God Came Through....Duh
God sent Nehemiah to build a wall and he was doubted by so many that it could be done. But in the end "it was done!" So there came a time to rejoice for what God had done and for the Lord coming through for Him and the people of God. The very wall some of the doubters said wouldn't hold a butterfly because it was so weak became the very "wall of victory" for Nehemiah and God's people. VICTORY!! God is all powerful, all knowing, all victorious, and all for His children. That is you and me!! Believe it or not, God loves us with an everlasting love. Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.
Sadly, we have begun to believe and speak that God will not come through for us and even some say that we need to be beaten down and defeated all the time because it "builds character." If there is a time for rejoicing then there is surely a time when God shows up or blesses us His children with spiritual blessings from on high. I realize that some have taken this message of hope and blessing and reduced it to a very human way of thinking. But don't let their confused way of looking at God's blessing us minimize the ability of God to do just that. May it never be said of God's children that He didn't come for them because we learn more from hurt and despair. If you have been born again you already know that we don't deserve anything from God but you also realize God had no problem giving all He could for us when He sacrificed His Son for our sins. I believe it is the plan of our enemy the devil to minimize what God wants to do for us and thus cause us to lose our faith and our hope of victory.
So yes. God comes through...Duh. Of course, He does!! Here is what the experience the children of Israel and Nehemiah had and how they reacted. Nehemiah 8:10 And Nehemiah continued, “Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!” God came through!!
How does this help us? In the smallest things, God is so specific and wonderful that He comes through in those as well. I am in a Bible study group and one of those attending said they were late for work one morning and he prayed for the lights to be green all the way to make up for the lost time all the lights were green and he made it in time. So how do we "qualify" this? WE DON'T! We let God be God and get our human way of thinking about things out of the way and just give Him praise! In the above scripture, Nehemiah said a very simple thing when God came through when he said don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!”
Whose joy is our strength? God's joy! God's joy is what we need to experience. Not our joy because of what He has done. It is God's joy to give to His children and we need to experience it more and more and let the impact of His joy draw us closer to Him. Jesus said this in Matthew 7:11 11 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him. I don't believe I should minimize God's blessings by trying to show I am some kind of martyr deserving of them. I should just receive the joy of the Lord, which is to bless His children and let that be my strength. And that strength will never run out because God is eternal and eternally joyful.
This is not about the prosperity gospel, whatever that means, but it is about the joy of the Lord and His victories being seen throughout lives as He loves on His creation. The more we learn to receive from God His love and grace the more we will learn to give it to others . Peter wrote this in 1 Peter 4:8 Love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. We don't come up with this love from ourselves, but the Holy Spirit, who is God, gives this love to us and we in turn give it to others. If we don't give it to others then there is the possibility that we haven't yet received it. King Solomon said it this way in Proverbs 17:9 “He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends”. By the way, that is just another mystery of God His Word explains to us. LEARN. LEARN. LEARN.
The Pilgrimage Continues
David Warren