The Defiant Diet: Saying No to the King’s Table to Say Yes to God’s
On Caregiving, Collapse, and the Quiet Power of a Ten-Day Test
Good morning, and hello friends.
Today, let’s start with a story of defiance. Not the kind with shouting and swords, but a quiet, stubborn refusal made at a dinner table. It’s a story that has been sitting with me, kneading my spirit like dough, ever since my season of intense caregiving for my mom came to a close. It’s from Daniel, chapter one.
“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank...”
You know the story. Daniel and his friends are captives in Babylon, chosen for a three-year grooming program in the king’s palace. Their new life comes with a royal menu: the king’s rich food and wine. It’s a privilege, a sign of favor, a step up in the world. To refuse is not just rude; it’s political suicide. It’s a rejection of the king’s generosity and the system itself.
Yet Daniel resolves. He makes a decision in his heart. He will not defile himself.
He doesn’t stage a protest. He doesn’t give a grand speech. He simply asks the chief official for permission not to violate his conscience. And when met with fear, “I fear my lord the king... you would endanger my head”, he doesn’t argue theology. He proposes a practical, ten-day test: “Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food.”
At the end of ten days, they looked healthier and better nourished. God honored a resolution made in secret with a result that was visible to all.
This story has become my mirror these last two months. The “caregiving assignment,” as I’ve come to call it, concluded with my mom’s passing. In the quiet that followed, I took a hard look in the mirror, and a neighbor’s offhand comment served as the glass. Talking about our aging parents, he said, “Yeah, stress will destroy health. Look at what you looked like when you first got here and look what stress has done to you.”
Oof. A gut jab, delivered with kindness but undeniable truth.
He was right. In Pennsylvania, my days were framed by discipline: a 5k trail run every weekday morning, and long weekend runs, a dining room converted into a gym with weights I’d use four to six days a week. In Florida, that framework dissolved into the all-consuming, beautiful, draining work of caregiving. My priority rightly shifted to her needs, her schedule, her comfort. My own vessel, as Paul would call it, was run on fumes and desperation prayers.
The king’s table in my story wasn’t Babylonian delicacies. It was the relentless feast of stress, sleeplessness, and the slow setting-aside of my own health. I partook willingly, out of love, but I defiled the temple nonetheless.
So, in this new, quiet chapter, I’ve begun the work of repair. It started small. A 28-day herbal detox for my gut, a physical reset. For the first ten days, nothing. Then, “things” began to happen. A clearing out. I’m on day 18 as I write this, and the process is its own kind of testimony; sometimes the work is invisible before it becomes evident.
Then came the bodyweight exercises. Simple push-ups and sit-ups in the morning. A reclaiming of strength, stitch by stitch.
And then, a gift I hadn’t dared hope for returned. In my first year of this walk with Yahusha, for a glorious six to eight months, He would wake me promptly at 3 a.m. to pray. It was a sacred, scheduled intimacy. Then, it stopped. I tried to force it by setting my own 3am alarm, but it wasn’t the same. The initiation wasn’t mine to command.
These past two weeks, in the quiet of this new rhythm, He began waking me again. Not every night, but a few times a week. The joy of it is hard to convey. Starting the day with hours in conversation with the Lord, before the world stirs, is the only way I want to begin. It is the well from which everything else draws.
All this: the detox, the exercise, the returned 3 a.m. prayers, feels like a series of small, defiant resolutions. They are my “vegetables and water.” They are a conscious stepping away from the king’s table of depletion and back towards the simple, nourishing sustenance of the Father’s design for this one life He’s entrusted to me.
Which brings me to the next step, the one that led me back to Daniel in the first place. This week, I’m beginning a 30-day Daniel Fast. I’d been feeling the nudge toward a plant-based fast for weeks, calling it that in my head. Then, during a morning conversation with Him, the passage from Daniel 1:8 landed in my spirit with clarity. So that’s what I’m calling it.
It’s not about earning spiritual points or punishing the body. It’s about resolution. It’s about declaring, in a tangible, daily way, that my sustenance comes from a different source. It’s about clearing the palate of the world’ rich, complex flavors to remember the clean, simple taste of what He provides. It’s a ten-day test stretched to thirty, a physical act of spiritual alignment.
I think that’s the heart of Daniel’s story we often miss. His resolution wasn’t primarily about food. It was about identity. In refusing the king’s food, he was refusing to let Babylon define him. He was saying, “I may live in your kingdom, but my nourishment, my strength, my identity comes from my God.” And God honored that. He gave them not just health, but “knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom,” and to Daniel specifically, “understanding in all visions and dreams.” Fidelity in the small, secret thing, what goes into the body opened the door for divine wisdom and revelation.
That’s the thread I see in my own small story, and in so many of our walks. As I wrote in “The Collaborative Canvas,” our waiting periods are often His wiring, preparing us for connection. This season of physical restoration feels like that…a rewiring. And in “The List and The Letting Go,” I talked about bringing our heart’s desires to a Father who knows better. This fast is a form of letting go, of control, of comfort, of my usual routines, to present a simple ask: “Father, nourish me. Strengthen me. Define me.”
So, I’m stepping into this test. I’m curious what He will do with these thirty days of vegetables, water, and a heart saying, “I am Yours, not the empire’s.”
Have any of you walked through a similar extended fast? What was that season like for you? Did you find, as Daniel did, that the faithful refusal of one thing made room for the supernatural provision of another?
I’d love to hear your stories.
That is all, and thank you for reading.
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In the read-through-the-bible-in-a-year plan my wife and I are following, today was Daniel Chapters 1-4. The vegetables story was fresh on my mind when I read your post. So the question is now "What are you trying to show me, God?"
For me, I don't feel that it is dietary. Maybe it's more financial or occupational.
Since I've been having some of those 2 or 3 am wake-up calls, I'll have to investigate....
His morning return of yours gives me so much hope!! Thank you 🤍🙏🏼