to test you on what kind of a move you will make. And that's okay. That's a good thing. And we'll maybe take a look at this later. Let me say this real quickly, though. God never tempts you with sin. He tempts you with obedience. There's a difference. Satan, Satan, this world, your own flesh, the lusts that dwell in your members, they want to pull you to sin. God wants to pull you to obedience and righteousness. And God tempted Abraham. And there's many places in the Scriptures where God tempts you to do right. And where tempt means to test. God wants to test you to do right, and the decisions that you make now are going to affect that. Look at verse 1 with me in the book of Daniel. Verse 1, it says, And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar. That's about where Iraq is today, modern day Iraq, if you can picture that on the map. It says, to the house of his God. And he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God. And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the prince's, children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning of the tongue of the Chaldeans. Now, among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names. For he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar, and to Hananiah of Shadrach, and to Mishael of Meshach, and to Azariah of Abednego. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself." Now right off the bat, you're thinking like me probably, what's the big deal if he eats the king's meat? That sounds like a good deal, right? I mean, don't you like to have a nice buffet laid out for a king? Sure. Who doesn't want that? But Daniel had purposed something in his heart. He wasn't gonna drink wine. Well, now we understand. We don't go there. We don't want to drink anything that would defile our temple, the body being our temple, a temple of God if we're saved. And God wants that body to be His temple when you do get saved. But God does not want us to defile the temple in any way. And Daniel purposed in his heart. And that's my challenge to you this morning. about what have you purposed in your heart. What will you purpose? Maybe something at camp this week. Maybe something you've heard recently from the preaching of God's word. Maybe from your own devotions. There's something that's been pressing upon your heart, and it's time to purpose in your heart as to what you're going to do with that thing before you actually have to make the decision. You ever do that? Have you ever predetermined what you're going to do if you're ever in such a situation. I think Daniel had determined a long time before he ever got to Shinar to being there with the eunuchs and being basically a captive from Israel, from Judah. He's now hundreds of miles away from home. He's going to spend probably the rest of his entire life in a foreign land, never to get home again. Yeah, thankfully he's got some friends with him. But he had determined, I believe, ahead of time what he would do, that he would not defile himself with certain foods or certain drinks. And that's something we're going to look at more as time goes on. But let's start with this reality. Daniel purposed in his heart, it's your move. what will God lay on your heart? That you've got a purpose already as to what you're going to do as your life unfolds. The word purpose means to put, to place, to set, to appoint, to direct, to ordain, to establish. And there's a lot of ways in which we can use this word purpose, but Daniel purposed. He set some things in his heart. For instance, look at Psalm 16 with me. There are things that we are to set. There are things that we are to place and appoint. And the Psalmist David in Psalm 16 gives us a clue into something that he had purposed in his heart. In Psalm 16, verse number 6, it says, Look at verse 8. If this is one thing, if this is just one example, there's a whole host of them. If you could do one thing as a teenager that will completely impact how well your life goes, the kind of joy and peace that you'll experience. You say, what do you mean? Of course my life's gonna be joyful and it's gonna be a good experience. Not necessarily so. It depends on the decisions that you make even as a teenager. It'd be interesting to know, and not to be doom and gloom, but Brother Chris, the 14 years ago, that youth group then, where are they now? Have their lives been good? Have their lives been filled with joy and peace, or has it been miserable because of decisions that were made even as a teenager? He says, I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. David described, and I believe a key piece of his heart and life is that he set the Lord, he purposed in his heart that God would be first. Now, you know that, right? So you didn't have to come to camp to learn that. You knew that already. You knew that's the right answer, that yeah, God should be first and others should be second and self should be last. Yeah, you know that in your mind, but is it in your heart? Have you set God first in your heart? And you'll know if that's true or not by the decisions that you make according to that determination, according to that purpose. Daniel purposed in his heart there in verse eight. He determined it. He made a decision in advance. And I encourage you to make some decisions now before the time requires you to make a decision. Because if you're one that just wants to live and make a decision in the moment, you're gonna fail many times. Sometimes you'll succeed. But sometimes you'll fail. As a young person, little boy, my second mother, our neighbor lady, she was from Germany, an immigrant to New York City, and married a man from Estonia. Anyway, she would smoke cigarettes. All the time. And in doing so would say to me, don't ever do this. I mean, she was so addicted to smoking cigarettes. And she challenged me, don't even do the first one. And as a young boy, I made a decision. I will never smoke a cigarette. And to this day, I haven't. I don't plan for that to change either. Why? Because younger than you, I made a decision. I am not going to smoke a cigarette. Well, did your friends ever tempt you? Yeah, but I determined I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna go down that pathway. Same with drugs. By the grace of God, as a boy, I made a decision. I'm not going to do drugs. Now, I did get high one time on painting a wall with a very powerful... The funniest part of it, it was at the church building in North Dakota. I had to finish this wall. We're priming some walls, and I ran out of primer. I have one wall left, and it's a Saturday night. It needed to dry before Sunday, because it's a classroom, and I went up into the attic where we kept all these paints, and I found some primer, but it was a Kills primer, which has a very powerful chemical compound in it. I started applying that, and man, did I get loopy. But besides that, I'm like, I don't want anything to do with drugs. It destroys life. Even marijuana destroys brain cells. It destroys your life. And I highly encourage you to make decisions. Maybe some of you have even done some of these things. And I encourage you to determine going forward that you're not going to do that anymore. You're not going to go down that pathway anymore. There's so many things that the world has that are destructive. I mentioned to you at my first teen camp, I was a seventh grader, and there was a guest speaker, don't know who it was, I don't even think I had too many friends there, but I just remember sitting there, listening to this guy, kind of challenging with the same idea as to what you're gonna do, excuse me. going forward, what kind of decisions are you going to make in life? And he was challenging us with guy-girl things. He says, how far, how far will you go with someone of the opposite gender before you're married? And then he talked about interphalangeating. I was like, ooh, can you say that in front of kids? I didn't even know what it was, do you? These are your phalanges, right? Remember that in biology class? And he talked about interphalangeating. Oh! And he challenged us, he challenged us with his reality to determine in advance what you will allow yourself to do with someone of the opposite gender. It was a good challenge. And I made a decision as a youth that I would keep, by the grace of God, keep myself pure until I got married. And by the grace of God, I did. You say, what did your friends think of you? Oh, I was called names. I was accused of being on the other side because I wouldn't do all the things with the ladies. And there's a lot of hard things said. There was a lot of hard decisions to make. There were times that when my friends I knew were going to pursue that, and I left, and I had to go elsewhere. This was before I was saved. I want to challenge you when it comes to that area. You've got to make a decision now. You've got a purpose in your heart now. How far? I mean, what do I think is right? Well, Bible says in 1 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter seven, it's good for a man not to touch a woman. And if your line drawn in this saying is not to touch until you get married, you'll never have any regrets. Amen. But if your line is somewhere over here where you're gonna allow interphalangeating, or embracing, and on down the pathway. Because you're not purposing in your heart where you will or will not go, you're just going to let the moment decide for you. Many will go to the place where they make a decision that influences and changes the course of their adult life. Your move. It's your move. How about even something as simple as lying? Have you made a decision in your heart? Have you purposed in your heart as to whether or not you'll tell the truth or does the moment determine it? Do the stakes determine it? Well, I'll lie if it gets me out of trouble. And it won't be a big, big bold thing. It'll just be a little thing. It'll just be, you know, just a little twisting of the truth to, you know, just make everyone feel good and get me out of a jam. You gotta make a decision in your heart as to whether or not you're gonna tell the truth because your future does depend upon it. Say, well, how can that really affect my future? When people learn, and they will learn, that you don't tell the truth all the time, they won't be able to trust you. I think one of the main reasons why our world is descending, socially speaking, is because people cannot trust each other. And as a result, we cannot have good relationships. Marriages don't work well, and it stems back to decisions made as young people as to whether or not lying is okay or accepted. Purpose. Purpose in your heart. Now, here's the first thing, and this is going to be a two-part message. We'll continue this one later on today. But here's an area in which I believe Daniel purposed his heart. It's regarding his identity. I believe this is a topic that really is necessary to think about, talk about for teenagers and even beyond. Let me ask you this question. Who are you? Who are you? What defines you? If I was to ask you, maybe I will, watch out. After service, if I was to ask you, who are you? Well, this is my name, right? Because the name helps to identify who you are. I like to ask the second question, where are you from? Say, why do I ask that question? Helps to define you. And usually I like to ask it to connect with people. I've been in 48 states in America, and so chances are I've been to your home state, and I like to connect with people on that level. But if someone was beyond the hi, how are you, what's your age and where are you from, how would you define yourself? Who are you? A lot of times, young people, let the world define them. Let the world identify who they are, as opposed to being purposed in your heart as to who you are. And obviously, Daniel was one, and his three friends, they were purposed in their hearts, and they would identify as the children of God, even though they're in a foreign land. even though their names have been changed to meet the local names. When I went to Swaziland, I got a Swazi name, because Paul Morrison is just kind of a weird name. It's American. And so my name over there is Tulani, Tulani Mamba. Tulani means peace, or it means be quiet, depending on how you use it. They had their names changed. They were taught the new language. They were taught the ways of the Chaldeans. They're away from home. They're in a new environment. They don't know how long it's going to be. Will they ever go home? I mean, their identity on almost every level in just a matter of a few months, perhaps, everything's been changed about them except They're still the children of God. So I challenge you this morning, who are you? How do you identify yourself? How do you think of yourself? What describes you? Daniel and his three friends are here in the very first global government. There have been, in history, there have been four global empires. And the Bible talks about, in the book of Daniel and in the book of Revelation, about the end times and about the final world government, which will be nothing more than a continuation of the fourth one, the Roman one. But here's the Babylonian government, the first world government, and they have conquered much of the known world, and they brought key people in from these places, including Israel, and they're going to train them and use them in this global system. And it just got me thinking here in the book of Daniel how we've got that global system being set up right before our eyes. Things are developing. And I'm not here to discourage you, but rather to encourage you that just as God used Daniel and his three friends in that first global government, God has a plan for your life as well. No matter what happens in this world, even if somehow you were removed from your own country and brought to another country, if your identity is found in Christ, it won't change. Now you may identify as you're from this state, you're from this country, you're a, how about, this is a big one for guys. We like to identify ourselves according to our sports team, our favorite sport and our sports team. And I'll be honest with you, as a teenager, that was a big one for me. And God, it still is. But in a balanced way. You see, when I was your age, my football team was life. And if my team won on Sunday, I was in a good mood all week long. If my team lost, I was in a bad mood all week long. And when I got saved, God dealt with me about that because my sports team does not identify who I ought to be day in, day out. And I learned through, and you can figure out which team I'm for, I learned through four Super Bowl losses in a row. Four in a row, God taught me it's not about them. And for a while I quit following them. And then God has allowed me a more balanced position where I keep track, but it doesn't define me. It doesn't affect my mentality, my mood, my emotions. But if you're not careful, there are plenty of things that can try to define you, that you identify yourself with. It could be music. It could be cars, gentlemen. On the ladies' side, here's a challenge, ladies. Don't allow social media to define who you are. That's a big one today. Let's be honest. We can allow ourselves to, you know, people get onto Instagram and TikTok and things like that, and they see how everyone else looks and behaves, what their life's pursuits are, And they are sometimes subconsciously roped into or influenced. In fact, they even have influencers out there, right? Influenced to go a certain way because that's what social media is trying to cause us to identify with. Instead of, like Daniel and his friends, we identify as the children of God. Let God influence who you are. Look at 1 John with me, chapter two. We can so many times allow the wrong things to identify us. In 1 John chapter two, verse number 15, it says, love not the world. And we're not even going to go into the specifics just now, but there's the key. There's the key. You are going to identify, you ready for this? With what or who you love the most. That's who you're going to identify with, who or what you love the most. And that will then work on defining who you are. You're going to take your identity from who or what you love the most. And there's the danger. Love not the world. Don't be committed to this world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. There is a world system out there right now, a system of sin trying to pull you in using the fleshly lusts that dwell within you, trying to use those things to lure you into identifying with the world whereby you look like them, dress like them, act like them, so on and so forth. And social media, I mean, it's right there in your face every day. Before social media, it was movies. Movies were the thing. And so, you know, back in my day before social media and smartphones, when everyone watched a movie, and if you didn't watch this movie, you were ostracized from your friends. My parents wouldn't let me watch this movie called E.T. It was back in the 80s because of what they thought was some spiritually dark themes. And I kid you not, in my school, I was the only kid who never saw E.T. And I got it, too, because everyone's quoting from it, and then they start dressing like the characters. And even to this day, people do that, right? And if we're not careful, we're allowing Hollywood or social media to give us an identity that is not of God. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Don't love the things of this world, love the things of God. Even if you go somewhere and they change your name and they bring you into a foreign land, if you're a child of God, nothing will change in that way. Look at Mark with me, Mark chapter number 8. Mark 8, verse 34, and when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And here's the cost of discipleship. Christ would have us to follow after him, taking up our cross, putting self to death and follow him. Verse 35, for whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake in the gospels, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? I mean, what if you were the world's icon? What if you won American Idol? What if you were some kind of hero in this world? What would it profit you if you were without Christ? And yet through social media and many other avenues, there's this pole where you want to be someone like that. You want to be famous. You want to have lots of fortune and fame and be an influencer out there. What if you were to gain all that, but you lost your own soul to hell? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Watch verse 38, Jesus saying this. Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Jesus Christ is coming back one day, and I want to identify with him, not just then for the glory side of it, but now. I want to identify with Christ now, even if it means I'm not going to be popular in this world. Even if it means I won't have as much fun as friends and family and others out there may seem to be having. I want to identify with Christ. I was raised in church. We were a Sunday morning only family in the sense that we'd go to church obviously on Sunday mornings, but that was about the extent of it. And by the time I was a late teenager, I had no interest in the things of God. But those key things I was telling you about, that was like seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade. Then by 10th grade, I'm like, nah. Then I got saved when I was 20 years old. And so I come from maybe a different perspective than some of you, but let me encourage you to determine and purpose some things. And there's nothing in this world, sometimes, you know, if you're raised in church and you're there Sunday morning, Sunday night, I mean, if you're raised in that, and I think that's the great place to be raised, but here's the danger. The danger is that you may think the grass is greener out there. And I know maybe you don't want to go all the way over here because maybe the grass gets brown over there, but you want to be somewhere in here where you think it's going to be a better life. Let me tell you something. God saved me from that and put me over here on his side. What do you want? There's this coming global system of worship, but will you identify with Christ? And once we, look at Revelation 4 with me. Once we have found our identity in Christ, which begins with salvation, and it continues on through sanctification and service to the Lord, no matter what this world does, We've got to have the identity, and when that identity is settled, everything else is secondary. Revelation 4 verse 11 says this, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created. You were created. I was created to please God. and I speak from experience and I speak based upon the authority of this verse, that unless you are living and therefore identifying with your creative purpose, that of pleasing your Creator, life will be miserable. Oh, you may have some fun moments, but your heart will be void of joy and contentment. Look at the people that are in the world. Look at the kids that have been raised in church and have gone off to the world. They're not content. Always have to find something else to make them feel happy. but there's no joy, there's no peace. And so you make decisions. How will you identify? These four young men identified with the God of creation. They identify with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were the children of God. Their hearts were decided. How about your heart? What have you purposed in your heart regarding identity? So that if you're asked, who are you? I'm a child of God. Thanks for asking. I don't want you to just parrot that answer, but I want you to be thinking that in your heart. I'm a child of God. And even if they put me somewhere else, even if life as I know it is upended one day, I am a child of God, and that's the most important thing. And because of that, I have purposed in my heart that I'm gonna do this, that I'm gonna think this way. I'm gonna make these decisions. I will not do this. I will do this. Purposed. Daniel purposed in his heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the time, and thank you for this beginning thought. And I pray that these young people would be purposed in their heart. May they be decided to be on the Lord's side and purposed as to what to do and to be identified with Christ, not this world, not even to self, but to Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.