When Your Dreams Die, God’s Work May Just Be Beginning

Daniel 1:3, 6 – “Then the king commanded Ashpenaz…to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility…Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.”

In anyone’s book, this would be an absolute tragedy! Your nation has been conquered by a pagan nation. Your king has been captured, the temple of God has been pillaged, and some of the holy vessels have been carried away as spoils of war. And you, along with some of the brightest and best young people in your nation, are taken captive to a foreign land 900 miles away, where you don’t even speak the language. Everything familiar to you has been ripped away, and the future you imagined for yourself has disappeared.

And it could actually have been worse.

The Bible never says this, so I cannot say it was true, but think about it. Daniel and his three friends were placed under the authority of a man called the chief of the eunuchs (see verse 8). Furthermore, nowhere in the Bible are Daniel and his three friends mentioned as having wives or families. I cannot help but wonder if these young men were made eunuchs as well. If that were true, their tragedy and disappointment would have been even greater. They would never have been able to have families of their own, and if they had ever returned to Jerusalem, their condition would have prevented them from entering the assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:1).

Think about the heartbreak these young men may have experienced. Their homeland was gone, their freedom was gone, their future was uncertain, and they may even have lost the hope of having families of their own.

And yet, they never lost their faith in God!

They could not control what the Babylonians called them, but they could control how they responded to their circumstances.

They made up their minds that they would not defile themselves with the king’s food and wine. They were living in a pagan land, surrounded by a pagan culture, but they were determined to remain faithful to the God they served.

What amazes me most is that, in the midst of all this heartbreak and calamity, God was right there with them! At every challenging turn in their lives, God was at work. He blessed them, gave them wisdom and favor, and at times intervened in their lives in miraculous ways.

These young men probably could not see the full picture of what God was doing while they were living through their darkest days. They may have wondered why God had allowed these terrible things to happen to them. They may have longed for the days when they lived in Judah with their families, before everything fell apart.

But God had not abandoned them. He was working out a plan far greater than anything they could have imagined.

Their very presence in Babylon became a testimony to the power, faithfulness, and sovereignty of God. Through these men, God revealed Himself to pagan kings and powerful rulers.

Their faithfulness would influence people and events far beyond anything they could have anticipated.

And think about this: God considered their lives so important to His plan that He made sure an entire book of the Bible was devoted to recording what He did through Daniel and his friends in Babylon!

We know very little about their lives before the captivity. We know nothing about their childhoods, their families, or the dreams they may have had for their futures. But God has preserved for us the story of what happened when their lives took a turn they never would have chosen.

What they may have viewed as the end of their dreams became the setting in which God revealed His glory!

That brings me to a question I need to ask myself, and perhaps you need to ask yourself as well.

Are we looking at our lives the way God does, or are we spending our time longing for the past and wishing our circumstances were different?

It is easy to look back at the way life used to be and believe those were our best days. We remember the people we loved, the opportunities we had, and the dreams we once held. Then something happens that changes everything, and we wonder what God could possibly do with the life we have left.

But what if we are looking at things all wrong?

What if the circumstances we desperately want God to change are the very circumstances He intends to use to accomplish something important? What if the disappointment we are experiencing today is preparing us for a work of God we cannot yet see?

Daniel and his friends did not choose captivity. They did not choose to lose their homeland, their freedom, or the future they had expected. But they could choose to remain faithful to God, and that is exactly what they did.

They could not control their circumstances, but their circumstances could not take away their opportunity to serve God!

That is an encouraging truth for all of us. We may not understand why God has allowed certain things to happen in our lives. We may be facing disappointments, losses, frustrations, or circumstances that seem to have destroyed the future we had planned. We may even wonder whether our most useful days are behind us.

But we must never assume that because our circumstances have changed, God’s purpose for our lives has ended.

Before we become depressed and discouraged about our circumstances, perhaps we should stop and ask God to show us what He wants to accomplish through them. Instead of spending all our time wishing we could return to the way things used to be, we need to ask Him how we can remain faithful to Him right where we are.

We may not see the whole picture today. Daniel and his friends probably did not either. But we can trust the God who sees what we cannot see and knows what we cannot know.

Your greatest disappointment does not have to be the end of your usefulness to God. It may be the very setting in which He accomplishes something you never imagined possible!

So don’t give up. Don’t assume God has forgotten you. And don’t spend so much time longing for yesterday that you miss what He wants to do through you today.

This frustrating trial you are facing just might be the very doorway through which God chooses to reveal His glory!