Can You Trust God for Your Prosperity?
When getting ahead tempts you to compromise, Daniel’s example invites you to trust God with your future and keep your integrity.
Certain professions get a bad rap because their members seem willing to do anything to get ahead. I’ll wager you immediately thought of lawyers and politicians. But before pointing at anyone else, shouldn’t you and I examine ourselves?
Each of us feels the pull to look out for Number One. The drive to get ahead and secure our future can lead us to justify crooked means. The occupation isn’t to blame—it’s the crookedness of our motives and actions.
Proverbs 11:3 (ESV) contrasts two kinds of people: “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”
I’d like to think of myself as a good person. But if I’ve betrayed someone’s trust, lied about someone, or tried to assassinate another person’s character, I’ve committed an act of treachery. Wanting security doesn’t excuse abandoning integrity.
What happens when someone else’s integrity stands in the way of our ambitions? Daniel 6 brings that question—and this proverb—to life.
Daniel distinguished himself among the king’s three high officials and 120 governors. An excellent spirit marked his work, and King Darius planned to place him over the whole kingdom.
Jealous of his success, the other officials searched for grounds to accuse him. They found neither corruption nor negligence. So they targeted his faithfulness to God.
Appealing to Darius’s vanity, they persuaded him to decree that, for thirty days, anyone making a petition to any god or man except the king would be thrown into the lions’ den.
Daniel knew the decree had been signed. Yet he continued kneeling in prayer three times a day, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, just as he had done before. His allegiance to God hadn’t changed because obedience had become dangerous.
Thrown into the lions’ den, Daniel survived the night. He told the king, “My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm” (Daniel 6:22 ESV).
The king then ordered Daniel’s malicious accusers thrown into the den, where the lions killed them.
The story’s climax isn’t the calamity of the treacherous, but the prosperity of the upright: Daniel prospered during the reigns of Darius and Cyrus. Through upright living, Daniel received the prosperity those treacherous officials coveted and pursued through crooked schemes.
Daniel obeyed without knowing whether God would spare him from the lions. His integrity guided his choices; trust in God allowed him to leave the outcome in God’s hands.
We aren’t promised Daniel’s position or his miraculous rescue. But in Christ, our future is secure, and our eternal prosperity is assured. We needn’t betray someone else to protect what God has already secured for us.
Today, trust God with all the details of your life, especially your desire for comfort and security. Let integrity guide your choices, even when doing right seems costly. In Christ, you are already rich in what matters eternally.
