to God be the glory

This post is dedicated to Zach Blickens, a friend of mine who is a youth pastor and worship pastor at River of Life in Cedar Rapids, IA. You can find more info about him and his wife's ministry here.

Last Thursday, I heard a message on Daniel 2. Daniel is a great example of a young leader. Many people of faith can benefit by taking his example of leadership. In this chapter, King Nebuchadnezzar can't sleep due to repeated dreams that keep him awake. He demanded his magicians, scorcerors, and "dream experts" to not only interpret the dream, but first tell him what the dream was. If they can't, they will be put to death. Well this was impossible and they said no man can do this. Daniel and his three close friends- Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah- got wrapped up in this, too. They came together and fervently prayed to God for wisdom. God granted them the mystery of the king's dream and Daniel ended up telling the king his dream in great detail.

I encourage you to read about the dream and the whole chapter. There are many points to be made, but the one I want to bring up is how Daniel gave the glory to God. First, when he received the mystery of the king's dream, he praised God. Then, standing before the king, he gave God full credit for being able to relay the king's dream and its interpretation. In addition to that, he gave credit to his friends twice in the chapter for their accountability to him. After all, they prayed fervently to God with Daniel and ate the vegetables and water diet with him in the previous chapter.

Now why do I dedicate this blog to Zach? Because he always praises God for gifts that he and others have, good things that happen in his life and those around him, and probably even the bad things sometimes too. He doesn't take credit at all when he receives compliments because he knows that everything good comes from God. So when I try to be more like that, I think of Daniel's character in these few chapters, and Zach too.