Monday Mercies
Happy Monday! I was blown away from the responses from our first Monday Mercies blog post, so I figured I would keep on keeping on with yesterday’s sermon from Nehemiah. Also, if you want to hear Pastor Mike’s sermon online, please subscribe to New Life Church on Youtube HERE – they live stream all of their sermons every Sunday! And if you live in the Southern Maryland area, there are multiple New Life campus’s where you can participate as well.
In Nehemiah, Chapter 2, the king granted Nehemiah’s request to rebuild Jerusalem and the wall. People were not happy about this as Nehemiah really didn’t have much background in the whole construction building thing and they wanted someone who was a bit more qualified. But Nehemiah followed God’s word and inspected the city, asked a bunch of people to help, and onward they went – rebuilding the city. Now, this at first sounds like a silly story, but as a business owner, this was actually a huge hit my brain and solidified why what I am doing in this whole entrepreneurship thing is going to always work out!
I have been told my whole life that as a Christian, there are going to be so many times that when you are actively pursuing God, you will be faced with demons that will try to deter you from getting closer to him and following his path. It makes total sense – the devil doesn’t want you to succeed. He wants to see you fail and fall on your face. You CAN’T do those things if you are following God and staying true to his word. So every time you take a step forward, the devil will try to steer you off track. We had witnessed this first thing on our trip to Haiti when we were faced with so many travel issues on our first day traveling there. God wanted us to go spread his word, the devil said NAH and delayed our flights for hours. We persisted and FINALLY got to Haiti, had the most amazing time, got baptized, and now have a little church family thousands of miles from us. They say “Good things don’t come easy,” and that’s basically what this is talking about. God wants to protect you and get you safely to where he wants you to be.
Although Nehemiah was their last choice and faced with a lot of adversity on rebuilding Jerusalem, he stayed strong and listened to God. The devil tries to get you to believe that will ALWAYS be the case. That you will always have adversity, that the lows will never end, that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. He wants you to fall into that downward spiral and believe “this is NEVER going to work”. But God wants the opposite. He sees that we’re struggling and as we continue toward him, the oppositions fade away and amazing things start to happen. Trust him and he will set you free!
Nehemiah looked around the city and started to point out all of things that were wrong to other people who knew more about construction than he did. He sought out leaders who had experience. We can do this in our own life. I, personally, do this with every part of my life. My business isn’t doing what I want? Hire a business coach. My marriage isn’t the fairytale it once was when we were dating? Find a couple who has a relationship that you would want who have been married for decades that you can trust and ask them to be your relationship mentors. Your health is out of control in the negative and you want to feel better? Hire a nutritionist, a personal trainer, see a doctor. HIGHER LEVEL THINKING. YOU don’t HAVE to know all of the things because God has already placed other people in your life who DO know all the things that you don’t know! So ask around!
Next, Nehemiah started to ask for help from the leaders who took control of each task, because let’s be real, Nehemiah couldn’t build an entire city by himself. You need a team! Ask for help from those around you. You can not change your life without helping others first, so before you start assuming that random people are going to agree to help you, try offering them some help first. You also can not change yourself alone. How many times did you want to follow what God wanted you to do but you had no way of getting there on your own? I bet you EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And then what happened? God provided the help for what he called you to do, when you thought you had hit a dead end. A miracle happens and suddenly you end up getting that job that you thought you would never get. Suddenly your car clunks out on you but the next day your boss gives you a bonus check that JUST so happens to cover the cost of your auto bill. These things happen all of the time and it’s NOT coincidence. It’s God!
So the next time you are feeling down and defeated – look around, pray, plan, ask for help, and keep on the path that Jesus has set for you because you’re already on your way!
