Zoe Code Podcast With Mike Q. Daniel

Mike Daniel discusses Luke 2:8-14 as an example of seeing God in the transitions of your life, including, God will give you a change of heart as you realize He is not about you but He is for you in carrying out His plans to glorify Himself; God will give you a change of focus as you give up your agenda to participate with Him in His plans; and God will change your hope from self-reliance to dependence on Him as you participate in a bigger story than your own that speaks of the glory of God.

Mike Daniel discusses setting goals for 2015 in the areas of your family life, your resources, your relationship with God and ministry with Him, your intellectual and recreational life and your health. He recommends making a chart of where you are currently, your ideal, what you would like to see happen by the end of the year and what you want to accomplish in your life. In goal setting, this life is temporary and the only lasting thing is our relationship with God and how He impacts others through us. In setting the goals, keep checking with God on what it is that He wants to do in your life.

Mike Daniel discusses Prov. 16:9--the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps--in the context of setting goals for 2015, including God is working on your increased experience and expression of His life; God’s agenda is for you to experience greater dependence on Him; and God wants to have relational intimacy with you in every venue of your life.

Mike Daniel continues his discussion from Daniel on the four elements of spiritual vision, including how spiritual vision always looks to God and not to self; how spiritual vision sees God’s activity as revealing God, not validating you; how God’s gifts to you are never just for you; and how spiritual vision always brings the authority of men under the sovereignty of God.

Mike Daniel discusses the lessons we can learn from how Daniel’s responded to God in his impossible circumstances including how impossibility is the very context of God’s work in your life so He can accomplish what only He can do in your circumstance; how the Spirit draws your expectation from self to God always; and how God is working on your relationship with Him all the time. 

Mike Daniel continues his discussion of Daniel 2:1-16 to illustrate God’s invitation to you in impossible circumstances, including how God is interested in inviting you to the end of your rope and resources and abilities so you can experience what only He can do in your life; how God is wanting you to live out of the relationship you were designed for; and how God wants to be much more in and through you and the only way you let Him is if you give up being enough for yourself.

Mike Daniel discusses Daniel’s response to the sovereignty of God in King Nebuchadnezzar’s impossible request in Daniel 2:1-16 to illustrate God’s invitation to you in impossible circumstances and what it might look like to live from the sovereignty of God instead of trying to cause and be the source of what we want from God. If God has put you into an impossible situation it is to do something that can only be done through the sovereignty of God.

Mike Daniel discusses Matt. 16:13-18 and how God won’t change in order to fit your image of Him but invites you to see Him as He is and you will be the one to change; how his revelation, if you receive it, is always transformation for you; how faith is not what you do for God, but what you let him do by grace through you; and how who He is determines who you are and what He does determines what you do.

In Part 2, Mike Daniel discusses how the only One who is going to be with us on this pilgrimage journey our entire time on earth is Jesus Christ; how He is both the journey and the goal and the walk and the destination; and how our circumstances will either drive us to Him or they will be our opportunity to participate with Him in those circumstances. 

Mike Daniel discusses how every believer can walk and enjoy Jesus by pursuing Him as the destination of our pilgrimage journey since our life with Him is both our journey and destination; and how the goal of our pilgrimage is that we will no longer wander away from Him as our Source, but that we will wander with Him.  

Mike Daniel discusses how worship is our submission to God based on His revelation of Himself to us resulting in His exalting himself through our lives made available to him for what he will do in other peoples’ lives; how when we recognize what he’s done for us, we’ll submit to him so that he can do what he wants through us; and how if we could just recognize his activity, receive his revelation and respond in submission, the natural byproduct is that is that we are useful to Him and He is exalted in our lives. 

Mike Daniel discusses the peace that Jesus left us and how we can increasingly experience that peace in times of trouble when we realize Jesus loves us and is for us, He has a plan for us and is sovereign over our circumstances and He has the power and is able to bring about His plan for us.

Mike Daniel continues his discussion of fasting from a grace grid, including fasting as grieving our hunger and homesickness for a world with God to come; we don’t fast to earn anything by it but we’re not going to enjoy what we have without deliberately seeking God; God will get our attention through bad circumstances, but if we can learn to practice experiencing his presence through fasting, we can more easily experience him in the midst of circumstances. The reason we fast from food or anything we do to distract ourselves in this world, is to have a specific interaction with Him that can be generalized to all of life.

Mike Daniel discusses fasting from a grace grid in Matt. 9:14-17 including not fasting to earn anything from God but to experience more of what you already have in Him; the problem of our being so full of the junk that doesn’t satisfy us that we never get around to feeding the hunger of what really satisfies us in Christ; and how frequently we are living a cotton candy Christianity instead of living by the sustenance of Christ Himself, the living bread and living water who wants to be the sustainer of our souls.

Mike Daniel discusses the discipline of prayer and how God calls us to prayer to develop intimacy with Him. Mike explains the intimacy-building prayer practices of meditative and contemplative prayer using scripture, recollection of truth by giving God what concerns you and receiving from Him what He has promised, and reflective prayer of seeing how the things God has created reflects and speaks of Him and His majesty.

Mike Daniel continues his discussion of spiritual disciplines, including that we can choose to sow to the Spirit and reap life or sow to the flesh and reap death; that practicing spiritual disciplines results in freedom from the flesh; that if Jesus doesn’t renew our minds in private he likely won’t have our attention in any other venues; and that the point of practicing these disciplines is that we would learn to walk in the sufficiency of His grace that is already fully ours by the indwelling life of Christ.

Mike Daniel discusses the role of spiritual disciplines from a grace perspective distinguishing how pursuing such disciplines as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, communion and baptism are of no use when practiced in the flesh, as an attempt to earn something from God or as a self-improvement program. Mike explains how setting aside time to practice being with God will make our constant experience of Him become greater, deeper and more fulfilling.

Mike Daniel discusses Luke 10:25-37—the story of the Good Samaritan—to illustrate how God invites you to participate with Him in someone else’s life so that you will know Him better; how you don’t love by what you give but by what you give up; how being sacrificially available to God by putting another’s needs above your own needs demonstrates the love of God to others; and how only God can love others like that through you.

Mike Daniel and Nathan Keith discuss Ezekiel 37:1-14, including God can take the very dry bones of our life apart from Him and cause life in our circumstances; there is no life in God apart from death to self; and plannng our lives is fine but if He is not in those plans, they will never breathe.

Mike teaches from the example of the Centurion who said no to Jesus about coming to his house to heal his servant, including practicing a posture of unworthiness in order to receive your value and your worth by His grace; realizing God has everything in His box and knowing that He already is at work in all your circumstances and is bigger than the solution you’re seeking from Him; and submitting and receiving whatever He has for you in circumstances based on your relationship with Him.