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…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 28 Adding advice. Read Daniel 4:26-27. How many times have you wanted to add in your own advice to the information that you’re sharing with others? People will talk to you about something as I’m telling them data or other information that they’ve asked for, sometimes I feel that it’s important that I include some advice. It can be really difficult to give advice to others, especially if they have not asked for it. Often, you have to truly try to understand the situation and ensure that it’s going to be appropriate to add our own advice. Daniel was in a precarious position here. He…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 27 Sharing the Truth. Read Daniel 4:20-25. If you’ve ever thought it was difficult to deliver bad news, you should think about what Daniel experienced having to share this message with the king. The king was one of the most powerful people in this entire part of the world at this point. And Daniel has to tell him the message that God is going to humble him and make him lose his mind to the place where he would be living in the fields and eating grass. I appreciate the difficulty and challenge that Daniel faced through this. Sharing bad news is never easy, but…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 25 Ask the right person. Read Daniel 4:8-18. After the king has spent all that time asking all the wrong people for help with his dream, he finally gets around to asking someone who can help him. And thankfully, the king also recognizes why Daniel can help him. The king understands that Daniel is a servant of the one true God. Daniel is able to interpret the dream because God can interpret the dream. It’s not that Daniel was any more special than anyone else, but Daniel believed and trusted in God. Because of that, the king trusted and believed in Daniel. We saw yesterday…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 24 Asking for help, and not getting it. Read Daniel 4:4-7. There have been a number of times that I have asked for help and not gotten it, and that’s always frustrating. That can look like different things at different times. Sometimes I ask for help and people help me, but not in the way, I was expecting. Other times I ask for help, but I ask the wrong people and they don’t really know how to help me, which is equally frustrating. The king experienced this second situation. He was at a place where he did not know what to do and he was…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 23 The letter. Read Daniel 4:1-3. Most people don’t enjoy sharing their difficulties, poor decisions, or humiliating experiences. Those are stories that are reserved for only a trusted few people. However, here in chapter 4 of Daniel, we see the King himself sharing a letter to all his kingdom. In this letter, we read about a humiliating and difficult situation that happened to the king. Why does he choose to share this situation with everyone? The king wants people to know and understand just how amazing and powerful God is. The king is going to tell of the miraculous and wonderous sign that God has…

Leading Through Challenging Circumstances, Day 21 The recap. Read Daniel 3:27-28. For anybody who missed anything, the king does a really nice recap of the entire story right here. Three men worshipped the one true God and him alone. They defied the king and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve any one else or anything else. Then God saved them. Because of this, the king commands everyone to praise the one true God. Sometimes we need to take a moment and recap situations in our life. Things keep happening every single day and we make our way through. But, do we take a moment once a…