The Book of Nehemiah: Post 6: The Good Times

Books I'm Reading...
1) When I Don't Desire God by John Piper (Good, real good)
2) Doctrine by Mark Driscoll (A Brilliant, Tough Read)
3) Fight Clubs by Jonathan Dodson (A MUST READ...GO BUY IT!)

Book I just finished:
1) A Sweet and Bitter Providence by John Piper (I Loved this book, could not put it down. It explains the Book of Ruth...need I say more? Piper...Book of Ruth...its solid).

Books I want to read:
Whatever book you want to give me! :)

What I'm Doing...
1) Meeting once a week with a young man that loves God, his name is John Hardy and he just graduated from high school and loves the Lord. We are meeting as accountability partners right now and hopefully I am mentoring him a little.

2) Homegroup...I am in a homegroup that meets on Thursday nights...get involved in something like this at your church/town/city, whatever...it will change your life!

3) Coaching...I coach football...yep.

4) Reading.

5) Staring at a computer...I haven't done this as much, but it happens.

Prayer Requests:
1) Urgency (We have one life to live...I need to make a change)
2) More Reflective in my faith (Meaning, I want to actually think about how I live each day more)
3) My "Dents" 'Help me to remember that my Dent does not determine my identity!'(Pastor Jeff Kapusta, LifePoint Church, Wilmington, NC)
4) The Gauntlet!! My church is taking over 1000 students to Daytona Beach, FL for our version of youth camp from the 26th-30th....its gonna be awesome!

Alrighty...so, as I have been reading Nehemiah, I have realized that this book is the story of my life. What a tragedy! In Chapters 8-10, we see a group of people "sold out" to God's cause. They are so excited and seemingly ready to change their lives for God.

Chapter 8: Ezra Reads the Law. There are several things that take place in Chapter 8 that make everyone think that the Israelites are finally starting to get their acts together.

1) They have a unified purpose.
vs. 1 "All the people assembled with a unified purpose at the square just inside the Water Gate." So these people were serious...they were ready to do work for the Kingdom! They had just gotten back from "Youth Camp" and they were ready to change the World!

My previous post touches on other things that happen in Chapters 8-9, but the point here is that they seemingly had it together. I want to focus on Chapter 10 for a while now...

2) They make promises.
vs. 30 "We PROMISE not to let our daughters marry the pagan people of the land."
vs. 31 " We PROMISE that if the people of the land should bring any merchandise or grain to be sold on the Sabbath, we will refuse to buy it.
vs. 32 "We PROMISE to obey the command to pay the annual temple tax."
vs. 35 "We PROMISE to bring the first part of every harvest to the Lord's temple.
vs. 38 "We PROMISE together not to neglect the Temple of Our God.

3) Nehemiah Set Provisions in Place
In Chapter 12:44-47, Nehemiah puts people in charge of different things in the city and temple to insure that everything would get done. Surely, Nehemiah did this because he was leaving to go back to King Artaxerxes for a little while...he hoped and prayed that he would return to a thriving city, full of fervor for the things of God...but he didn't.

After Chapter 12, everyone is thinking, "Praise God, they get it! They are finally doing what they have been commanded to do! Chapter 11 goes on and the Israelite nation is doing great and on into Chapter 12, things were going well! God was being praised and people were being faithful!"

Isn't it refreshing to see God's people carrying out God's plan? Doesn't it encourage you? I know it does me. Things are going well here...and if the story stopped at the end of Chapter 12, who knows what would have happened...but it doesn't. Chapter 13 will rock the Israelite nation and Nehemiah. We will get into this next time...

I WILL GO
Chase Culbertson