Nehe
miah
1 Pray for forgiveness for God's people who are in dire straights.
2 When God gives you a burden and you pray about it, He will clear the way to get it done.
3 &4 People work together, each on a section, and guard each other, and God's work gets done.
5 When fellow Christians are in need, help the without expecting anything back and don't take more than you need.
6 &7 God can complete what He starts but we must stay firm in following His commands. Perfectly reasonable sounding requests by someone may do us harm if they are designed to cause us to disobey a command through fear.
8 Take time to read what God has written to us and rejoice over it because it is Holy. Do not let it burden you. Strive to follow it because He has given you the Holy Book of Life.
9 &10 When we don't follow God's laws, he lets us reap the consequences. But he will always forgive us and bring us back into his will when we repent.
11, 12 &13 We can complete what God wants us to do, have a big celebration, and still let others tempt us to slide into sin. It can take great effort to continue following God's will after a big success. It often seems to be when you are high that you will be low.
I recently read a book by Lynn Austin called "On This Foundation". It was historical fiction based on the book of Nehemiah in the Bible. The author did her research and is an excellent story teller. She got me involved in the characters and storyline. And she changed the way I look at the Bible. The people in the Bible were regular people living their daily lives to the best (or worst, depending on the person) of their abilities. They had their goals, loves,, dramas, good days and bad. Many sought to follow God's will, many followed their own. The people who wrote about the people in the Bible and God's interaction with them, wrote, following what God told them to teach the generation of people they were living in. They didn't know how what they were writing would be translated into many languages (most of which were not even being spoken when they were writing) and impact the entire world for thousands of generations. The people in the Bible could be us. What they wrote applies directly to us. Not as just a code book for how to live life, but as a storyline of all the mistakes we can make and how we can survive bad events, evil people, and poor weather to make good decisions and follow what we hear God telling us if we listen.
Since I read this book, I have been reading a chapter of the Bible (roughly) a day, writing down what is said to me, writing a thank you to God for something, and writing a prayer for someone. I am liking it and learning. Finally after 5x years I have a prayer journal going.
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