King Belshazzar, you knew all this, but you still refused to honour the Lord who rules from heaven. The words written there are mene, which means “numbered”, tekel, which means “weighed”, and parsin, which means “divided”. God has numbered the days of your kingdom and has brought it to an end. He has weighed you on his balance scales, and you fall short of what it takes to be king. So God has divided your kingdom between the Medes and the Persians. (Daniel 5:22, 25-28 CEVUK00)
Belshazzar didn’t learn from the mistakes of his father. Instead of standing for God like Nebuchadnezzar did in the later days of his life, Belshazzar decided to stand for himself and his own pride. He put himself and other idols before God. Belshazzar was measured by God and came up short. Over time, Belshazzar loosened his standards to the point where he didn’t think twice about defaming God’s people by using their goblets.
What do you stand for? In today’s culture it seems more people stand for the wrong things than those that stand for what God says is right. What standards are you using to measure your actions? Are you using God’s standards or the world’s? When you use the standards of the world as your sliding scale to measure your actions, you’ll often find yourself doing things you shouldn’t, and justifying your actions. Maybe the movies and television shows you watch and the music you listen to may be acceptable to the world’s standards, but are they to God’s? Maybe the type of language you use is acceptable to the world, but is it to God? Take an extensive inventory of your actions today and see what you really stand for. If you were to be measured by God today, would you come up lacking?
As you finish reading and praying today, ask yourself: If God were to measure my actions and my heart, how would He rate me? What’s one thing I will stop doing today that does not meet God’s high standards?
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