Pathways Press.com

Written by Caleb Mathis, a contemporary pastor and writer. This is an excerpt from his work “Daniel: Keys to Surviving the Exile You Don’t Know You’re In.”

Even if you don’t feel like it, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you’re an exile. It’s important to recognize that fact, or you’ll be spinning your wheels in the wrong direction. When followers of Jesus are more formed by their political ideology than their theology, we’ve forgotten we’re exiles. When comfort matters more than conformity to Christ, we’ve lost the plot. When individual freedoms eclipse love of neighbor; when we’re more familiar with the numbers in our bank account than the chapter and verse of the scriptures; when we look and act and think and inhabit the world just like everyone else, we’ve not only forgotten we’re exiles, we’ve been assimilated. The dominant culture has won. The people of God have always been minority populations in the world—and they didn’t seek to be anything else. That minority population toppled the Roman Empire not by force, politics, or violence, but simply by being different. In a highly classed society, the Church treated prince and pauper alike. With hunger and sickness rampaging, the Church emptied itself to feed, clothe, and bandage the forgotten. When sexual relationships had no boundaries, the Church practiced minority sexual ethics. When the world said Caesar was Lord, the Church responded by saying that was Jesus’ title, and then they actually lived like it was true. Perhaps more than anyone else in the scriptures, Daniel understood exile—physical and spiritual. He not only survived his time of exile, he thrived under it. More than ever, we need his example… As much as I love Daniel, he puts me between a rock and a hard place. He leaves me with a choice. I can invest in the comfort of my life here and now: better job, bigger car, greener lawn— or I can humbly accept my life as an exile, a citizen of a coming-but-not-yet-realized Kingdom built on foundations of love and grace, mercy and sacrifice, that our culture will never, ever understand. I can build my life, or I can build something larger and more lasting. What I’m pretty sure I can’t do, though, is build both. Faithful people do faithful things, right? Daniel pushes me to get moving by making peace with being different, leaning on others, becoming a self-feeder, doing good work, and elevating my vision beyond myself. It’s the only way to survive, even thrive, in this exile.

Prayer:

Written by Henry Martyn (1781-1812), an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia.

O Send thy Light and Thy Truth, that we may live always near to Thee, our God. Let us feel Thy love, that we may be as it were already in heaven, that we may do all our work as the angels do theirs. Let us be ready for every work, be ready to go out or come in, to stay or to depart, just as Thou shalt appoint. Lord, let us have no will of our own, or consider our true happiness as depending in the slightest degree on anything that can befall us outwardly, but as consisting altogether in conformity to Thy will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.