Daniel 6:19–20: “Then the king arose very early in the morning and went in haste to the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried out with a lamenting voice to Daniel. The king spoke, saying to Daniel, ‘Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?'”

October 17th, 2021 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Daniel 5 described the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians, and in this chapter we see Daniel living under the new ruler of the kingdom. Darius the Mede took note of Daniel’s wisdom and leadership and placed him as 1 of 3 governors over all the land. When the other governors and leaders found out that Darius was considering placing Daniel over the entire realm, it didn’t sit well with them. They were extremely jealous of the king’s favored counselor, who they knew prayed every day to his God.

Through flattery, they conned Darius into signing a deeply flawed law, a decree making it a crime for anyone to pray or ask anything of any god or man except from the king for 30 days. When Darius realized how they had used him, he was extremely upset, since he was so pleased with Daniel. The men threw Daniel into a lion’s den, and the next morning, after a miserable night, the king rushed to see if Daniel’s God had protected him. Although they meant to do away with Daniel, God had other plans and once again turned things around to bring about good. We don’t know what exactly happened in the lions’ den. All we are told is that the lions’ mouths were shut. The evangelist D. L. Moody said he thought Daniel probably used one of the lions for a pillow that night.

There is an old story of a persecuted believer who was being chased by soldiers that were under orders to put him to death. He found a cave and rushed in to hide. When they solder’s came to the cave, they saw a spider’s web across the entrance and determined that the man couldn’t have gone in there or the web would have been broken. Hours later, when the believer came out of the cave, he walked into the web and realized why the soldiers hadn’t looked for him there. “Where God is not, a wall is but a spider’s web; Where God is, a spider’s web is as a wall,” he said.

“LORD, we ask that You make spider webs as walls in our lives this day, in Jesus’ name.”