Author: Megan Langan

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 13:15-22 (day three)

The Single Adults Ministry has been reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer this summer, and it has given us many insights into building up our daily spiritual lives. One of which is the reminder that no one drifts into holiness. You don’t drift towards the spiritual disciplines, you don’t simply stumble into keeping the Sabbath. The natural drift of life will lead us towards sin and apathy.

But how does one keep a boat from drifting out to sea? You throw down an anchor, something stronger than the pull of the drift, that keeps the boat where you want it to be. This means setting a firm boundary and building in accountability so that you can resist the drift and keep growing in godliness.

The Israelites had begun to drift back into old habits and were no longer keeping the Sabbath, something we are guilty of as well. When Nehemiah noticed this drift, he threw down an anchor on their behalf by shutting the gates. He kept them accountable by drawing a firm boundary. When they saw those shut gates on the Sabbath, they were reminded that day wasn’t for work, but for worship.

Is there an area of life where you find yourself adrift? How might you throw down an anchor to keep yourself accountable to growing in the ways of God?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 12:40-47 (day four)

Did you notice that these musicians planned and prepared for this joyous worship service? They spent their days leading up to this service in prayer, purification, and probably rehearsal in order to lead the people in worship to the best of their ability. And it paid off! The praise exhibited among the Israelites was so loud it could be heard from afar. Their preparation helped create an environment where the joy of the Lord could be felt.

You don’t have to be part of the choir and orchestra to prepare for worship. How are you spending your days in between our worship gatherings on Sundays? The way you spend your time during the week impacts the way you walk into worship. If we spend the week comparing ourselves to others, living in unconfessed sin, walking in unforgiveness, or spinning our wheels over worldly concerns, we’ll find it harder to jump for joy and sing loud enough for all to hear.

What are daily habits or disciplines that help you prepare to worship with joy on Sunday? How does your time during the week need to change in order to prepare well for worship?

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 10:28-30 (day four)

I have to confess, I have a hard time keeping myself accountable to my goals and convictions on my own. I go through this every January, and then again around this time of year. I have new spiritual convictions or goals in mind, and I start with good intentions, but I often can’t seem to motivate myself to keep at it. Eventually, the things of daily life choke out my once strongly held convictions and I fall back into old patterns. As much as it frustrates me, I am simply not strong enough on my own to accomplish these things.

You know what changes this pattern, though? Stating my goals in front of others. Attaching my name to a goal where others can see it. Including my community in my spiritual formation and personal growth. Now, it’s not just me, myself, and I keeping me accountable, but a community of people who want grow with me.

When the people under Nehemiah’s care signed the document, they were boldly and publicly attaching their name to a goal for holiness. No, simply signing a document doesn’t mean you’re sure to accomplish that goal, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction to maintain public accountability. If the people slipped back into a life of sin, others in the community could remind them of the document with their name on it and the life they are called to. It’s not foolproof, but it is helpful. How might you employ a similar kind of accountability in your own life?

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?