Author: Megan Langan

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 9:1-3 (day four)

This is one of the many instances in Scripture where we see God’s people using ashes or dirt in their process of grieving over sin. They did this as an outward sign of their repentance and humility before God, showing their sorrow over their sins against God and one another. These instances in Scripture inspired what would become Ash Wednesday, an annual reminder that sin is grievous and makes us worthy of death, though through the grace of Christ we are granted life.

Echoing what Aaron stated in Re:Vlog, I don’t often become grieved by my sin in the way I ought to. Yes, we have perfect forgiveness of sin through Christ, but sin still grieves the heart of God, which means it should grieve our hearts as well. While Ash Wednesday is a wonderful annual opportunity to do this, we must make genuine repentance an ongoing activity. How might you incorporate this kind of repentance – sorrow over sin and gratitude for God’s forgiveness – into your life? Maybe this becomes the focus of your response time during Sunday worship, or maybe you find an accountability partner to pray with once a week. Whatever this looks like for you, we know that spending time in regular repentance will make us look more like Christ. What a wonderful reward!

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 8:9-12 (day four)

I love that throughout Scripture, God commands fasting and feasting in equal measure, often in symmetry to each other. Our God is not one who commands constant mourning or asceticism, nor does he desire for us to live in unending indulgence and leisure. Both fasting and feasting are good and proper ways to respond to God’s word, and we see them both displayed by the heroes of our faith. Depending on the people in question and the way God is moving amongst them, some encounter God’s law and holiness and rightly fall on their face, mourning over their sin. Others, as we see Nehemiah encouraging here, rightly breakout in rejoicing because the Lord of Lords is on their side, and as the writer of Lamentations states, “His mercies are new every morning.” Both are needed – we must mourn over our sin and tremble at God’s holiness, but we must also rejoice that such a holy God pursues us with love and grace. The more we understand Scripture, just as the Jews did in this passage, the more we will feel led to both fast and feast in response to God’s Word.

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 6:10-19 (day four)

Nehemiah dealt with mockery and oppression from powerful people, he dealt with internal strife among the people of God, and now he’s dealing with direct threats to his life, blackmail, and false prophets. Anyone in his shoes would have experienced fear and frustration, and would have considered quitting. Most would have quit. But Nehemiah carried on, completing the wall in a miraculously short time.

Nehemiah was able to carry on despite all this opposition because he knew God’s voice. John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” He knew God’s voice, and didn’t hear it in the voice of his oppressors or their false prophets. He gave ear only to what the Lord had to say. Everything else he heard he submitted to God, who gave him discernment in how to respond.

In order to fulfill the calling on his life, he needed real, spiritual discernment. That discernment was gained through the countless hours he spent in prayer before the task of building the wall ever began. Discernment is built in the quiet place, where we spend time getting to know the voice of our Shepherd. God lovingly invites you into that quiet place each day – accept that invitation.

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 5:6-13 (day four)

We’ve reached a time of conflict in Nehemiah’s mission, and it’s coming both external and internal sources. Last week we discussed the conflict coming from outsiders, and this week the issues are coming from within God’s people. There are interesting differences in how Nehemiah handles these forms of conflict.

When facing oppression from outsiders, Nehemiah doesn’t seem to engage the mockery or threats. He simply offers his honest feelings to the Lord, appoints guards around the city, and carries on with the work of building the wall.

When conflict arises amongst the people of God, though, things are different. They are called to a higher standard, one of spiritual unity. When economic injustice persists among them, it is not only a social or physical issue, but a spiritual one. Nehemiah recognized that every level of communal life held a spiritual component, which meant this issue of injustice was worth his time and attention. It was worth any resulting delays to the wall construction, because unity among the people of God has always been and will always be a marker of the Kingdom, more so than any wall or monument.

What issues of injustice exist among God’s people today? What is God calling you to do to address them?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 4:1-8 (day four)

When walking through a difficult life circumstance, I often think to myself, “I don’t know how people do this without Jesus.” Whatever the situation is, be it financial struggle, health concerns, relationship issues, job stress, all of it – truly all of it – takes on a different light when submitted to Christ. The situation might still be hard, but when we walk in relationship with the Lord, he bears that heavy burden for us. We know that his purposes for us are good and that his plan for our life is one of redemption, so we can trust that he is working and moving on our behalf, even when things seem most dark.

While Nehemiah lived before Jesus came onto the earthly scene, we see him modeling this same thing. When he was getting scorned and jeered at from all sides, and even living under physical threat (ironically, these threats from Sanballat reinforced Jerusalem’s need for the wall), he ran to the Lord, and gave that heavy burden directly to him. Nehemiah trusted God’s plan, God’s justice, and God’s faithfulness. Nehemiah believed what Paul would later write, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.” 

What heaviness are you carrying that would be better off in the Lord’s hands?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 3:1-5 (day three)

While several of the names listed in this passage don’t mean anything to us, they would have meant a great deal to Nehemiah’s original audience. In a collectivist culture like this, family names and family heritage meant a great deal, and loyalty to one’s family or clan was a high value. Loyalty was strongest among one’s immediate family (though that included far more people than we would today), next strongest among the clan, present but still less strong among tribes, and the pattern continues as you draw the circle wider.

When we come to this list of names, we’re meant to be struck by such a great number of families coming together in unity for this shared task. These people didn’t come together in a vacuum. I’m sure there were plenty of past hurts and tensions, ideological differences and even bad blood between some of these families. They all gave up time, resources, and even their own security to participate in building the wall. This is a miraculous picture of unity!

Chris has often said that one of the primary marks of revival and movement of the Spirit is unity among God’s people. We get a beautiful picture of this in Nehemiah. What opportunities has the Lord given you to participate in such Unity?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 2:11-20 (day four)

This scene reminds me of the news coverage of the California wildfires earlier this year. After the fires tore through a neighborhood, news footage would show residents of that community returning to their homes and surveying the damage. From our living room, we witnessed people realize for the first time just how much they’d lost, how vulnerable they were, and how much work there was in front of them. It is a raw and vulnerable thing to assess the damage of something you love, or a place that was taken away from you.

Nehemiah could have assessed that damage, which was probably far worse than he expected, and walked away determining it to be a total loss. But God had given him a yearning to rebuild the wall, a blessing for his journey, and the resources he needed to complete the task. While we might determine something to be a total loss, God makes a different assessment. What in your life have you determined to be a total loss that God is leading you to reassess?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:4–11 (day four)

Repentance is a humbling exercise. It’s challenging enough to reflect on our daily shortcomings and sin at a personal level, but knowing how to engage in repentance at the corporate level is especially difficult. We look around at the sin and destruction in the world and feel our spirits groaning to repent, but how do we repent for something we may or may not have had an active part in? How do we repent for something that seems bigger than us, or something that happened before our time?

Nehemiah repented for his own sins, the sins of his family, and the sins of the Israelites. He repented for his direct sin, but also sins with which he was indirectly related. Nehemiah knew that whether or not he played a leading role in a particular sin issue among the Israelites, that issue of sin impacted his own spiritual life and that of generations to come. He could have stood by and pointed out what awful shape the world was in, shaking his head at his neighbors. He could have turned to self-righteousness and held a holier-than-thou attitude. Instead, he repented. He repented for the sins of his people that were much bigger than him or his family. This takes humility and a genuine longing to see the movement of God in the world and the restoration that only He can bring.

Complaining about the state of the world is easy. Repentance is harder. Only one of those options leads to renewal. When you look around and see the results of sin and destruction in the world around you, what will you choose?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:1–3, 11 (day four)

Though there was celebration at the end of the exile, there was just as much, if not more, grieving. Families had been scattered and homes destroyed, and the city of Jerusalem itself sat in ruin. I’m sure many saw the rubble and considered it a lost cause – Jerusalem could never be restored, the kingdom of Israel could never return to what it once was.

Nehemiah grieved with and for his people, but he allowed that grief to turn into proactive hope. He could have allowed this grief to swallow him up, talking only of what could have been and “what-if,” lamenting over the state of things for decades. Instead, he allowed his grief to bring him to the Lord, who instilled a confident hope of better days to come. Not only would they rebuild the city, but they would rebuild their faith, and experience a collective spiritual milestone that would build the faith of generations to come.

When we observe the rubble around us, may it lead us to a prayerful, proactive hope.