Hey everyone. It's President's Day, and I am off work for the week. Having a bit more time on my hands this week, you may hear from me a little more often.
In my last post, I finished up a six-part lesson about Samson. Having finished studying the book of Judges, I have now turned my attention to the book of Nehemiah. I want share with you briefly why I chose to study this particular book. My wife and I work alongside Ross Lippencott, Manami Kim and some other great disciples with the teens here in New Jersey. Together we are working to build a great ministry for our teens. With that in mind, I read a little booklet written by Dave Pocta on building Youth and Family Ministry. It was very good, and he talked about Nehemiah a lot. It inspired me to examine Nehemiah more closely to see what I can learn to more adeptly build the ministry God has placed me in.
I am learning valuable lessons that I want to share, and the truth is that we are all building something, whether it is a ministry, small group or just our relationship with God. We want to build well. Think about 1 Corinthians 3:10, "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds." We are all building something. I would assume that we all want to build it well. Let's see what Nehemiah can teach us.
Now to understand what is going on in Nehemiah, we have to understand a few things. First, we need to know that Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians in 586 B.C., and many of the inhabitants of the city were carried off into exile. Later the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians, and in 538 B.C. the Persians allow some of the Israelites to return to Jerusalem. In 516 B.C. the temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem as recorded in Haggai, but the walls (the protection) of Jerusalem still lay in ruin. It is not until Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem in 445 B.C. that the walls are rebuilt. Think about this. Nehemiah comes along to fix something that had been broken for 141 years. Israelites had been back in Jerusalem for 107 years and had not rebuilt the walls. Three or four generations had come and gone and no one had fixed the problem. It appears that they had just accepted that the problem was too big to fix for generations, as if they were saying, "Well, that is just the way things are." I'm jumping ahead a little, but when Nehemiah comes along, he sets his mind to fix this problem, and completes the work in 52 days. (See Nehemiah 6:15) A determined man with a great relationship with God fixes a hundred year old problem in less than 8 weeks. I don't know about you, but I think Nehemiah might have some things to teach me, not only about building my ministry, but about fixing the 49 year old problems in my character. I hope you will join me on my journey.
