Lesson 4: Choosing Battles Wisely

Daniel 1:11-16
11 Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah,
12 “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink.
13 Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.”
14 So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days.
15 At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food.
16 So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

We cannot fight every battle in our life, so we must choose which are the important battles. This is what our verses from Daniel show us today. Return to verse 4 of this chapter: the king intended to “teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.” Then, in verse 7, their names were changed from names that spoke of God and who He is in their lives to names about serving Babylon’s gods.

Daniel and his friends did not fight against what they would be asked to learn. We can learn all the things the world wants to teach us and still hold to Truth in Jesus. Many schools will now intentionally teach heresies to take a student away from the Christian beliefs they may have learned from their parents. Even if you did not come from a Christian family but now believe in Jesus, faith is something someone will try to help you “un-learn”. Daniel knew that what he believed did not rely on how much education he was given. He knew that trusting and believing God was a choice he made for himself.


Daniel and his friends did not fight against their name changes. They knew that it truly does not matter what someone calls you. Only your relationship with Jesus determines who you are.

They DID choose to fight the battle over food. Why was food important? Food, for the people of Israel, was part of their worship of God. They determined they would not defile themselves with the king’s food, which likely had been offered in worship to Babylon’s false god Marduk before being served to the young men. Jewish law forbade them to eat foods offered to idols.

This is another important thing we see in Daniel. Remember verse 8 from our last lesson? Right after their names were changed, we read, “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine…” Before the situation arose, Daniel made the decision in his heart that he would not take this step if or when it would be asked of him. The verses in this account suggest that some time passed between the name changes and the decision on the food.

*When you realize that some important decisions will be coming to you, do you decide ahead of time what you will do? Think of a bad decision you made in the past – what would have happened if you had decided ahead of time which decision you would make, and then stayed with that decision?