Last Sunday, we had the privilege of hearing from Kenny Ng, an elder from Emmanuel EFC on the Three Rs of Persecution based on Daniel 6.
"Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent." (Daniel 6:3,4)
Daniel gets persecuted by the administrators satraps for being righteous and for being faithful to his God. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:12, "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." This world is certainly not a friend to God and His people, the world that did not recognize their creator or received Him when He came in the flesh.
Daniel's response was to continue with his routine of praying three times a day in defiance of the King's decree not to pray to anyone for thirty days but to the King, on pain of execution by being fed to the lions. How Daniel was able to do that was because he had been praying and seeking God consistently all his life: discipline becomes habit, habit character, and character destiny.
The result: God heard Daniel and protected him in the lions' den, and gave poetic justice by having his persecutors themselves with the families thrown into the den instead. God is glorified by the King and the people everywhere who heard about the miracle.
But it is not in every case of persecution that the persecuted gets rescued. Many times, many suffer and die, like Stephen, the first martyr of the church, and all the apostles and thousands upon thousands of Christians down through the centuries and all over the world now, even in our own neighbour: Boycott Indonesia—Stop Murdering Christians Now!
The roll call of the faithful in Hebrews 11 includes those who were miraculously delivered and those who died. They lived and died by faith, as Daniel's friends put it, "... the God we serve is able to save us... and He will rescue us... But even if He does not, ... we will not serve your gods..." (Daniel 3:17) If we live and die by faith in God, this world is not our home and we will truly be the children of Abraham who "was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God." (Hebrews 11:10)