How much more will the living God be the same? And so you see there that half-heartedness, whereas we can see in Daniel 6:1-4, remember what it tells about Daniel. I love this about Daniel. Boy I love this verse here. It says this about Daniel: It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be over the whole kingdom; and over these were three governors of whom Daniel was one, that the satraps might give account to them so that the king would suffer no loss. Then this Daniel distinguished himself above all the governors and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to setting him over the whole realm. So the governors and satraps sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom; they could find no charge or fault because he was faithful; there was no error or fault. He was excellent. He wasn't mediocre. He didn't say oh that's near enough. He was actually attentive to details.
He was attentive to details. He made sure things were done and they were done well, and so you notice here he became promoted. Why did this happen? Because he had an excellent spirit in him. What spirit did he have in him? The Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God's an excellent spirit. He inspires us to do things well. This is why when we're dealing with Uganda we've actually just refused to go forward until they start to do things right and do it well. Then we add more to them - and it's the same for you. If you want to go forward, if you want God's favour in your life, we need to make a decision what I'm going to do is choose excellence. Here's another one: choose character. Develop character. Here's another destiny decision, develop strong character and say no to compromise. Develop strong character, strong character. In Romans 8:29 the Bible tells us that He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, His Son, the First Born of many brothers.
So God's plan and God's destiny is we become Christ-like in character, so when you make a commitment to grow your character and develop your character, you're making a commitment to your destiny - because I've noticed this. I was sharing this with someone else the other day. I haven't got a whiteboard or anything; if you could imagine just for a moment three circles like this, one here and there's one nice big circle there, another one intersecting it and then a third one intersecting it okay? Now pretty well all you see in a person's life is the top circle, the gift that they have. The top circle is their gift. The Bible says a gift will make room for you, so if you've got giftings in your life, you're musical or creative or quite gifted [an accountant 00.16.50] then it'll open a door for you. But what keeps you in that place is your character and your spirit or attitude that you carry.
So you'll find a person that you receive and give them a job because he's got great gifting, if he hasn't got a good character to go with it eventually you'll want to fire him. If he defiles and messes up the relationships because he hasn't got a good spirit and ability to connect and relate to people, then also he'll probably get fired as well. So what I've noticed over years now with people, that people make the most of all their gifts and highlight what they're gifted at, but actually it's your character and your spirit that determines whether you can build anything big. And so if we're going to really advance in our life the things we can give attention to are our character and the spirit that we carry, so we carry an excellent spirit and also we develop our character. So what do we mean develop your character? Well what about the area of being faithful, that when you give your word you can be relied on. That's character.