Leading at all times
Rev. Adam Fox
I was challenged at the end of last year by a missionary to read the Bible in one year. I have always wanted to do it, and Andrea and I downloaded an app that guides us into reading the Bible in one year, a little old testament and a little new testament. And it has been good and at times a little difficult - getting through the Pentateuch was a struggle. But Thursday I started the book of Nehemiah.
Now I know the story of Nehemiah, and have been through a few sermon series of this book. It is a good read with many life lessons on working together, leadership, making the best out of a bad job, priorities... But God showed me this scripture again, and I was Wow.
So a quick summary of the Book first.
Israel and Judah are captives. Jerusalem has been wrecked. The people are slaves in foreign lands. One of them is a man named Nehemiah. He is the cup bearer to King Artaxerxes.
While this is not a glamour job, he does have the ear of the King. And when the king notices that he is saddened and troubled, it is an opening to tell him the plight of his home state, his capital city.
The King approves of a wall to be built with Nehemiah as the head of it.
And work gets done, the foreign king helps supply materials to rebuild the outer wall of the city, and give it some defense against invaders.
One of the neat things about this book, there are a lot. But one of them is the walls of Jerusalem get rebuilt, but it is rebuilt by commoners. It is described how each man and women built there own section. the people built it themselves. Were they skilled in wall-building? Nope. But they did it themselves. We can learn from this as Christians today.
The work of the Church, the ministry of the Gospel will be carried out in the world today. But it is common in the church that the 10% do the work 0f 90%. God does not want the perfect Christians giving back of their talents and skills, he wants us to do that. Be active. Be a leader. Find a niche to develop your talents and skills. Be more outspoken in your community. Work on your section of the Wall. But make it great looking.
And the other thought that hit home was Nehemiah's job. He was a servant of the king, the food tester. While this is a high place for a servant lets not spit on my cupcake and call it frosting, it is still a slave. And he is the one responsible for advice - unofficial and guess what happens when the food is poisoned.
Do we read of Nehemiah being sour or bemoaning about his place in life? Nope. Chapter two tells us that he never was sad.
And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before.2 Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.”
So I became dreadfully afraid, 3 and said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?”
Even though his job well, sucked, he still brought his best. We need to do the same. A lot of us are not comfortable with our job, or co-workers, or tasks of our job... but we have them. We need to be examples of God in these difficult growing jobs.
Be a leader, start building your wall.
Even though his job well, sucked, he still brought his best. We need to do the same. A lot of us are not comfortable with our job, or co-workers, or tasks of our job... but we have them. We need to be examples of God in these difficult growing jobs.
Be a leader, start building your wall.
