Kristi Burchfiel

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 38 The history lesson. Read Daniel 5:18-22. There’s a saying that those who don’t know or study history are doomed to repeat it. This is a very appropriate saying for today’s reading. Daniel has to give the king a history lesson. We were just reading about this in Daniel chapter 4, so the lesson is very fresh for us, however, apparently the king’s son didn’t remember it. Now that the son is king, he’s doing all the things that his father was doing before God humbled him. Daniel doesn’t start off by reading the message from God. Instead, Daniel starts off by reminding the king…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 37 No reward. Read Daniel 5:17. The idea of giving someone a reward for doing what we want them to do is a pretty popular idea. We see often that people are willing to say “thank you” in a more tangible way by giving gifts or favors. Here the king was trying to do the same thing with Daniel. The king wanted the message interpreted, so he was promising gifts and favors to anyone who would be able to do it. Daniel knew that through God, he would be able to interpret the message that God had given the king. But, he didn’t want even…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 36 Résumé filler. Read Daniel 5:13-16. I work with several high school-age students in a number of different areas. In a conversation I was having with one of them recently, the topic of resume fillers came up. This young person was discussing how so many of his peers join or are part of organizations solely so they can put them on their resume to make them more desirable for scholarships or college applications. These people don’t really do anything with the organization or make a difference, they just want to be able to say they were part of it. This got me thinking about what…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 35 What is your reputation? Read Daniel 5:10-12. I’ve heard it said that you don’t get to create your reputation, you simply influence it. Reputation is what other people think about you. When your name comes up in conversations, what’s the impression of the people who hear it? What have they heard about you? What have they experienced regarding you? All of these factors come together to build your reputation. Even though this new King didn’t seem to know much of what his father had gone through or experienced, the Queen did. The Queen knew Daniel by reputation. She understood what he had been able…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 34 Déjà vu. Read Daniel 5:5-9. Reading these verses and looking back over the first few chapters of Daniel, it starts to read the same. It’s a very similar situation. God has moved in a divine way. The king is trying to make sense of it, but no one can understand. So often we find ourselves in situations that are repeats. If we’re not careful and don’t learn from the opportunities that God presents us, we will find ourselves repeating the same situation over and over and over again. God wants us to learn and to seek after him. Here we see the next generation…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 33 Praising the Creator or the creation? Read Daniel 5:1-4. It can be easy to get mixed up as leaders. We can get so focused on the things that we are doing that. We end up missing the focus and get focused on all the wrong things. Chronologically, Daniel chapter 5 takes place quite a bit after Daniel chapter 4. King Nebuchadnezzar’s son is now on the throne. We quickly see that he has inherited his father’s prideful attitude, but not his father’s acknowledgment of the one true God. This new king loves wealth and grandeur and parties, and at the start of chapter 5,…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 32 The final message to the people. Read Daniel 4:36-37. This entire chapter has been a letter that king Nebuchadnezzar was writing to his entire kingdom. Most kings would not have wanted people to know what he went through, the humbling and humiliating experience that he had. But the king is broadcasting it to the entire kingdom for the express purpose of ensuring that they know and understand that God is God. When it comes to declaring the praise and wonder and glory of who God is, it’s not about our pride. It’s not about making ourselves look good. God is about God and him…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 31 The results. Read Daniel 4:34-35. What are key steps that every leader needs to make sure they follow through on? Results and review. No matter what we’re doing or how we’re doing it, we must take time to understand the results and review those results. That’s the only way we can adjust, make changes, and get better. King Nebuchadnezzar went through the same thing. After the time passed that God had shared with him, he had an opportunity to review the results. He made the very quick and smart decision to acknowledge the Lordship of God. God is truly over everything. God is the…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 30 Has your boss lost his mind? Read Daniel 4:31-33. Truthfully, we have all thought that our bosses have lost their minds at different points in time. In this case, the king really did lose his mind. He had been bragging and boasting about his greatness instead of acknowledging the greatness of God. As a result, God humbled him. All the things that Nebuchadnezzar thought were great about him, God took away. God even took away his capacity to problem solve or even understand the logic of who he was. Our abilities and capacities for everything about us is a gift from God. If we…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 29 Pride. Read Daniel 4:29-30. It doesn’t seem to matter how often God reminds us of the dangers of pride, we all still seem to fall prey to believing that we are more important than we really are. We also fall prey to trying to glorify ourselves instead of glorifying God. God had given king Nebuchadnezzar a warning that this would happen, but it had been 12 months since he had that dream. He had lost sight of what God had told him and had gone back to thinking that he had done all of the great things in his kingdom instead of God. Then…