Nehemiah

I want to share some revelation with you. The Lord kept taking me to the book of Nehemiah where they were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Every time when I prayed and asked the Lord what He wants to show me, He kept taking me to Nehemiah. Now I love stories of people like Esther, or David...there has to be a bit of romance or action in the deal ... you know! Well I kept reading how the people had to rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and how much opposition they had in doing so. They even had to sleep with their clothes on and worked while holding a sword in the other hand. So clearly this was a very big deal, and I thought that it is not very applicable to me at my present day. But then I read a paragraph from Sigi Oblander's devotional book: "A gate always means an entrance, and a wall speaks of boundaries. We need to know our boundaries to know our identities. When we inherit a land, we need to know our boundaries so we know what to protect and what not to protect."

The people of Israel came back to Jerusalem after being taking to Babylonia for sinning and being rebellious. And the first thing that they are told to do is to rebuilt boundaries. Here we are the same, but as people who came back to the identity that Christ gave us. We are serving Him but we have gone through so many violations, abuse, rejection, rebellion, sin, promiscuity etc. that our cities (identities) were also destroyed. Now we are ordered to rebuilt our boundaries just like the Israelites, and while doing it we have to be vigilant with our swords in one hand. What is our sword? The word of God! By following His instruction in the Bible we learn to rebuilt it, and if you struggle with it...ask your fellow builder to stay awake with you and pray through it.