Adult Bible Study April 13, 2008

Lesson Text: Daniel 3:10-13; 16-18, 21, 24
By Ken Hawkley
E-mail: louise050@comcast.net

About a month ago I read a story of a man in New Brunswick, Canada, who saved his wife and children when their roof collapsed under the weight of record-breaking snowfall. He didn’t survive. I am guessing that he didn’t rationalize what he did; he likely reacted out of deep-seated commitment to making sure his family survived. Sometimes faithfulness is like that. It is doing what we hold deep inside without even thinking of what we are doing.

On the other end, we see cases like Eliot Spitzer, who was caught in a sex scandal. I like to believe that he didn’t suddenly lose his way overnight. I think he may have drifted away from his general decency a little at a time until he was so far away that the chain to his anchor broke. Faithfulness is sometimes checking where we are in relation to our anchor.

It is not enough to ask whether we are being faithful to what we believe about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I think we also need to ask whether those newer in the faith are getting the message from us.. The Word of God is supposed to be a living word; I say it is supposed to be a lived Word.

We cannot simply teach it in Sunday school or during the sermon and believe that others will catch it. We must take them along with us. By doing so, we will find ourselves more emboldened to live more faithfully as we demonstrate to others what a faithful life looks like. This is no time for false Mennonite humility. We are all followers of Christ. We learn by watching, by doing, by talking, and by praying.

Remember that the three in the fiery furnace in our story today had to show their true grit because they acted out what they believed. That’s why they were noticed and why they stood out. First, they knew to whom they were anchored, and then they acted accordingly, likely without much rationalization.. Faith, as they say, is a verb.