But
even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not
serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."
(Daniel
3:18 NIV)
Some
decisions have to be made before their time. If you wait until the
moment of temptation, you may be swayed to make the wrong choice.
The decision Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego made not to bow down to
the golden image of the king was made when they began to serve God
and predetermined
not to serve or worship any other god or image.
The
decision Daniel made to continue to pray to God after the kings
decree that petitions could be made to none other except him, was
made long before the decree. His initial decision to serve God was
to serve Him alone and none other.
A
false god or idol is anything we put before our relationship with
God. If we give ourselves to or engage in anything that we know goes
against God’s revealed will, we are serving an idol, another god.
Many gods will reveal themselves to us and attempt to persuade us to
bow down before them. Now, we wouldn’t necessarily recognize them
as gods, thinking of them more as desires or the love of the world as
found in 1 John 2: 15-16:
Do
not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the
world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the
boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from
the world.
Let’s
take a common one like adultery. The time to make up your mind you
will not commit it is the moment you get married. If you wait until
you are tempted to make the decision, you are in trouble.
About
any temptation we would fall to, we need to have already
predetermined not to fall to it. And then, when the temptation
comes, we need to FLEE. One of our problems is we haven’t made up
our minds yet, and when the temptation comes, we try to resist it
while making up our minds about it. Scripture tells us to flee
temptation, not to try and resist it.
Here’s
a good plan: predetermine not to sin against God, and then flee
temptation. The
world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God
lives forever. (1
John 2:17) Let
us predetermine to be always faithful to God and depend upon and
trust in Him to bring it about.
