Reading · Ben’s Substack

One of the great assumptions of the modern world is that the visible world is the only world. We naturally trust what we can observe. We place confidence in what can be measured, explained, and experienced through our senses. Even as Christians, it is surprisingly easy to live as though the physical world is the whole story and the spiritual world just an idea we all agree on while together on Sunday mornings. The Bible, by contrast, refuses to separate reality quite so cleanly. Again and again, it reminds us that what can be seen is not all that is real, and that what cannot be seen is often shaping the very things we can. Daniel 10 sits as one of the cleanest places in Scripture where that orientation is not just taught, it’s revealed.

For a conversation, the curtain is pulled back, and Daniel is allowed to see a reality that had been battling around him the entire time without his knowledge. As readers, we naturally find ourselves drawn toward the details. Who is this messenger? Who is the prince of Persia? What exactly is happening in the heavenly places? Those are understandable questions, and they have occupied me for decades. But the conversation itself seems far less interested in questions than our imagination. Daniel is not given this vision so that he will become fascinated with the unseen world. If that were the point, there would be many more details concerning the battle and spiritual regions of authority. Instead, it seems he is given the vision so that he can better understand the world he already lives in, a world where God’s purposes are advancing even as they encounter actual, evil resistance on an unseen plane.

For twenty-one days Daniel lived out what he was feeling. He knew he was mourning. He knew he was praying. He knew he was seeking understanding. That’s more than most of us can muster in times of confusion, right? What he did not know was that his story was unfolding inside another larger story altogether. While Daniel prayed, heaven was moving. While Daniel waited, opposition was real. While Daniel was searching for understanding, forces beyond his sight were actively resisting the purposes of God. This is astonishing. I wonder why we don’t preach this chapter more? None of these realities diminished Daniel’s experience or suggested that his emotions were somehow misguided. They just revealed that his experience was not the whole story. The visible events of those three weeks were real, but they were never the only reality shaping them. It is true what they say, control is just an illusion.

Recovering this way of seeing the world may be one of the most difficult tasks facing followers of Jesus today. It is not because we deny the existence of God or even the reality of evil. It is because we have inherited a way of thinking that has trained us to interpret almost everything through material causes alone. We automatically look for psychological, social, political, economic, even biological explanations. All of those perspectives matter, and wisdom does require us to take them seriously. The Bible never dismisses them. It just refuses to stop there, even if that refusal makes our modern ears very uncomfortable. The biblical imagination insists that human history is also the place where the kingdom of God continues pressing into a world that does not just ignore His purposes but actively resists them. Apparently, the Fall was a part of a much larger rebellion - one still going on today.

This conviction should reshape the way we understand discipleship itself. Following Jesus is certainly about learning, growing in wisdom, and allowing our lives to be transformed by the larger truth. But, despite the modern attractional methods of most churches, it is more than self-improvement or the cultivation of healthier habits. This is why this model has ultimately failed. Discipleship is participation in the redemptive, that is, rescuing, work of God, and wherever God begins restoring what sin has distorted, resistance should not surprise us. The New Testament returns to this reality a lot. Paul reminds his readers that our struggle is not ultimately against flesh and blood. Peter warns believers not to be surprised when trials come upon them. Jesus Himself tells His disciples that following Him will involve opposition. None of those passages are intended to make us fearful. They are intended to help us see the world as it really is. That kind of information is actually power.

Daniel is remarkably restrained in the way he presents that reality, and I think we should be equally as careful. The chapter does not encourage us to become preoccupied with demons or to imagine spiritual warfare behind every inconvenience we experience. In fact, it gives us surprisingly little information about the unseen conflict itself. Instead, it establishes a framework within which the rest of life begins to make much more sense. Evil is real, but it is never presented as equal to God. Opposition is active, but it is never absolute. God’s purposes encounter resistance, but they never lose their trajectory. That quiet confidence may be one of the most helpful features of the entire chapter because it allows us to take evil seriously without allowing evil to become the center of our attention or pull our lives into a fear spiral.

Once we see this for what it is, ordinary life starts looking a little different. The decision to forgive someone who has deeply wounded us, the private resolve to remain faithful in a difficult marriage, the courage to tell the truth when southern-style lying would be easier, the choice to continue trusting God when circumstances refuse to improve—none of these moments are played out in isolation. There are times in our lives when the reality of God’s Kingdom punches through our commitment to the ordinary. That is exactly why they matter. They are not isolated acts of personal improvement. They show our participation in a story much larger than ourselves.

This should also change the way we think about discouragement. One of the temptations of the life of a disciple is to assume that resistance always means we have taken a wrong turn. We begin interpreting fatigue, temptation, disappointment, or opposition as evidence that God has somehow withdrawn His hand. I write often about this because it is such an obstacle to growth for most of us. Daniel 10 gently offers us another explanation. Perhaps some of the places where we experience the greatest resistance are not signs that God’s work has ceased but reminders that His work has always been executed within contested territory. That does not explain every hardship we encounter; it’s not that simple. However, it should protect us from assuming that what we can, in moments of distress, especially, accurately discern all that is happening.

Daniel did not suddenly become part of a larger story. He had been living inside that story all along. The curtain was simply lifted for a brief moment so that he could see what had always been true. I’ll admit, most of us will never receive that kind of vision, but the Bible has already given us something just as important. It reminds us that our ordinary lives are never just ordinary. Every quiet act of faithfulness, every prayer offered in weakness, every difficult act of obedience, and every choice to resist despair takes place within and in alignment with the larger purposes of God. We may never fully understand how those moments fit into His plan, but Daniel 10 assures us that they do.

This is a big part of why this chapter is such a gift to us. It teaches us to hold our own stories with a little more humility because we are reminded how little of reality we are actually capable of seeing. We rarely know everything God is doing. We rarely understand every force at work around us, and we rarely discern the full significance of our own journey. Even still, none of these limitations diminish the larger reality that our lives are playing out within the purposes of God, purposes that no resistance, however real, should ever overcome. That is, unless we give up. Remember, the Bible is very specific in telling us not to grow weary in doing these kinds of good things.

Daniel’s understanding of the world has now expanded in ways he could never have imagined. He knows there is a larger story unfolding around him, one where the purposes of God continue advancing despite real resistance. But the conversation is far from over. Daniel still cannot stand. His strength has not yet returned. Knowing more has not suddenly made him capable of carrying what has been revealed.

That, I think, is one of the most beautiful parts of this chapter. The messenger doesn’t simply keep talking. He reaches out his hand.

We’ll spend our final treatment of this chapter there because it is a detail that appears so often that it is difficult to believe it is accidental. Before Daniel is sent back into the world with greater understanding, he is repeatedly touched, strengthened, and steadied. Maybe, just maybe, this is God’s way of reminding us that truth alone has never been enough. We don’t just need properly ordered thinking. We need physical reassurance.

The Larger Story

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