Hearing His Voice #178

He urged them to ask the God of heaven to show them his mercy by telling them the secret. . . . That night the secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision.

Daniel 2:18-19

Nebuchadnezzar had made an unreasonable demand with potentially dreadful consequences. The pressure struck terror in the sages of Babylon, but it compelled Daniel and his friends to pray. Instead of despairing at the impossibility—after all, who among us would really expect God to reveal someone else’s dream to us?—Daniel took the impossibility to God. He didn’t resign his hope to the God who works in mysterious ways, or assume that God had already revealed His Word centuries before and therefore wasn’t interested in a pagan king’s dreams today. He appealed to the living God whose voice spoke all of creation into being.

So Daniel and his friends counted on God’s mercy and boldly asked Him to tell them a secret. That night, God answered by revealing the secret in a vision. As it turns out, the pagan king’s dream had been given by God in the first place. This wasn’t a psychological outworking of a disturbed mind, the fruit of a guilty conscience, or a demonically inspired thought of an idolater. Nebuchadnezzar did not believe in God; in fact, he worshiped false gods. Yet the God of heaven spoke to him in a dream, and then revealed the dream and its meaning to Daniel in a vision. The “revealer of mysteries” (Daniel 2:47) was very vocal about what was happening because He had authored the mysteries to begin with.

This story ought to stretch our understanding of how—and to whom—God speaks. We know He has spoken in Scripture, but Scripture itself tells us that He speaks in a multitude of ways. God has not put Himself in a box. He can speak to anyone at any time for any reason—and reveal any mystery that confounds us.

Lord, You gave Daniel a vision simply because he asked and didn’t limit You with his expectations. I relinquish my expectations too. Please give me insight into the problems of my life and of my world.