We all have one other world we live in: our public world. Some people call it our public persona. This is the world where someone who doesn't know you privately, personally, or professionally hears your name and has some opinion about you one way or another. So the question becomes: where is integrity rooted? Some people think it's rooted in their public life. They spend all of their time trying to spin their public image. It's not rooted there, however. It's simply revealed there. People who lack integrity will have it revealed publicly.

Daniel's message of hope and help is still the good news of God's grace. We call it the gospel today. It still has the power to impact lives and transform cultures. Paul referred to the gospel as the "power of God" [Romans 1:16] and chose a word from which we derive our word "dynamite" to describe it. It's this power - not pickets, petitions, protests or politics - that's our only hope today.

In many ways we've become the Babylon of the modern era. We learned our lessons at the feet of Nebuchadnezzar himself. It's little wonder that we've lived to see Bible reading and the display of the Ten Commandments removed from public view and creation science excluded from classroom instruction. None of this is new. It has its roots in Babylon, and thus reveals that the book of Daniel is one of the most relevant books of the Bible in our world today.

Divine opportunities are all around you every day. Make a conscious effort today to show kindness to someone.

The great, God-blessed churches in the world today have one common characteristic: an insistence upon an exposition of God's infallible Word.

What makes a church great in the eyes of God? Participation, proclamation, preservation, and propagation. Every church ought to exhibit all four.

Men and women, boys and girls, are still bowing to the image of peer pressure out on their own Plain of Dura every week in every city of America.