And the king appointed to them a daily portion from the king’s choice provision and from the wine that he drank, and appointed that they should be brought up for three years so that at the end of the time they might stand before the king. / … / But Daniel set his heart not to defile himself with the king’s choice provision and with the wine that the king drank, so he requested of the leader of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. (Dan. 1:5;8)
Today, we are constantly being presented with the diet of Babylon — provisions intended to make us numb or drunk to who we are as God’s people. This food is all around us; our worldly education, careers, and political views of world affairs we take in are seeping subtly into our daily human living as the “king’s choice provision.” We may ask, why is it that today, as God’s people, we find ourselves in low struggles of ambition, striving, jealousy, rebellion, and base addictions? It is all related to what we are eating everyday; we become what we eat. The issue is we have been eating a different diet from the one that God prepared for us. Today God’s people have become constituted by the world without knowing it.
Yet, in the book of Daniel there is an answer — a simple, powerful solution that is being presented to us in the church life today. Our eating! Just as Daniel rejected the king’s food and ate a specific diet that kept him undefiled, we also need to be able to take in God’s words essentially, which is our divine diet. Daniel’s diet was not only physical, it was spiritually essential. His power to withstand the world was from this divine food in the Old Testament. Daniel’s eating was his taking in and believing God’s words, building a new constitution within him. Daniel gained a true life supply and boldness from faith mingled with the word — it was the essential, divine diet that sustained him, not the physical food.
Today we also are eating — week after week we meet, come together for fellowship, and receive so much spiritual help, but what are we really eating? After a rich sharing of the Lord’s speaking, we need to ask ourselves what did we hear? What is echoing in us with lasting impact? Often, what we touch or enjoy as spiritual food goes unchallenged until we face real human challenges in our lives. It is in these moments that we find that the sudden inspiration, stories, or pieces of theology we claim as food are unable to give us the power to overcome these human crises. What did we really eat essentially, giving us a true spiritual impact? What is this essential diet?
This essential, divine diet is God’s words as spirit and life coming into you to be your new constitution as His people. In John 6, the Lord tells us clearly that “the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (v. 63). This diet — the spirit and the Word — is our salvation. Today, we eat to be saved from this generation just as Daniel — he was a normal person, facing the same worldly influence as us; yet that divine diet, became a constitution in him revealed in the moment of crisis, supplying him the strength to withstand. Whenever we eat, we need to be saved and reconstituted by the Lord’s words. If there is no true experience of God’s living word bringing us into fellowship with God, we are not eating. It is this divine diet that makes us acceptable before the Lord; there is nothing else we can offer that will make us one with Him and His desire. Today, we are able to withstand the world because of eating and drinking God’s word in spirit in the New Testament age. This eating is the ultimate solution to our lives — it yields a true impact in our spirit when we read His words. And it is from this kind of eating that we are reconstituted. Our eating has a specific result: it brings us into mutual satisfaction with God. God and man are both a rest in that mutual satisfaction.
Throughout the book of Daniel, we see a person living in his time, surrounded by all of the worldly influence and yet overcoming, preserved for the Lord’s use and with an inward condition to coordinate with the Lord for His move in that age. Today, our eating of this specific, divine diet — the spirit and the word — is for our understanding, tranquility and coordination with God’s move on the earth. May we be truly constituted to be the age turners today.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 10/29/2023, not reviewed by the speaker.)