06 Oct
2024

Daniel Resolved

Passage: Daniel 1:1-8, 15-21

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” — Colossians 2:6-8

SERMON OUTLINE:

1.Life in the city
2.Faith in the city
3.The God of the city

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

How might you explain the difference of being conformed or transformed? What’s one way you’ve changed in the past 10 years? What contributed to that change in your life?

Read Daniel 1:1-8, 15-21. What challenges, encourages, or sparks questions for you in these passages? What phrases stand out to you that help shape your understanding of God’s character and your identity as a child of God?

The power of Babylon aimed to shape the exiles, like Daniel, into their image. A few ways they did this was through isolation (exile v3), indoctrination (language and literature v4), comfort (food v5), and confusion (name changes vv6-7). How have you experienced or observed our culture seek to shape people in these ways?

We are always being formed. There are ways that we are sometimes unintentionally formed through stories we believe, relationships we keep, and the habits of our lives. James K.A. Smith wrote in You Are What You Love, “Look at your daily, weekly, monthly, and annual routines. What are the things you do that do something to you? What are the secular liturgies in your life? What vision of the good life is carried in those liturgies? What Story is embedded in those cultural practices? What kind of person do they want you to become? To what kingdom are these rituals aimed?” Share with each other one routine (daily, weekly, monthly, or annual) from your life and discuss together how these routines seek to form you.

In verse 8 we learn Daniel “resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.” What did his resolve look like? Why was resolve necessary?

Intentional spiritual formation includes faithful teaching, Christ-centered community, and the practices of Jesus. These three elements work together. Have you experienced a tendency towards one of these three without the others? How do these three aspects of formation work together?

Dallas Willard stated in The Great Omission, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” With gratitude and newness of life, we follow in Jesus’s practices including: Scripture, reading, prayer, silence and solitude, simplicity, Sabbath, and fasting. What do these practices look like in your life? How can we as a community encourage one another in these practices without a sense of judgment or earning anything?

PRAYER

Share with your group how they can be praying for you: what is weighing on you from this past week? What are you praising God for from this past week?

Zephaniah 3:17  /  “The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Romans 12:2 / “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”