Go on a Rich Diet!!

How many diet and exercise plans have you been on??

As you know I compete in both triathlons and hockey and while I love both sports, there is a very significant difference for me. In hockey, I can always go to the bench after the end of a shift but in a triathlon the only shift you get is switching gears! No one else can take your place. There is no DH, no bullpen, you can’t just say pass. It’s all you every step of the journey.

It is the same thing with our lives, every time we have a decision to make, we get a turn. The more conscious we become of the significance of those decisions, the more we will embrace those choices. The question is this: “ In the light of eternity what difference will this make?”

What thoughts will I dwell on...man, can I get in a funk when the self defeating thoughts are allowed to roam freely. Who will the people be that dominate my conversations? How will I direct my desires? How will I take care of my body? Will I allow myself to be interrupted? All these things when I add them up make up my life and determine its course. No one else can play my part.

One of the champions of choosing well, getting his whole diet figured out and being incredibly wise is Daniel. Here in his story we find a man who was definitely in a place that was way out of his control. His land was conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and he was an unwelcome foreigner in a new country. He lost everything he knew from his family to his culture, his status and his name. Did he still have choices to make? Absolutely and he took every opportunity to exercise them. Get ready for today’s spiritual workout!

The name Daniel means ‘the Lord will judge’. He had nobility in Israel, he had nothing in Babylon. This nation and its leaders decided to cart off the most sacred objects from Israel including its students who had the highest potential and enter them into their leadership training. He was now known as Belteshazzar and where we may have gone fighting tooth and nail, we find Daniel shifting his energy in other ways.


In the Bible, Babylon represents everything there is about excess when it comes to luxuries.
The merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries. Revelation 18:3
It was a city that was materialistic and was intoxicating in every way.
The inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. Revelation 17:2
It was a place where your view of reality could all too easily become distorted where your god becomes whatever feels right for you...forget about the naked truth of consequences.
Daniel walks into all of this and -

Resolve before God that no one else will live my life for me v1-10

It was certainly quite the science project. Take the cream of the crop of the nation that you have crushed and completely immerse them in your culture, your beliefs and train them to be in your service...but what do you do with young men who clearly have a different way of going about their lives?

For Daniel it was obvious and the matter was clear. Am I going to go mainstream and become soft. Everything about a steady diet of rich food and wine spoke of excess to Daniel. This was not the plan that he grew up on and He wasn’t about to change his steady diet of being rich toward God. He had resolve and the decision was not to defile himself in this way. In his day, he would have been bound as well by many of the ceremonial laws that surrounded food as well which are not the case for us today.

God has given us a tiny measure of what He has in limitless supply and that is our decision making ability. When I sign up for a triathlon on the Subaru website and pay the registration fee there is a point of no return. You resolve that you will run the race (Hebrews 12:1,2)and you begin training.


In the Christian life, we are not in a sprint, we are in this for the long haul and we need to stay true to the convictions that God has given us.

I love the verses in 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 for those of us who actively resolving to run the race:
After you, insert your name into these verses and be empowered by the truth of His Word spoken over you.


I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

So Daniel makes the decision and resolves to not defile himself in this way.


Did you know the greatest difference in concentration camps between people who give up and those who remain resilient is the sense that they still have control over something however little that is. The same is true of nursing homes and for those seniors who still making the decision as to how their room is set up to deciding their entertainment. Daniel knew he still had choices in his environment and he exercised them for the glory of God.

Let’s also remember that taking this very decision involved great risk for Daniel. One should tread very lightly with a man like King Nebuchadnezzar in charge. When Zedekiah as a propped up ruler rebelled against him, the king had his sons killed before his eyes and then had his eyes cut out.

Choose to detoxify and simplify and watch God work v11-16


The chief official is obviously reluctant with Daniel’s request, but God is already working in the official’s heart to cause him to admire his request. We read that God causes favour and sympathy to be shown to him.

When has God chosen to show you favour in the eyes of others?
Did anything precede that on your part? Often, we have to put ourselves out there so to speak in a place of vulnerability, a place of risk where we tell God, OK, ‘I am 100% trusting you on this initiative’.

However with regards to the request there is a very big ‘IF’!!

He doesn’t want his head to be on the platter if this experiment goes bad so they come to a happy compromise.

The test experiment will last 10 days and Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah will only eat vegetables and drink water.

For these four men this was certainly the first of many opportunities for God to shine brightly through their lives. The call to live simply was purely on a physical level but it would be naive for us to think that this was only about being vegetarians.

At the very heart of this test was to set these men apart from all the rest of the king’s servants. The fact that they made this decision meant that all the eyes of the others were strictly on them. They weren’t interested in blending in, they were prepared to stand out and as we read further in this book, more and more areas of their lives were going to surface and shine from their prayer lives to their unstoppable faith in God and God alone.

Speaking of going mainstream and being soft, we live in a culture of consumerism and excess. It is so easy for us to just blend in to the culture around us and not stand out. Our spending patterns, our entertainment choices, our success rate at marriage...there is unfortunately very little that separates us.

Now while I’m not calling for us to move down the road and set up shop with the Amish in St. Jacobs, when is the last time we made a decision to simplify so that we could hear the voice of God more clearly in our lives and allow Him to shine more brightly?

We have learned that God has forgiven us and redeemed us but we easily become lazy at knowing the facts and not living out the truth in its transforming work in our lives. We know that we don’t need the spiritual disciplines in order to go to heaven so we don’t bother with them and we know that God knows all our needs so we skip out on the exercise of prayer and this is when we lose out.

Daniel didn’t want to lose out so he went on a diet plan for God!

Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you to go on a diet of rice and beans just yet, but let’s take an honest look at our lives and where are we becoming soft?

• sleeping in vs resting in God

• listening to the opinions of talk shows vs hearing from God

• television shows vs watching God show up in our lives.


I watched a couple of great shows this week. One show was actually a ride home with Shawn Cayer as he shared about how his daughter Rachel is beginning to pray.

Another show was the baptism of Jay and Fred at the Gord and Anne’s home on Thursday night.

When we get consumed by all that this world has to offer we all too easily lose our footing, our minds can become fuzzy.

If we allow the world to steal our hearts, we have all but lost the battle. Gary Thomas

Let me say this also...

Even when it comes to pursuing our faith, that very same mentality easily crosses over. We can easily become soft when we only feed off what others say about God. We consume services, Bible studies, events and Christian books all with a desire to fill our appetites. All too easily we just let other people keeping feeding us instead of learning to feed ourselves.

When did it change at church? Most people come to church with their napkin tucked into their shirt and ready to eat and forget to take it out when they leave! Where else is the napkin supposed to go? It was meant to go over our arm as a server.

Gary Thomas writes in The Beautiful Fight,

The great use of the church is to help men and women to do without it...Church services are diets of worship. They are meals. All who are hungry will take them, and if wise, regularly. But no worker is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them.
And here is when the napkin comes out...

Service reminds us that Christianity isn’t about keeping our faith as much as it is about spreading our faith. Get your servant towels out; church meetings don’t define us. What defines us is what we do with it out there!

And that is what defines Southside and that is what defines each and every one of us. They already know we go here for the most part but the verdict is still out on whether it is worth it for them.


Let the results of your life with God speak for themself v17-21

God blessed these four men with heightened spiritual sensitivity

Because they chose to go without, they were blessed with:

Knowledge – incredible insights – God wants to bless you with fresh revelations into His Word
Understanding of all kinds of literature – They had a wealth of understanding that went into all areas of life and learning – they had incredibly sharp minds

Understanding of visions and dreams – They were blessed with prophetic insight and were enabled by God to speak into the lives of others and especially to the leaders in the nation
10X better when it came to wisdom compared to those with earthly wisdom....hands down, make no mistake about it, they stood head and shoulders above all the rest. When they stood up for their faith and beliefs, others recognized it.

I was sharing stories with my pastor friend Dan Barber about how our kids were doing in school. Dan’s daughter is just starting HS this year and is now in a new circle of friends. One day she was caught off guard because one of her friends referred to her as ‘holy’ in a good way. It wasn’t because she carried a large Bible to school or a cross necklace that she was wearing. The other girls noticed the way that she talked about others and herself, what it was filled with and what it was free of.

The Champion ran an article about our family on Friday and we were able to share about the joy of simplicity and the freedom from stuff that we felt in Mexico.

I began this morning by talking about the decisions that we make and the question, ‘In the light of eternity what difference does this make?’

The fact is that temporal pleasures will always crowd out eternal ones. We are told to resist the urge to fulfill our appetite with cheap substitutes for the same reason our parents told us not to eat cookies before supper. If we are truly going to be satisfied spiritually we need to learn the patience that comes in waiting and getting hungry for God to reveal Himself and show up in our lives instead of running for ‘sin substitutes’.

Name a sin and you can always find its ‘holy’ opposite. Examples are learning to give instead of stealing, encouraging others instead of gossiping about them, sacrificial love for others instead of lust, reaching out to others in need instead of self absorption

The Takeaway....

One of the best things we can do is become conscious of making decisions. So set apart ten days, decide to go on a Daniel adventure and for 10 days choose to honor God in that area.

Maybe like Daniel it will involve what you eat or what you choose to feed your mind.

Decide to go 10 days without complaining about anything!

Read the whole book of Daniel in 10 days

Cut out the sheets that state ‘temporary’ and ‘eternal’ and paste them where they appropriately go for 10 days. For example: place ‘temporary’ on your fridge, your tv, your wallet,...everything in there goes real fast but put eternal on your bball hoop if you play with someone else, put eternal on the chair where you meet with God or by the night table by your bed if that is where you pray. Put eternal on your BBQ if you have friends over and talk about your spiritual life over the meal.



I saw a guy in Subway the other day with a UPC symbol tattooed on the back of his neck complete with his birthdate in numbers under the line and it reminded me that one day our lives will be scanned and it is my prayer that it will be found rich with great decisions that honoured God!

Service is our soul salsa....Ministry opportunity guide