Monday Mercies
Hi, friends! Things are getting a little crazy over here in Southern Maryland, as our governor announced that all non-essential business close their doors to try and flatten the curve of the COVID-19 epidemic. I know I probably sound crazy, but I honestly do feel like God is trying to tell us something with this whole coronavirus thing. We are going to dive a little deeper into Nehemiah, Chapter 13 on this weeks Monday Mercies. If you would like to hear this sermon, please visit New Life’s Youtube Channel. As a reminder, if you have not watched Part 1, 2, and 3, please read the linked blog posts! All of the talks on Nehemiah build off of each other.
So, Nehemiah had to return to the kingdom for a while because of the king’s orders. He was away from Jerusalem for a few years, after starting the rebuild of the city, to be with the king. When Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem, he arrived to find that everyone had stopped working on the rebuild of the city and they had moved the enemies things into the temples that they had built for God! Nehemiah felt like such a failure because all of the hard work he had put in resulted in absolutely nothing! Nehemiah could have walked away from Jerusalem right then and there. But he didn’t. He knew that God had a plan and he wanted to see it through. So he gathered everyone back up and started them back to work! He threw out the enemies things from the temple and started clean. He got things back up on their feet.
We often feel this way in our relationship with Jesus – some days you are on cloud 9, singing worship music, reading your Bible, having talks with God multiple times a day, every day – and then a few years later you realize you don’t remember the last time you opened your Bible, you haven’t been to church in months, you don’t even pray anymore. Do you think that God looks at us and thinks we are trash because we messed up? No! He just wants to love us and for us to love him! So we could either stay in that dark place, so we could pick up the pieces, restore ourselves back to what God wants, and pursue his path for us! Why look at yourself as a failure, when God looks at us and thinks “restored”?
If you are feeling off track in your spiritual life, health, relationships, business, etc. – I think we can all follow these steps and get back on track.
- Identify the enemy (over eating, too much Netflix, comparison-game online, etc.)
- Clean it out of your life. Over eat? Throw away all of the things that are unhealthy for you.
- Refill your heart (or your fridge) with the RIGHT things. Buy extra carrots. Other veggies. Fruits. You can’t just leave the space empty, you have to fill it back up with the right things.
- Remember this: People don’t remember how much money you have or how many houses or how many vacations you took, but they remember how you treated them and how you helped bring them closer to Jesus.
