Think it through

Sign up to receive updates and reminders

Returning to duty

How do we carry out our King's business in the court of the earthly king?

  • tell the truth when shading it would be easier
  • give proper credit
  • refuse to game a metric
  • serve a difficult student
  • correct an error
  • protect someone with less institutional influence
  • finish the work entrusted to you
  • resist career anxiety
  • return to prayer and worship

Sweet prevailing

There's another form of "prevailing" that coopts Christians because victory can look like a blessing. 

Here are quotations from CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters:

  • “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
  • “A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”
  • “You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...'I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”
  • “Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.”
  • “We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”
  • “We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

The danger to Christians is when we can be convinced to Christians when it can get them to retain Christian vocabulary while adopting the system's definition of the good life.

Consecrated boasting protects against the Accuser. The Accuser gains leverage through charges that must be hidden, denied, rationalized, or defended. Consecrated boasting voluntarily brings weakness into the open and relocates the believer’s defense from personal adequacy to Christ’s adequacy. Examples:

  • Job 1:9-11. "Then Satan answered the Lord and said, 'Does Job fear God for no reason? 10 Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.'"
  • Zechariah 3:1-2. "Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him [Joshua]. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand[b] plucked from the fire?'”
  • Revelation 12:10. "And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.'"
  • Statements of reassurance against the Accuser:
    • • “The Accuser cannot weaponize what I have already surrendered to Christ.”
      • “I do not defend my righteousness; I appeal to Christ’s.”
      • “My weakness is evidence of my need for grace, not evidence that grace has failed.”
      • “I confess what the Accuser exposes, but I reject the condemnation he attaches to it.”
      • “My failures may testify against my strength, but they testify for my need of Christ.”
      • “The Accuser says, ‘Look what you are.’ Faith answers, ‘Look whose I am.’”
      • “I do not need to conceal my weakness because my standing before God does not depend upon appearing strong.”
      • “Where accusation says, ‘You are disqualified,’ the gospel says, ‘Christ has justified you.’”
      • “I can admit the charge without accepting the sentence, because Christ has borne the sentence.”
      • “Confessed weakness deprives accusation of secrecy.”
      • “Repented sin can no longer function as blackmail.”
      • “The believer defeats accusation not by proving innocence but by pointing to the Lamb.”
      • “Satan prosecutes the record; Christ answers with the cross.”
      • “The Accuser points to my insufficiency; I agree—and boast in Christ’s sufficiency.”
      • “My weakness is not my identity; it is the stage on which Christ’s strength is displayed.”
      • “The Accuser wants weakness to produce shame; Christ turns weakness into testimony.”
      • “Boasting in weakness converts evidence for the prosecution into evidence for grace.”
      • “What I bring willingly into the light cannot easily be used against me from the shadows.”
      • “The Accuser says, ‘Hide this.’ Christ says, ‘Bring it into the light and let grace speak.’”
      “Consecrated boasting is refusing to let either achievement or failure become the basis of identity.”

September 15 and 16

Why is there ambiguity in interpreting prophecy?


September 8 and 9

Elements that make Daniel 7 essential:

  • Daniel 7 establishes the basic prophetic framework.
  • Daniel 7 changes the reader's perspective on history.
  • The "little horn" becomes a template for later tyrants.
  • Daniel 7 tells us where history is going before Daniel 8–11 describes how difficult the road will be.
  • Daniel 7 introduces the heavenly court that explains earthly events.
  • Daniel 7 establishes the sovereignty issue that dominates the rest of Daniel.
  • Daniel 7 establishes the persecution-of-the-saints theme.
  • Daniel 7 establishes the distinction between temporary victory and ultimate victory.
  • Daniel 7 indicates the endpoint that Daniel 12 completes.

September 1 and 2: Our place in the world

We live and work under the reign of the Son of Man—cultivating, humanizing, and stewarding our part of God's world. This is where Daniel's eschatology becomes our operating philosophy rather than simply information about the future.

If Daniel 7:9-14 tell us where history is going, how should that change how we work at the university this week?

  • We can work without panic because the Ancient of Days already reigns.
  • We should recognize beastly tendencies without becoming beastly ourselves. We become beastly when we assert sovereignty ourselves rather than living under God's sovereignty.
  • Just as the Son of Man receives dominion that leads to flourishing, we receive responsibility as stewardship on our part.
  • Ww work toward restoration of the world rather than just resistance against the beasts.

August 25 and 26

How can an institution (a business, school, government agency, or church) remain outwardly successful and impressive while becoming inwardly "beastlike" (predatory, consuming of people, and self-exalting)? What are the warning signs of this shift?

A rule of life: Think theologically. Work faithfully. Exercise borrowed authority responsibly. Build what promotes flourishing. Resist what becomes beastly. Do not panic when evil appears powerful. Do not worship what is temporary.

What should Christians do differently Monday morning because Daniel 7 is true?

Authority is stewardship, not possession.

Grow character as fast as capability.

Here is a video that's a good refresher about the book of Daniel.

I found this summary of the video:


Prophetic Vision and Structure

  1. The book of Daniel's two-part structure and language shift emphasize the significance of Chapters 2 and 7 as keys to understanding the book's later prophecies.
  2. Daniel's vision in Chapter 2 depicts a statue of four metals symbolizing a sequence of human kingdoms, culminating in God's kingdom overthrowing earthly powers.

Divine Kingdom and Human Empires

  1. Chapter 7 presents four beasts representing arrogant kingdoms, with the final beast embodying an evil empire led by a king who exalts himself above God and persecutes His people.
  2. The book offers a pattern and promise that human kingdoms become violent when they glorify their own power, but God will ultimately confront them and establish His rule over all nations.

Faith and Patience

  1. Daniel's visions encourage patience among God's people, urging them to wait for His kingdom while remaining faithful despite persecution and exile.


Created with MailerLite