Don’t Be Afraid

“Run”. The bully was closing in on my friend and I. We were very afraid that we were going to get hurt. All of a sudden, my older brother came around the corner. He saw the bully chasing us and stepped in to protect us. He told us that we didn’t need to be afraid, because he was there to help. He had dealt with bullies before and knew how to handle them.

The Bible has many stories about people who were afraid. In the time when the Bible was written, wild animals like lions and bears roamed around and often attacked humans. In the Old Testament section of the Bible, in the book of Daniel, chapter 6, we read a story about a man named Daniel who encountered a group of hungry lions, yet was kept safe. You can see a video summary of the story on our YouTube channel, ReadKnowGrowGlow in the lesson about the word family “an”.

Here is a summary of the story.

Daniel was a very smart, hard-working man who worked for a king. Daniel loved God and talked with Him in prayer each day. The king liked Daniel and trusted him. In fact, he promoted Daniel to be a leader over other people. This made some people jealous of Daniel. They hatched a plot to hurt Daniel. The group went to the king and got him to sign a law that said that people could only pray to the king. If anyone broke that law, they would be put into a den of lions and eaten up. They knew that Daniel only prayed to God and so this would mean that Daniel would be breaking the king’s law and would be killed by lions. Sure enough, the group saw Daniel praying to God and told the king that he had broken the law and must be punished. The king liked Daniel and did not want to hurt him, but had to follow the law. So, Daniel was thrown into a cave with many hungry lions prowling about the cave. Now remember that Daniel talked to God everyday. He loved God and God loved Daniel. God protected Daniel from the lions so that he was not hurt at all. The next morning the king went to look into the cave expecting to see Daniel dead. Instead, Daniel was alive. He told the king that God had shut the lion’s mouths and that he was fine. The king realized that God was all powerful and had protected Daniel. He made a new law that people could pray to this powerful and loving God.

An exciting story. But what does this mean for me ? Well this story reminds us that God knows all about us. God knew that Daniel was being bullied by these jealous men and that were going to hurt him.The story also shows us that God is all powerful and can protect us. God shut the mouths of hungry lions and kept Daniel from being hurt.

Do you think that Daniel was afraid ? Probably he was very afraid. But Daniel also knew that God loved him and could be trusted to help him. So he prayed to God and trusted God to help him. Here is a verse from the Bible to remind us that we can trust God when we are afraid. It is found in the book of Psalms chapter 56 verse 3. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”.

You might like to colour this picture from the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.