How to silence your enemy’s roar?

Hold to your integrity and tongue. 

In today’s warfare, weapons come in many high-tech forms: drones, missiles, and satellites. Victory depends on strategic deployment. When the battlefield is spiritual, when integrity is under attack in high places—public, private, or political, “speak softly, and carry a better stick.” Words are often the weapon of choice to defeat your faith. Your enemy is not afraid to take you down by mouth. Be strategic in your counterattack like Daniel of Daniel chapter six. 

His faithfulness to God was attacked by Persian King Darius who issued a word throughout his realm that all must bow down to a statue erected in his honor to represent his god of the king or die by the mouths of hungry lions. Daniel refused to surrender his moral high ground, and God delivered him: 

“My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in His sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.” Daniel 6:22 

BACKSTORY: Daniel expressed his innocence (זָכוּ; zaku, purity) before God and the king. He was clean, clear of any violation of an illegal and immoral law—idolatry. He acknowledged that God sent His angel to shut the lions' mouths demonstrating his God was the only true God deserving of his faith. The king’s officials, out of jealousy, set up the statue and orchestrated the mandate— “bow or die” —to trap Daniel knowing his devotion to the God of Judah would be an opportunity to take him down. They were wrong. 

Daniel remained steadfast in his conviction despite the roar of his enemy’s weapons—the mouths of hungry lions to discredit his belief in his God. The result of his public integrity and God’s deliverance, was this: the king issued an edict reversing is his “bow or die” command.” Now, the whole Persian dominion was required to “fear the God of Daniel—the living God.”  

ILLUSTRATION: Your enemy will try to bait you with their inflammatory words to get you to answer with inflammatory words in kind. Their aim is that your integrity will go up in smoke; your image will be singed. Don’t fight fire with fire. Fight fire with faith like Rosa Parks. The roar of Jim Crow was “Get up. Give up your bus seat or go to jail. Her quiet word to the bus driver was a word of faith, "You may do that.”  The subtext of her response was the stuff of biblical proportions. The next morning, with her release, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, December 1, 1955, was launched, and a civil rights movement was sparked. The mouth of the lions of segregation was shut. 

APPLICATION: There is more than one way to silence the roar of a toothless lion. Speak softly and carry big faith.