Pastor Taylor is a native of Pine Bluff and a graduate of Pine Bluff High School. He attended Ouachita Baptist University and received his B.A. in 1967. He did graduate Work at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, California. He received his Master of Divinity degree from there in 1970 and the Doctor of Ministry degree in 1980. While attending Seminary, Pastor Taylor served as a Student Chaplain at San Quentin State Prison for two years. He has served as Pastor in Arkansas, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. Pastor Taylor and his wife JoAnne have two grown children and twelve grandchildren.
I read of a man who one day was walking down the street. He came to a most unusual window display. As he stopped to look he saw that it was a clock…without any hands. The pendulum was moving, the works were in motion. Everything about this clock seemed to be in the very best of condition…with one small matter. The face of the clock had all the numbers of the hours of the day…But no hands moved upon the face of it.
It was doing everything except what it had been made to do…indicating the time. As he stood looking…the man, a Christian, thought “This is a picture of many who profess Jesus Christ. They are like this clock, without hands. There is so much activity and movement with them, but little of the purpose for which they have been saved to do.
As we make our way through the book of Daniel we learn this is not true of him. Even in most unfavorable circumstances he had maintained a constant walk with God. He was a man who had been honored and trusted through all the changes in the kingdom.
The kingdom was filled with little men who looked with envy at this great man. Trying to find fault they finally looked at his faith…his relationship with God. In Chapter 6:5 we read “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning…his God.”
So a plot against his life is hatched…they targeted his prayer life. This was, I believe, the secret of Daniel’s strength. In v.10 we are told of his commitment to regular times of prayer. In fact the life of Daniel was mostly a life of prayer. His prayers revealed his gratitude toward God and an utter sense of dependence upon Him. So…using his prayer life they make a plan to bring him down-v.6-9. They ask the king to make prayer to God illegal. Sounds like today does it not? But Daniel is not afraid…Neither does he stop praying to God. So…he is thrown into a den of lions. Notice here carefully what happens. Daniel is not kept FROM the lion’s den. But he was kept IN the lion’s den. God has so many different ways of blessing the faithful.
There are times when we may not understand what we are going through, but if we trust God as we are going through it, He will make a way. I Kings 8:56 says “There have not failed one word of all His good promise which He promised by the hand of Moses, his servant.” Don’t worry if you don’t understand what is happening. Don’t be asking “Why! Just keep on keeping on in faithfulness to God. Let him fulfill His purpose in your life…then…others can look and see Jesus at work in your life.