In this verse, Daniel is preferred among all of these other key leaders of the great Medo-Persian empire, as he was among the Babylonians. Why? Because an excellent spirit was in him. Here is a man in his late 80’s, and we cannot help but harken back to that time when he was in a cell as a teenager, confronted with a temptation to disobey God in some small ceremonial law of his religion. At the time, you will recall, there was something that Daniel did which was to affect his entire extraordinary career for all these seventy some years that were yet to come.

“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s food, nor with the wine which he drank” (Daniel 1:8). The matter at hand may seem trivial to some. But he determined to obey God in all things, even what he ate and drank. Daniel obeyed God in little things and was able to obey Him in big matters, too.

I hope perhaps that the tremendous implications of that statement might become even more apparent now that he is an older man, who has been obeying God all along. That he determined that he would not defile himself before God, that the one all consuming passion of his heart was to refrain from breaking even the least of the laws of his God. What a tremendous determination. I hope that same determination is yours.

Heavenly Father, give me strength to obey You in the big and seemingly insignificant details of my life. Lord, let me live my life to please You in all things and do all my work to the satisfaction of anyone over me and to Your glory…