Quote for the Day
(*Not from Scripture passage*) “Like father, like son.”
Today's Prayer
This week pray that God continues to focus your life on growing with Him. Ask God to influence you in a way that allows those around you to grow closer to His likeness rather than yours.
Daniel 5:1-9
Daniel 5:1-9 (NIV)1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in , so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. 3 So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the in , and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. 4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.7 The king called out for the enchanters, astrologers and diviners to be brought and said to these wise men of , “Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”8 Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. 9 So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew more pale. His nobles were baffled.
Message
Last week we saw the final conversion of King Nebuchadnezzar. After numerous calls from God, he finally answered the door. (Or should I say heart?) As we move to the next part of Daniel’s life story we see the next leader Daniel will work with. Belshazzar is Nebuchadnezzar’s son. What we see in the first few verses of chapter 5 is a son who acts very much like his father PRIOR to the father’s understanding of God’s true power.It is party time and Belshazzar is having his thousand closest friends and advisors over for dinner when suddenly out of nowhere a hand appears and begins to write on the wall. Just like dad he sends for all the smart guys to figure it out, and just like dad he offers riches and power as the reward for the answer. As we have seen over and over, the smart guys are not in tune with the message if it comes from God, and once again they cannot answer the question of what the handwriting says.What is your influence over your family and children? Are they just like you? God’s intention is that they are replicas of God, with a major influence by the role you play in their life. The reality of a child’s life, or even marriage for that matter, is that we gravitate to become like those we love. Have you given the best example for those that love you? Do they need some additional influence? Do you? Do they love what you love? It is never too late to change what we are influencing others to be like.