Nehemiah is alot like Ben, just not so evil

Do you watch Lost? I absolutely love/hate that show. I love that it’s all twisted up and you never know what’s going to happen, but I hate it for those very same reasons! They give you just enough each week to mess with your brain and to make you return next week, but never enough to leave you satisfied. We were talking here in the office this morning about Lost and mentioned how nice it would be to know where this thing is really going, to get a chance to see the last pages of the story without experiencing the discomfort of waiting between episodes. The more I think about it though, it’s the getting to those last pages that’s the fun part. Sometimes I get tired of the process and can get easily distracted by new shows or whatever, but I’m hoping that the end of the story will be worth the wait and the effort it takes to stay focused.

Nehemiah was in a similar situation, albeit with a much more important story. You see, he had no way of knowing how it would all end. Threats against him were coming in daily, but there was still work to be done. Options arose all the time that could have pulled Nehemiah off to the side, but he had one focus—the wall. His story was finishing the wall and nothing was going to stop him from doing it. Nehemiah knew he was where God wanted him to be, and he was relying on God to finish what He’d started. Nehemiah knew if he stayed firm and continued on, the ending would be more than worth the wait and the effort.

Sometimes we want to jump ahead to the end or chase a rabbit because the job is getting tough. For me, I like to keep things moving and can easily be sidetracked into starting something new before I finish the first thing. I have to fight against this all the time. If I were Nehemiah, once I knew the wall construction was going well, I’d probably be ready to grab a few soldiers and go show those bad guys what our God can do. But then the wall may have never been finished, and the finished wall displayed God’s glory in ways Nehemiah could never have done on his own. The challenge is knowing when God is calling you to move on and when to keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t know what God is calling you to do—I don’t know what your “wall” is—but right now for me it’s LifeMatters. This study has come a long way from where it started, but I know there’s still more work to do.

So, this week there are two challenges. One is for you to seek out what God has called you to be doing, or if you already know, to make sure you’re still focused on it. The other is to help me better serve you. Spend some time talking to God about the first challenge and then answer a few questions to help me with the second:

How can this study better help you? How can I better serve you? What can our team do to help you really reach young adults? If this study just had ________________ it would be so much better. My class would benefit greatly from ________________. As a leader, if I could do ________________, my class would be so much better.

You can e-mail your answers to me at chad.jordan@lifeway.com or you can post a response right here on the blog. I look forward to hearing from you!