As was his custom

Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. – Daniel 6.10

About 15 years ago we went through a huge blow to the work here. It was enough that we considered leaving. The church was small. We had three couples coming other than our family and on a Saturday morning they sent me an email. They told me that unless I conformed to their wishes they were all leaving the church.

I couldn’t conform – so what do I do next?

I prayed and started looking at the word of God. I am not sure how I came across this passage over those next few days, but there it was. God gave the answer to what you do when you get bad news.

When the notice came telling Daniel he could not pray to his God he did what he did every day. The Holy Spirit used that to keep us going. If David could ‘according to his custom’ with this decree from the king we could what ‘was our custom’ despite the email from the folks who had been in our church.

Daniel was not rattled by bad news. He didn’t get in a funk and take a ‘woe is me’ attitude. He had the faith to just keep on plugging away and trust God to sort out the rest. That preaches easier than it lives. Our flesh gets in the way and our eyes only see the visible. Like David when things are not going well or we get that knock on the door or letter in the post of email or text message or phone call that shales us to the core we need to stop, pray, and keep on doing ‘as is our custom.’