have and all your enchanters, your astrologers and your meteorologists. He says, God has positioned me as a follower of the one true living God to break through the riddle and to give you not only the dream, but the definition and to put it in perspective that your story is actually just a very small part of a bigger story that God is writing. Daniel becomes even more influential through this process. I think this story has a lot to speak to us even though it's removed by some 2,500 years and a few cultures and a couple different languages because as the people of God, I believe with all of my heart, God has called us just by nature of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ. He's called us to be influencers, not just to be influenced. Right now in our culture, there is a lot of emphasis upon what are called influencers. When I was growing up like many of you before the advent of the internet, and by the way, if you're under 30 years, there's probably 30 years old, there's never been a time in your life where you didn't have access to the internet. And so you're what's called a native, which means this is normal for you. For those of us who grew up before dial-up, before there was such a thing called the internet, when we actually had to do book reports out of the Encyclopedia Britannica and go to the library, this is all brand new or at least it's newer to us. But I think what's happening in our particular world that we're living in is God's trying to get our attention, God's trying to speak to us as his people about what are the influences in our life? And when I was growing up, the influencers were primarily Hollywood actors, professional athletes, and then on a much lower level, things like teachers, mentors, parents. Today, like there's a whole new world because of the internet, the advent of it, of what are called influencers. Our youngest daughter came home from college this last summer and she was home for a couple months and she had one of her roommates who came to visit. And when I asked her who, tell me about your roommate. And oh, you know, she's just a cute young 20-something girl. And I said, oh, it's great. She's coming. She goes, dad, she's the social media influencer. I was like, what does that mean? What does that, what? She's like, dad, she's an influencer. I'm like, what, tell me what that means. It means like she has like 40,000 followers on Instagram. And I'm like, well, good, that's great. And she goes, no, like people pay her to take pictures wearing their clothes for their companies. Like pay her? And she's like, oh yeah, dad. She had a company who like flew her and her boyfriend to Paris just to take pictures of them wearing their tank tops in front of the Eiffel Tower. I'm like, how do I get in on this gig? And it's like, dad, you're not an influencer. I'm like, thanks. Appreciate that. She goes, no, that's not you. So when her friend was coming up, she goes, and then we're gonna go to Grand Rapids and we're gonna meet up with one of her Instagram friends who's an influencer who has like 300,000 followers. And I'm like, who is this girl? She's like, oh, she's like 20. She's got like 350,000 influencers. She's monetized her influence on social media. And that's why she has a Range Rover. She has her own house. I'm like, because of Instagram? And she's like, oh yeah, dad, it's a whole new world. I'm like, you ain't kidding me. It's a whole new world where influence is being pedaled and being held by people that a generation ago would have never had a voice. And we can look at that and say, well, that's a negative. Or we can look at that and say it's an opportunity because I believe with all of my heart that in the hour that we're living in that the church needs to awaken, we as followers of Jesus Christ that are called to be salt and light, which is a metaphor for influence, have incredible opportunities every single day of our life through the way that we live our lives, through the way that we engage with other people, even the way that we engage on social media, how we do our jobs, how we raise our kids, how we interact with people that are different from us. We have an opportunity to be like Daniel, to be Shadrach, to be Meshach, to be Abednego, that find ourselves living as exiles in in many ways a Babylonian culture that is contrary to what is home for us, that is different than our own personal convictions. It's in many ways, it's different than our morality. It's different than the values that we have. How many know as a Christian, Philippians chapter three says, we are citizens of heaven first. Our citizenship is in heaven. First Peter chapter two says that we should live our time on this planet as exiles and sojourners. In other words, we're traveling through this place. We're in the world, but we're not called to be of the world. First John chapter two says love not the world, nor the things in it. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life and all of these things are passing away. So we're not supposed to love the world. In other words, we're not supposed to find our identity, our security, we're not supposed to find our name, our values in the midst of a Babylonian culture and make no mistake about it. The world that we're living in right now from the biblical perspective, the way that God relates to it is that it's a broken system. It's a broken dark Babylonian system because it's based on sin and self. But as people that have found our identity in the culture of the kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy spirit that is based on Jesus as King and Lord and His word as our constitution and our declaration of dependence on God. We're supposed to live in this world, I believe, as influence, salt and light. But the problem is that most of us have been influenced more by the world than we have become influenced on the world. That's our challenge. Why aren't we making a difference in the place that God has planted us, the way that Daniel, the way that Esther, the way that Joseph, all of the different heroes that we have in the Bible? Why aren't we individually making as big of a difference on the culture we live in as the culture is making a difference on us? It all has to do with our understanding of influence. Biblical or a dictionary definition of influence is this. It's the capacity or the power to be a compelling force or to produce an effect on the actions, behavior and the opinions of others. So when you think about what are the influences on your life? I'm not talking about being Amish. I'm not talking about separating yourself out of the world. We're in the world, we're part of civilization, we're part of society, we're part of culture and some of that's just gonna be natural and generic and neutral. But I'm talking about at the core of who we are. I'm talking about at the way that we view the world, the way that we see ourselves. Are we coming under the influence of a Babylonian culture more than we are being influenced by the kingdom of Jesus Christ? And are we truly able to be salt, be light and to be influenced on the world that we live in? Think about what influences you. What influences you more? Is it kingdom of God or is it the world around us? I believe as Christians that God has created and called and he has positioned us specifically to be influences upon our world. This is what we were created for. You were created to be influenced by the world that's easy to do, it's easy to do. You were created in Christ Jesus, you were created, recreated by the Holy Spirit of God with the greater one, God living on the inside of you so that everywhere that you go, you actually are bringing influence that is affecting other people instead of the world around you influencing you. We've gotta make this shift. I was on an airplane for 14 hours on the way home from Myanmar and so I watched this docu-drama called Chernobyl. Has anybody seen that series? It's based on what took place in the Soviet Union when a nuclear reactor had a meltdown and the Soviet Union tried to cover it up. It actually in many ways probably explains the collapse of the Soviet Union. But as I'm watching it, I'm thinking about how there are so many similarities to what's taking place in culture today and how it's actually affecting all of us. I had a, in 2001, I took a train from Moscow to Kiev, Ukraine with Rick Renner and we went right through Chernobyl. It's interesting as I was watching the story how the nuclear core actually exploded in Chernobyl and radioactive nuclear material began to contaminate the entire region. In fact, the Soviet Union tried everything that they could do to cover it up so that nobody in the outside world would know what happened because it would mean that they were weak and that their system was broken. But what began to happen is other nations like Belarus and Germany and other places began to detect radioactive material in the atmosphere because as it was pumping out unrestrained out of this exploded nuclear reactor, they estimate that the amount of radioactive material that was released in the atmosphere every hour for multiple days, every hour, think about this, was the equivalent of 40 times the nuclear fallout from Hiroshima in Japan. When we dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan during World War II, take all of that nuclear radioactive material and it was 40 times that per hour. That's why they couldn't cover it up and now people can't even live there. They put a huge dome over the Chernobyl reactor that will cover it and contain it for 100 years. Now, here's what I wanna ask you. Are we being contaminated by a broken culture more than we are becoming radioactive out of our relationship with God? You see, because whatever you get closest to will contaminate you most. If I'm looking at the approval of people, if I'm looking for acceptance in the world, if I'm waiting for the affirmation of a system and a culture to say, you're okay, you're successful, you fit in, you belong, then I will draw near to that and that will begin to contaminate my soul and everywhere that I go, I will carry that culture. But if my primary focus in life, in the primary voice of my life is not the voice of the world, but it's the voice of my father, if the primary value system that I'm looking to to measure my life by is the word of God, if the people of God are propelling me on and encouraging me on and I'm getting the core of my identity, affirmation and acceptance out of my relationship with God. If my relationship with my heavenly father is larger and stronger than anything else, then I walk away from the seeker place, radioactive with the love of God, with the mercy of God, with the perspective of God, and then everyone I come into contact with gets contaminated by the radioactive love of a living God. Now, see, if I'm contaminated by the culture, then I can live my life saying, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I love church, and someday when I die, I wanna go to heaven, and that's awesome. Salvation is a free gift of God. You don't earn it, you don't qualify for it, it's none of those things, it's a free gift of God. You can actually live your life on this planet and get into heaven someday without actually having made a difference with your life. But if we're talking about calling, if we're talking about why we were created and put on this planet, there has to be a connection with the heart of our creator and the heart of our father that speaks life into us and positions us, poises us to have influence, not for ourselves, but for God's sake. You see, Daniel found himself in a partnership with God. God began to give dreams to Nebuchadnezzar. How many know Daniel didn't give the dreams? God was the one who gave the dreams to Nebuchadnezzar, but God also knew I've got a Daniel there who will give the interpretation of it. Here's what I know, there are a lot of people in our world today that are wrestling with dreams, with a sense of, I know that there's more for my life, I wanna have a connection with God, I wanna know why I was created, I wanna figure out how to untie the knot of my life, I've done everything, I've tried everything, I've called in every voice, I've called in every advisor, I've read every book in the Isle and the self-help section of Barnes and Nobles, I've gone to every type of religious affiliation, I've tried to find satisfaction in this, but I've got this dream, I've got this riddle, I've got this conundrum at the core of me, and I can't figure it out, who's going to help me? And in the middle of that circumstance and situation, and by the way, it's people that you and I work with and live with and a lot of times it's us as well, where in the middle of that God says, I'll mess with their dreams as long as I've got a person of influence in proximity to them who's poised to influence them. And it takes a shift in us seeing ourselves instead of being the influenced to saying, yes God, I want to be the influencer. And by the way, if you're trying to follow along on my notes, you might as well just scrap that, because I haven't even looked at them and I haven't even gotten to point one and I'm not getting there. This is what happens when I'm jet lagged and haven't slept and I've drinking too much Red Bull. Listen, we got Arthur Wallace, the great revivalist of Britain years ago said this, you will either become a profit to your culture or you will eventually become a product of your culture. I wonder how many of us are, actually if we were to really self-appraise would say, you know what, I'm really much more a product of external forces and voices that have influenced me than I am a prophetic voice to my culture, a prophetic voice from outside of the boundaries of a world system that's broken. You know, insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Have you noticed what our world does? We just do the same things over and over and over again. Oh, you want war? Well, guess what? I'll give you war. Oh, you hate me, I hate you. You retaliate against me, I'll retaliate against you. I'll live for myself and think I'll find satisfaction and we end up in ecclesiasties all over again. Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity. We've got a broken system and it is on a treadmill of insanity thinking that we're somehow going to find purpose and all it is is a culture saying, I've got a dream, I've got a riddle, I've got a conundrum on the inside of me and I can't figure it out. And what God says in response to that, to the world is I've got a whole church full of Daniels, I've got a whole church full of esters, I've just got to get them to see themselves as influencers and not the influenced. I've got to see them as being more significant than just living for the affirmation and the approval of the world. What's that going to give us? Hey, we all like to be liked. Everybody likes to be liked. Anybody in here like to be hated? No, nobody does. Who do we spend time with? People that like us. But at the end of the day, if we live our lives just waiting for the world to pat us on the head and say, good, acceptable, you fit in now, you will live your life quiet desperation and you will never rise to the level of what you were created to accomplish. Paul writes in Galatians chapter one, am I still seeking the approval of man? Am I living for the approval of man? If I were living for the approval and the affirmation of man, I would not be a servant of Christ. If you're waiting for the world to tell you well done good and faithful servant, you can't serve God at the same time. But if you live for the approval of one, if you live beyond what has influenced you, if you see yourself beyond the lid of your own captivity, that's when you become an influencer. What do I mean by that? Well, think about this. It would have been so easy for Daniel to say, there's no way in the world I can influence this kingdom. Who am I? I'm just a Jewish kid that got taken captive, dragged 675 miles from Judea to Babylon. I've been put in the king's courts. I got sent to university to where they tried to reeducate me. I've got a new name. It's a Babylonian name. I'm no longer name after the God that I worship. They gave me a new name based on one of their gods and they're feeding me good and giving me money in a position. If I just keep my mouth closed and I go along, I'll have a good life. And Daniel could have spent a lot of his time feeling sorry for himself. Well, you don't know what's happened to me. My whole family was wiped out. My home in Judea was burned. I thought God was real and here's God's turned his back on me. God's turned his back on us. And so I might as well just enjoy life. He could have, listen, allowed his captivity to define his destiny, but instead he allowed his captivity to point him in the direction of his destiny. You see, all of us have a captivity, a place that God has positioned us where maybe we did not want to be. Sometimes it's the job that we're in and we just think to ourselves, well, I don't want this job. I never wanted to be in this job. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've had Christians come up to me and say, Pastor, pray for me. Pray that God would get me out of my job. I'm like, why? Tell me why you went out of your job because I'm surrounded by a bunch of non-Christian pagans and they swear all the time and they talk about the bar and their immoral lifestyles and they're playing secular music all the time. And you know what? Pray for me so that I can have a job like you where I get to come into church late and work around Christians and just read my Bible and drink coffee all day. If I just had a job like you where I was surrounded by Christians, number one, you'd be sadly disappointed because Christians oftentimes are not that different from non-Christians. And number two, you don't need to be removed out of your job. Maybe God actually positioned you in your job. Well, why would God put me in a room full of Babylonians? Maybe because they've got some dreams that need interpretation. Maybe because they've got some problems that God wants to speak to. And maybe because we should have more faith. Listen, we should have more faith in God's keeping ability in our life than we have faith in hell's destroying power in our life. Maybe we should stop it. I'm so tired of being influenced by the world and so God put me into a little bubble. No, greater is he that's on the inside of you than he that's in the world. You ought to be able walking into environments like Daniel and the power of the kingdom of God that's on the inside of you can't help but come out. Your words are seasoned with grace. You've got a spirit of wisdom that comes from God dwelling on the inside of you. When you sit at board tables in corporate meetings, you're the one who has witty ideas and solutions that nobody's thought of because God has stepped in the middle of the boardroom because he's got a Daniel or an Esther there and he wants to use you to bring answers from the kingdom of God into that reality. So when it's all said and done, you can glorify him. Maybe he wants to demonstrate to your corporation that there are actually people that will show up to work on time, have a smile on their face, that they're not gonna be gossips when they say they're gonna do what they're gonna do, they actually do it. And then when people ask you at your review, why are you such a good employee? It's because I don't do it for you. I do it because of the God that I belong to. Maybe God wants to raise up some college students on the university campuses that are not gonna surrender to the tsunami of secularism who are gonna rise up and say, I can be the sharpest, I can be the smartest, I'm gonna have healthy relationships, I'm gonna build a healthy family that's gonna turn the tide in our culture and I may just be one Daniel and Babylon, but I'll tell you what, I'm gonna be an influencer and not come under the influence. What would happen if the church of Jesus Christ would actually stand up in the middle of our culture and look like Jesus? Paul writes in Ephesians chapter six. He says, I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that God would open a door for me to boldly proclaim the truth. Where did Paul write that from? He wrote it from jail, called himself an ambassador in chains. He could have said, God, it's not fair that I'm in jail. I didn't ask for this position. I don't wanna be in this job. I don't wanna be somebody who's going through divorce right now. I didn't wanna be a single mother who's raising up some kids. This is not what I planned in my life. But what would happen if we saw the constraints of our life? The constraints, things that we actually think are limitations, things that we think actually disqualify us, like Daniel being in Babylon. What if we actually saw those as open doors of opportunity? He said, you know what, I'm a single mother going through divorce. Who are the other single mothers in pain in my world that I can be a voice of influence to? A word of encouragement. Who needs today to believe that there's actually hope tomorrow? Do you know how many people are hopeless in our world right now? That today they're just hanging on by a thread because they've got something on the inside of them they don't know how to deal with, just like Nebuchadnezzar. It may not be a literal dream, but it may be a problem. It may be a brokenness. It may be a void in their hearts. And they're just, who can give me an understanding of this? Who can give me hope for today? Who can show me a different way? Who, who, who can do that? Maybe it's exactly why God's positioned you where you are. Jesus said in Matthew chapter five, verse 15, people don't put a light or a lamp under a basket, but they put it on a stand so that it gives light to the whole house. I wonder what room that right now is filled with darkness, that God has actually put you on a lamp stand to give light, to give understanding, to bring truth, to bring hope. You might say, well, I don't feel qualified. You don't know the issues I got going on on my life, Pastor. Listen, join the club, but your lids in your life and the captivity of your life does not qualify you or disqualify you from being used to help other people become free from the lids and the captivity of their life. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be available. You know what Daniel had that was unique? You know why the only four young people from Judea that we hear about, Daniel, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego are the only names that we hear of when there were thousands of them. It's because these were four that had made a decision to be different, to live above status quo. They said, yes, God, if you positioned us in Babylon, then we'll be influenced. If you'll open the doors, we'll step through it. And they had made a decision not to defile themselves. I'm not going to surrender my convictions. I'm not going to lose my identity as a child of God. I'm not going to give up my promises that God has made to me. I'm not going to lower my guard and get swept away. I'm gonna trust in God that wherever he has taken me, he is the God who's able to keep me. And wherever he can keep me, I believe God has determined to use me. Where has God put you on a lamp stand? Wherever that is, God's calling us to take the basket off and to let our light shine. Would you stand with me wherever you are today? Portage, online. Some of you in your living room right now, you're watching online. God's just challenging you. Get off your couch, stand up. You say, well, nobody will see me standing up. Heaven sees you standing up. Doesn't matter where you are. Standing up is a significant posture because by standing up, we're saying, God, here I am. Here I am. I'm not going to just sit by and be influenced. I wanna stand up, be an influence. Not just for myself, not just for my ideas, but for things that matter for eternity. If you read the rest of the chapter of Daniel, which I encourage you to do, think it's in verse 26, Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar, he says, there is a God in heaven who interprets dreams and speaks to the hearts of man. There is a God in heaven. What an announcement. What an announcement to somebody who's hopeless. There is a God in heaven. To somebody who's allowed their heart to become hard, there is a God in heaven. Today, we stand in the presence of God. We stand in the presence of one another. God's asking us, will you allow me to use you? Will you be a Daniel in your generation? Would you buy your heads with me all over the room? Today, the response that I'm calling for, that I really felt like the Lord laid on my heart for today is this. It's for us to give God our yes, to say, God, you can have my yes. Yes to what? You see, the reason why Daniel was put into great positions of influence was not just because he was smart, not just because he was good-looking, not just because he was of nobility. It was because he said yes to God. God, if you'll use me, you can have me. The world just assumes that it has your yes. Culture just assumes that it has your yes. Of course, you're gonna do what we tell you to do. Next weekend, we're gonna look at the image that Nebuchadnezzar built and tried to demand everybody bowed down to it. That's how culture is. It says, when you hear the music, when you hear our voice of culture, you bow to us, or there's gonna be repercussions. The world believes that it has your yes. But the God in heaven says, will you be counter-cultural? Will you be subversive enough to say, my yes belongs to God? I wanna be an influence. I wanna be used by God beyond myself, beyond status quo. All over the room, over at Portage Online, wherever you're at, as we stand, today, I'm gonna ask you, if you're saying, God, you can have my yes. Even in my brokenness, even in my weakness, even when I don't know how, even when it's scary, even when there's a trial, my yes does not belong to the world. My yes belongs to God. If that's you, wherever you're at, I want you to signify it by just lifting your hand, just saying, God, you have my yes. Beyond anybody else, beyond status quo, you have my yes. To use me as salt and light, you have my yes. God, here we are, in your presence, with your people. And we say yes to you. We say yes to being light that shines in the midst of darkness. We say yes to being monitors and markers of your great love for every single individual. Lord, we say yes to being counterculture, going against the stream, going against the grain, living for the king of kings. We say yes to your word, even when it stands in opposition to a culture that thinks it's greater than you. Lord, we say yes. Even in our weakness this morning, we say yes to you. We say we will not bow. We will not surrender. We will not be swept away. Our yes belongs to you. And God, my prayer this morning is that you would raise up out of this house Daniels that never saw themselves as Daniels. Esters that never saw themselves as kingdom changers and influencers. Lord, that you would raise up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendagos that are willing to lay their lives down than to surrender to a broken demonic Babylonian culture. God, would you put steel in our spirits and radioactive love because we've gotten close to you? Lord, strengthen us from the inside out. Strengthen our resolve. Strengthen our walk with you. Strengthen our convictions. And Lord, where there's brokenness in our life, would you heal us? In Jesus' name.