The Direction of the Heart

** Special thanks to Meghan Petyak for reminding me just how much I love this chapter in the Book. You can see her sermon on this passage here.

Daniel 10 is one of the more fascinating chapters in the Bible. Daniel is well-known for sure, but most of us know him through the stories that have become part of our preaching traditions—the lions’ den, the fiery furnace, the handwriting on the wall. By the time we reach the tenth chapter of the book of Daniel, however, the stories have a different focus. Daniel is now an old man. Decades have passed since he was taken from Jerusalem into exile, that’s a story in and of itself. Kingdoms have risen and fallen around him. He has remained faithful to God through changing administrations, political intrigue, and personal cost. The dramatic moments that defined his younger years have largely passed, and what remains is the quieter faithfulness of a man who has spent a lifetime walking with God. I’m not there yet, but I can feel the rumblings of this happening in my own life. I think more about legacy these days that I ever have. I’m starting to think a lot more about how all this will end up than how this started.

Chapter 10 opens in a very human and nearly ordinary way. Daniel tells us he has been mourning for three weeks. He has set aside ordinary comforts, eating no delicacies, drinking no wine, and anointing himself with no oil. He doesn’t tell us much about his emotional state beyond the word “mourning,” but it is enough to know that something is sitting heavy on him. He has recently received another vision concerning the future of his people, one that leaves him searching for understanding. He isn’t trying to manufacture a spiritual experience. He isn’t attempting to earn God’s attention through fasting. He is simply a man who cannot make sense of what he has seen, and so he does what faithful people have done for a very long time: he brings his confusion before God and remains there. For those who have tried this, you know just how difficult it can be to keep from rushing to resolution. But Daniel isn’t new to this - he hasn’t been coddled. He’s been through things that have built this in him. And it shows.

Standing beside the Tigris River, Daniel sees a figure whose appearance leaves him physically shaken. The description is unlike anything else in the Old Testament. His companions see nothing, yet they are overcome with terror and flee. Daniel alone remains, though even he loses all strength. Over the course of the chapter, he collapses to the ground, struggles to speak, and must be repeatedly strengthened by the one who has come to inform him. The messenger explains that Daniel’s prayer had been heard from the very first day but that his arrival had been delayed by realities unfolding in the unseen world. It is one of the few places in Scripture where we are allowed a glimpse that what is happening on earth is only part of the story. There are purposes of God unfolding beyond human sight, and they are no less real because they cannot be seen. To follow God means becoming very comfortable with the reality of the supernatural.

There is enough in this chapter to occupy us for months. The spiritual warfare it describes is enough to capture our imagination and focus. Many thinkers have focused on the prophetic vision that follows, attempting to identify kingdoms, rulers, and timelines. While those are worthwhile conversations, over the next few weeks we’ll spend time with some of the larger themes that emerge from this incredible passage. But, before the messenger explains the delay, before he strengthens Daniel, before he tells him anything about the future, he says something that I have found impossible to move past.

In my reading, preparing to write this, this verse stood out to me in new ways. It just seems like a strange way for a messenger from heaven to begin.

Think about this moment from Daniel’s perspective. Twenty-one days have passed. That’s three weeks. He has been mourning. Praying. Seeking. Then, without warning, a messenger from heaven shows up and begins to explain what has been happening. We might expect the first words to answer Daniel’s questions. We might expect an explanation for the delay or an immediate description of the conflict taking place outside Daniel’s ability to see. Instead, the messenger reaches back to something that had been true before any of those events. He starts at the start. Before speaking about the unseen, he speaks about the direction of Daniel’s heart. This is a “don’t miss this” moment in the Bible if there ever was one.

Why?

I don’t think this is just some holy way to start an important conversation. I think it tells us something about the kind of person God has been building Daniel to be.

Maybe it’s most helpful to think about what the messenger does not say. He doesn’t say, “Daniel, from the first day that you started talking to God about this.” Look, prayer is certainly part of the story, but that is not what he chooses to emphasize. He does not mention Daniel’s fasting, though Daniel has spent three weeks denying himself ordinary comforts. Most of us reading this couldn’t imagine what that even looks like. He does not applaud Daniel’s perseverance for the ways he’s been faithful previously. There’s no mention of church attendance or tithing or missions trips. The messenger from heaven chooses a different place to start. “From the first day that you set your heart to understand...”

I think you see where I am going here. It’s almost too obvious not to.

We rarely speak this way beacause we rarely think this way because we are rarely mentored this way. We usually associate understanding with the mind. We understand a subject because we have studied it. We understand a problem because we have solved it. We even understand a situation because we finally have enough information. Understanding, at least in our culture today, is almost entirely an intellectual and internet exercise.

But, let me slow down here and reiterate, Daniel is not described as setting his mind to understand.

Allow me to ask this not in a tone of judgment or conviction, but rather from a place of curiosity: How well do you know your heart? What occupies it? How many rooms are there? Are there any locked doors? Is there a hallway with a draft? What colors are the walls? When people are invited over, do they come through the front door or the back door? Or, do you step out and only talk to them on the porch?

The biblical writers consistently use the heart in ways that challenge our modern assumptions. We often reduce the heart to the place where emotions live, but the Bible with its authority gives it a much deeper meaning. In the Bible, the heart is the center of the person. It is the place from which we love, worship, trust, fear, desire, and even make choices. It is what gives direction to our lives. This is the reason for the famous passage that tells us to guard our hearts above everything else, because everything else will flow from it. Before the Bible is concerned with what we know, it is concerned with what has captured us. Jesus’ ministry could almost be summed up this way as well. Heart, then habits.

This foundation makes the messenger’s words surprisingly practical.

Daniel is not commended for arriving at understanding. He is commended for orienting his life toward it. You may want to go back and read that again. Daniel is validated not for arrival, but rather for starting at all. I am 100% convinced that there are those reading this who need this more than anything else here.

There is a meaningful difference between starting and ending, and I suspect it has something to teach us about true spiritual maturity.

Many of us spend our lives pursuing certainty. Are there any others among us who are anxious? We want enough information to settle that anxiety. We want answers that resolve our questions and restore our sense of control. There is nothing wrong with wanting answers. The Bible is full of honest questions asked by faithful people. This can be a difficult nuance to wrap our minds around, but certainty and understanding are not necessarily the same thing. Certainty often wants the tension to end. Understanding is willing to stay present long enough to be changed by what it is learning. A few short days ago, I had a beautiful dinner with friends. We talked for hours about uncertainty. We bounced understanding off one another, and none of us wanted it to end. If you find people who are willing to be uncertain with you, find a way to sit at their table as often as you can.

I have become more and more convinced that uncertainty is not an error; it’s a doorway. It shapes the way we experience suffering, disappointment, conflict, and even our relationship with God. When something painful enters our lives, our first instinct is usually to ask, “Why?” Sometimes that question is sincere. Sometimes, for me, though, it is simply my attempt to regain control. A heart set towards understanding asks a slightly different question. It asks, “Lord, what’s happening here that I cannot yet see?” That is not a passive question, and it for damn sure isn’t an easy one. It requires enough humility to admit that reality may be larger than my present ability to interpret it. Humility. This is one of those characteristics of Jesus that just doesn’t get much airtime today.

Maybe that’s why the messenger puts these two ideas together. Daniel set his heart to understand, and he humbled himself before God. Humility is not added to understanding as though it were an optional thing. It is what makes understanding possible. Pride assumes it already knows what God should be doing, say answering inside of three weeks for example. Humility leaves room for God to reveal what we could not have discovered on our own, no matter how many journal pages we fill or meals we skip.

I wonder if this is one of the quieter marks of spiritual maturity one that we rarely celebrate. We often admire confidence, certainty, and quick answers, well-crafted sermons, and big, beautiful buildings. Even as a former pastor, I have to admit, God seems deeply interested in something much less visible. He notices the person who keeps turning towards Him while they are still trying to understand. It’s the broken man on bended knee, not the practiced man in the pulpit, he seems move toward with aggressive compassion. He notices the heart that refuses to become cynical when life grows confusing. I just had a hard time typing that sentence. He notices the quiet decision to remain teachable when it would be easier to settle for simple, pretty, Western Christian explanations.

For twenty-one mornings, Daniel lived without the benefit of knowing what God was doing. From his perspective, heaven had been silent. His questions remained unanswered, his understanding incomplete, and the burden that first drove him to prayer had not yet been lifted. If the story had ended there, Daniel might have assumed nothing had happened at all.

Long before Daniel understood the unseen work of God, God had already taken notice of the unseen work taking place in Daniel. That may be one of the most encouraging truths in the entire chapter. We spend so much of our spiritual lives wondering whether God notices our prayers, our questions, or our waiting. Daniel 10 quietly reminds us that God is paying attention to something even deeper. He sees the heart that continues turning toward Him while understanding is still just out of reach.

Maybe that is where spiritual maturity begins—not when we finally arrive at clarity, but when, in the middle of confusion, we continue to turn the deepest parts of ourselves toward God, a God who sees what we cannot.

Next time, we’ll look at the messenger’s next statement, one that has reshaped the way I think about prayer altogether.

But until then, may you find the courage to keep your heart seeking understanding, even when certainty is still out of reach.