03 How God Prepares You for Critical Moments (Nehemiah 2:1-20)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we'll be looking at Nehemiah chapter two. This is the third talk in our series on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. If you'd like, you can follow along with lecture notes and find links related to today's talk by going to our website, wednesdayintheword.com slash Nehemiah 3. Thank you for joining us. All right, we are in Nehemiah chapter 2 today. Some of you may know that I love clogging. And some of you are probably saying, What's clogging? I almost brought my clogging shoes to show you, but my daughter looked at me and goes, You're not really, are you? So I'm okay, I guess I won't. But clogging is um, yeah? You can't hear me? I moved it too far. Is that better? Thank you for telling me. Um clogging is a dance form that was created right here in America in the Appalachian Mountains. Oh, a man in the room. Speaker 1: Where's your microphone? Krisan Marotta: Mary, what's your name? Um, I haven't seen her. I don't know if she's she sounds good. Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you tell her that there is a lunch from my wife in this kitchen down here, in this little grocery bag that says Mary Brett? Krisan Marotta: Okay, thank you. Our pastor has big things to do today. Um what are we talking about? You're probably wondering why am I talking about clogging when we're talking about Nehemiah? Because clogging was a it's a dance form that was born in the 1700s in America when the Irish and Scottish and English and the Dutch German traditions came to America and met, and they brought all their, you know, like the river dance and their all their highland dancing. All those traditions came together in America and formed clogging. And clogging is a Gaelic term that means time. People think it has to do with wooden shoes. It has nothing to do with wooden shoes. It's um a dance that's done on the uh downbeat usually and the heel keeps rhythm, and it then as it developed, it was also influenced by the Cherokee Indian flat foot dancing and the African stomp kind of dances, and even Russian gypsies had a hand in it. So clogging is this American melting pot kind of dance. And I started clogging because my daughter wanted to learn. We saw the Skyline Country Cloggers perform and she said, I want to do that. So I asked, How old do you have to be? And they said, Well, you have to be at least eight if a parent comes with you. So the year she turned eight, she said, Mom, we're clogging. We're gonna go clog, right? So we signed up and we learned to clog together, and she dropped out, and I'm still clogging. So now, the reason I bring it up is because if I showed you a clogging step, it would look really impressive. Well, maybe not if I showed you, but if you saw some really good cloggers, it looks impressive. It looks like it's really hard to do. But actually, it is? No, it's not. Does anybody clog? Am I leaning? So you clog! Years ago I I took it, yeah. Oh, that's great. I like flat foot too. Good. You want to clog again? No. Okay. Anyway, well, if you if you're interested, the Skyline Country Cloggers are going to be performing at the Crozet Arts and Crafts Fair. I will be there from 11 to 1 on Saturday. It's uh the second weekend in October. It's a great craft show if you haven't ever been. Anyway, clogging looks really complicated, but it's not. There are really only eight basic movements. And every step is made up of those eight movements. So it's like learning the alphabet. Once you learn those eight um fundamentals, you can form every clogging step there is. And if I taught you those and then I gave you a dance and broke the dance down in steps and broke the steps down into these eight fundamentals, you could do it. Really, you could. If you can count to eight and you know you're right from your left, you can clog. And the right from the left isn't actually so critical. We have dancers that don't know that. Um so clogging looks like it's hard, but once you break it down and you kind of start with the eight fundamentals and build up, it gets easier. Like a child learning to walk or a math student who works their way up to calculus. You know, you start with basic addition and then you finally work up to things that I don't even understand. The doable the difficult becomes doable. And that is what the lesson of Nehemiah chapter 2 is. See, there was a connection. And it's also, I think, the explanation of one of the most, what I think one of the most confusing statements of Jesus. So we're going to look at that too, and then bring in Nehemiah. So if you have your handout, look at Nehemiah. If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew chapter 10. This is a passage where Jesus is talking to the twelve, and it's one of those that I always avoided because I always thought the gospels were confusing. Um, you know, Jesus would say things and I'd think, hmm, what? What the Pharisees said made sense. What he said, I don't get it. So I was happy to find this and see the connection to Nehemiah. This is uh Matthew chapter 10, verses 16 through 20. Jesus talking to the twelve, and he says, Behold, I'm sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before the governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. And that last verse, what is that, 19 and 20? I used to think, what does that mean? I especially as a new Christian, I thought this meant that if we were in some kind of crisis point, God would give you words that you'd never thought of before and you may not even understand, and they would come completely out of the blue. And so you didn't have to worry about it because, you know, somehow supernaturally God would bypass your mind and just make you say the right thing. I don't think that's what Jesus is saying, and I think what we're gonna see from Nehemiah is an example of what he is saying. Why, one of the reasons I don't think he's saying that is because the context is wisdom. Notice he starts out and he says, be as wise as serpents, um, or shrewd as it's sometimes translated, and as innocent or blameless as doves. And then in 17, beware of men, or some translate it, be on your guard. So the context is he's encouraging them to be wise. And wisdom doesn't involve bypassing your mind, generally. I don't think wisdom is being given words you don't understand. It's the accumulation of knowledge that you've gained over a lifetime of trusting God. So wisdom is those day-to-day skills you learn on how to live well and make good choices and use the right speech and say the right words, and it's the skill you need to live wisely to live well. And it comes from a lifetime of walking with God. So, how do you get those words? How do you get that wisdom? I think what he's what the what you'll we'll see from Nehemiah today is the Spirit gives us that wisdom based on a lifetime of accumulated lessons. So just like learning to clog, you start with the fundamentals and you build up to complicated steps and then complicated dances. We spend our lives trusting God and fearing the Lord and learning how to how to walk with him. And the lessons start out kind of easy and then they get harder, progressively harder. But we're prepared because he's been building us and growing us all along. So I think what Jesus is saying is the person who's called on in that critical moment to say whatever, the critical thing, is the person the Spirit has been preparing over a lifetime to say just that. So to go back to my analogy, the person who's going to be called on is the person who learned the dance, learned the steps. And yes, the dances get hard, the lessons get hard, but by the time you're asked to perform, you'll be ready. So I don't think he's saying you'll speak out of the blue, um, but you'll be speaking out of the wisdom that the Spirit has taught you over a lifetime of trusting him. So let's look at Nehemiah then, because what we see in chapter two is he faces just such a crisis moment. He has to go before the king and request permission to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And I think he's prepared because of the lifetime of trusting God that led up to that. So let me just review us a little bit. In chapter one, we met Nehemiah and saw that he was wrestling with the tension of living in two worlds. He was cupbearer to the king, which was a very high position of state. He had wealth, education, status, political power. He was living in the palace of the most powerful man of his age. So he's rich, comfortable, well off. And yet he's brother to the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem and are living in a city where there are no walls, where it's dangerous, they're in despair, and it's broken down. So he's, how do I reconcile this tension of being rich, wealthy, and successful when my brothers are poor, destitute, and in danger? And he wrestles with what am I to do? Do I stay here in the court and try to help from here, or do I go back to Jerusalem and try to help the situation there? And he spends four months basically weeping, mourning, praying, and wrestling with God over what should he do. And at the end of that time, he concludes he should ask permission to go. So at the end of the chapter one, he concludes his prayer with, Lord, basically give me the courage to do what I must do. He says, Um, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. So he's going to go before the king, and he basically says, Give me the courage to ask, to do this. So in chapter two, then, we see it's made up of three scenes. The first is his conversation with the king in the throne room. The second is he's in Jerusalem, beginning the process of rebuilding the walls, and then finally he's confronting his enemies, and we're gonna take them in order. But as we read through them, I want you to kind of picture them in your mind as if they were a movie screen, because if you think about it that way, they're really visually impressive. If you think about what it must have looked like and what was going on. So, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna hold this because it's bothering me. It's like in my field of vision. Ooh, I don't know about giving a teacher a microphone like this. This is like power. You know, you feel like we could be here till noon. Now I will try to resist. Okay, so Nehemiah chapter two, we're gonna start with verses one through eight. In the month of Nisan, which is our March in April, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, which would have been 445 or 446 BC, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence, and the king said to me, Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart. Then I was very much afraid, and I said to the king, Let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire? Then the king said to me, What are you requesting? So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said to the king, If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favour in your sight, that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it. And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, How long will you be gone, and when will you return? So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time, and I said to the king, If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me to the governors of the province beyond the river, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy. And the king granted me what I asked for, for the good hand of my God was upon me. So here you have Nehemiah in the throne room of the greatest king and queen of his age. They have all the splendor and wealth and power that would have been that you could have in 445 BC. And he enters the room with his red puffy eyes from crying. And think about there's some wonderful, really subtleties in this that I want to point out to them, out to you, because it's easy to, when you just read through, to miss what's going on. First, notice that if Nehemiah blows this, he's not going to get a second chance. You once you ask the king for a request, and the king says no, you can't keep coming back like a whiny child, you know, begging for a grocery store treat. You could get your head chopped off doing that. You if the king says no, it's over. That's the end. There's no appeal. So it's this is his do-or-die moment. And it begins when he decides to be honest. So up until this point, he's been hiding. It's been four months of wrestling with this, but he's been hiding it from the king. So why? I started thinking about that. Probably because, like most individuals with absolute power, only the king mattered. I mean, he was there as a servant. It didn't matter that he had a life, that he had troubles. It's only the king that matters. So, you know, if the king has had a bad day, everybody has to walk on tiptoes, and if the king is chilly, everybody has to run, put, you know, another log on the fire. And if the king's hungry, you rain run to get food. But um no one is allowed into the king's presence with their own heartache, their own needs, their own weaknesses. That's not what they're there for. Why should the king care about that? He's the sun in the sky, he's the only one that matters. He's the most powerful man at the world in the world at the time. So you don't just walk into him and with obviously been crying. Servants of the king were not supposed to have lives outside whatever they did for the king. So King Artaxerxes is probably this same kind of absolute despot. He likes things his way, and Nehemiah walks in with this broken-hearted face, and he's frightened because it's a breach of etiquette. And the king notices and says, Well, you're not sick, so this must be a sadness of heart. Tell me about it. Now, notice how prepared Nehemiah is. He never mentions Jerusalem by name, and that's significant because he calls it the city where my fathers are buried and the city in Judah. Because Jerusalem had this history of independence, and it was this strategic city on the trade routes to Egypt. And so there's a lot of politics and intrigue about Jerusalem, and people were suspect of the Jews because they didn't like to just bow down and worship other gods. They wanted to maintain this independence. So Jerusalem was a political minefield. If you scan back to Ezra chapter 4, you'll see that about 15 years earlier, a group of exiles had been allowed to return to Jerusalem and attempted to rebuild the wall. And when the king found out about it, he issued an edict to stop the rebuilding and said, No more, there can be no more rebuilding, and they crushed that attempt with an iron fist. So Nehemiah is essentially going to ask him to revoke an order, and kings don't do that typically. They don't, you can't really go to a king and say, Could you change your mind? So Nehemiah's, but that's essentially what Nehemiah is asking. So I think he's lived his life in the court, he's studied court politics, he knows he's walking a political typerope, so he doesn't name the city by name. The other thing he does is he makes a personal request, not a political one, which is very clever. He says, I want to honor the burial place of my fathers. He doesn't say, I'm a Jew and I want to go back to my homeland and rebuild my country and my walls and my independence, which would have been a political request. Instead, he makes a personal request. I want to honor the place where my fathers are buried. That's personal. And it's also very smart in getting the king to grant his request. And sometimes compare Nehemiah's request to the way Queen Esther approaches the king in her day, because she's very politically savvy too. She has the same kind of approach of knowing she's going to request the king to reverse an order and walking a political type road to get him to do it. So this would have appealed to the king because the Persians, like the Egyptians, worshipped their debt. They built shrines to their ancestors, they honored their ancestors, they thought it was very important that your ancestors lie in an honorable grave. So for Nehemiah to make that kind of request, the king would respond to that. That's part of his culture too, and his heritage. And I think what you see is Nehemiah's lived in this court all his life, and he is he knows what to say because he's been there day in and day out. And his concern for his ancestors suggests that he would also have concern for the king should the king die. So he notice he adds, May the king live forever, which was probably an ordinary kind of, you know, God save the queen, honorific, but it's a reminder kings don't live forever. And here's your servant concerned for what happens to people after they die, and it suggests to the king that Nehemiah would have concern for him after he dies. So he's appealing to the king on a number of levels, and I think walking this political typeroom. He doesn't come in and demand, you know, uh independence or personal fortune or power. He's asking for something that suited Artaxerxes. So Artaxerxes says yes. And I love verse 4. I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king. I think he must have, you can get, I just get the sense that he's standing there like, okay, here I go, I'm about to jump off the cliff. He's either going to issue an edict to execute me or he's going to grant my request. And so it's kind of, here I go, Lord. Um I'm I here I make the request. So notice after he makes the request and he is um gets a positive response, he is prepared. So he's not just prepared politically, he's prepared for the logistics. He's thought about what he's going to need to be successful. He asks for uh letters from the king to quell any political storms that would surely arise. So when the people beyond the river, uh the governors of the Trans Euphrates hear that Jerusalem's being rebuilt, they're going to get upset. He has letters to say the king is allowing this. And then he needs a letter to the keeper of the forest to get the supplies he needs. So he's organized, he's decisive, and he's prepared. And I think what we see is the Spirit gives him the words to say, but he's drawing on a lifetime of lessons that Nehemiah learned day in and day out by serving the court. So, what does that mean for us? I think the implication is what's happening to us today is the training ground for tomorrow. It makes me wonder how many boring days of court politics did Nehemiah go through to prepare him for just this moment. I mean, he must have been day in and day out of dealing with visiting dignitaries and bad moods of the king and seeing other people make requests and get turned down, or, you know, just the routine over and over again of dealing with this man. And yet each one of those days, I think, was the school or the training ground that God was using to prepare him for this moment. And I think God's doing the same thing for us. You know, the small daily frustrations we go through, or the hurdles that we face each day that require patience, or the situations where you have a choice of responding with a loving word or an angry word, or responding with a strong word or a kind word, all those seemingly insignificant choices and those small acts of trusting God in this moment, I think are the training ground so that if we are called before the king, metaphorically, or the governor, or witness to a neighbor or a child or a parent, we're prepared because this is the day, this is what God's teaching us now. So I encourage you as you go through each day, ask yourself, what's God teaching me today? You know, what struggle am I going through now that is preparing me for, could be preparing me for something in the future? Um, you know, what part of the Bible should we I be studying? Obviously, neomyom. That one we can answer. Um but as you study, are you learning what God thinks and how he thinks and what he values in the way of wisdom? Um, especially for moms with young kids, you often think, Oh, I'll never get through these days. You know, it's the same old thing: getting the shoes on, getting the shoes off, getting them fed, getting the laundry done, you know, getting them in and out of the car seat 150 times in one day. You know, and you you do it over and over and over again, and you think, what could I possibly be learning? Patience. You know, kind words, dealing with the unexpected, you know, learning to be flexible. I don't know. There's any number of things. But it it makes the mundane, trivial aspects of today important because it's what God's using to teach us should we ever be called to face that big crisis moment. And what I want to encourage you is when that time comes, you'll be prepared because God is God has got his finger in everything. He's doing it exactly what he needs to bring you to that point. Okay, so the Spirit is training and teaching us every day. The question is, are we listening? Are we learning? All right, let's look at the second scene. This takes place after the journey to Jerusalem. And I think what we'll see is it's the same principles from the first scene, only in a different setting. So we're going to look at verses 9 through 16. Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent me with officers of the army and horsemen, but when Sanbalat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite's servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. So I went to Jerusalem, and I was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by the valley gate, to the dragon spring, and to the dungate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down, and the gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool, but there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the valley of the Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, and the officials, and the rest who were to do the work. And in your handouts you have a little map. The scholar smarter than I have figured out the route Neah took around Nehemiah took around Jerusalem. But if you think about it, this is another one of those visually impressive scenes, because here you have this midnight ride around a broken city that's been leveled and destroyed, and he's examining all the rubble in detail, and you can just picture these mounds of broken stones and mortar and burned gates and timber. And no one living at the time could remember Jerusalem any other way. So here he is circling the city alone, and the rubble is so great at some points a single man on a single horse or donkey, maybe, can't pass through. It's just that devastating. So he makes us ride around at night to inspect the job, and then he comes back, look at 17 and 18. Then I said to them, You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hand for the good work. Now, that's just a couple of verses, but think about what's happening and what's not happening. First, Nehemiah doesn't go after them and re reprimand them for neglecting the wall. So he doesn't say, you know, you guys have been here fifteen years, you've had time to get started, you could have cleared away some of the debris, why aren't you working? Instead, he encourages them with what God has already done. He says, I told them of the hand of my God that had been on me and the words of the king. So instead of he, I think in some sense he understands these are broken people. They've been living in danger, they've been living in despair. Um how do you get them motivated to start what must be an overwhelming task? He doesn't write in and take charge, he doesn't come in and say, look, here I am, I've got letters from the king, I've got people, I've got army, I've got supplies, things are going to be different from now on. You know, get to work, let's start building. Instead, he waits three days, he kind of gets the lay of the land, he rides around at night and absorbs all the situation in the city. And then he starts out and he says, We have a really hard job to do. Not you and not I, but we. So he doesn't march in and present himself as the leader in charge who's going to dictate to them what they must do. Instead, he says, we have a job to do and look at what God has already done. That's how he motivates them. And he tells them the story of the king's permission, of the letters that have been given to him. And he says, he doesn't say, follow me, or look how great a leader I am, or look, you know, I've come from this position of power in the king, or look what I've done. Instead, he says, look what God has done. Look at the promises God has made, and look at how he's already started working on those promises. He promised the exile would end. It has. He's promised he would bring his people back. He's promised no matter how far they were scattered, he would collect them again. Look at how he's moving. Let's follow him. That's good leadership. He's not calling attention to himself, he's calling attention to God. He's not motivating the people based on his own charismatic personality, he's motivating them based on look what God has done. And it makes me wonder how many days had he to go through court politics or political intrigue or, you know, petty diplomats, how many hundreds of boring days did he go through growing up in the court of the Persian king to prepare him to motivate a people to take on a task that must have seemed absolutely overwhelming. Okay, so let's look at the last scene then. This is highlights the opposition of those in verse 10 who are described as disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites. Now we get to meet them. When Sembalat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshen the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, What is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king? Sounds like a schoolboy kind of taunt, but it's actually a pretty wise political threat. He's uh threatening Nehemiah with uh rebellion or treason, basically, which was a serious charge. He could be put to death for it. So Nehemiah is now in the situation where he's facing opposition, and notice how he responds. He doesn't respond with anger, he doesn't respond with the army that came with him, he doesn't respond with any kind of political intrigues, he responds with the word of God. So they mock him, and he says in verse 20, then I replied to them, the God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will rise and build, and you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem. So he's basically saying, We will succeed because God is on our side. God has promised to bring the exile to an end, and he will carry it out. So he doesn't become angry, he doesn't provoke them to violence, which was probably one of these kind of uh tense situations where the wrong word could have could have sparked a civil war. Instead, he um he doesn't respond with mocking or ridicule either. Instead, he says, God has promised and we're gonna stand on those promises. Which I think was the right word for his opposition and the right words for the people listening, because it again motivates them, I think, to that they can take on this task. I don't know how much political authority he has. It's I I don't know if he could have banished these people or arrested them. Um he does become the governor of Judah and this region, but I don't know if his authority would have included um foreigners. So I'm not sure how much he could have threatened them with, but in any case he doesn't threaten them. He instead responds with, God will give us the ability to succeed. Because God has promised the exile would end. So think back to what we learned in Matthew, when Jesus says, Um, when they deliver you over, do not be anxious about what you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your father speaking through you. I think what you see here is Nehemiah being wise, as this passage is, um, a sheep in the midst of wolves, wives as servant, and innocent as doves. He is wise in how he responds and deals with each of these three situations, and yet he's innocent in the sense that he remains blameless. He doesn't provoke them with any kind of sinful or selfish attitude so that they could respond justifiably because of his sinfulness. So he's wise and innocent, and yet throughout the chapter, when he has a stand to take, his answer is, I'm standing on the word of God. That's his defense every time. Look at what God has done, look at how he's blessed us, look at how this promises that he has made and he's going to keep. So he stands on the word of God, the character of God, and the promises of God, and basically says, We will succeed because God is with us. It's exactly the right thing to say at the right time. He basically says, Look, if God's for us, who's going to stand against us? If the God of heaven wants this work to be completed, and look at the evidence I have to attest to the fact that he does, then you can't stand in his way. So at no time in any of these settings did Nehemiah have anything more to offer than the Word of God, and yet that's what he offered, and that was the right thing. And the Spirit drew, I think, on his lifetime of lessons, his lifetime of you know building up to that point, so that when he was needed, he was prepared and ready. So, what does that mean for us? I think part of the exciting thing for me is that it means every day is important. I don't know about you, but I always kind of had this impression of I was always kind of waiting for life to start. You know, when you're a kid, you think, oh, when I get to high school, then life will be great, then I'll have everything I can drive, you know, life will be good. Then you get in high school and you think, oh, when I get to college, get to college, get out on my own, get away from my parents, then life will start. Then you get to college and you think, oh, when I get married, you know, then life can start, then I can I'll get married, and then I'll do the things I want to do and be the person I want to be. And then you get married and you think, oh, when I have kids. When I have kids, then life will start. And then you have kids and you think life is over. It's like, will these kids ever grow up? You know, will I ever have time to do anything again? So then you start looking for, oh, when the kids go off to college. Then life can start. And we're always kind of looking ahead for that, for that big thing to happen. And if only I had a different job or a different uh children or a different husband or lived a different place, or I had so you know, just one thing out there was different, then I could do all those things that I want to do and and all the things God might be calling me to. I think part of the lesson of Nehemiah is now is what you're called to. You're here because God put you here. You've got the kids in your life that He gave you for a reason. You've got the parents and the friends and the neighbors and the job, and it's all here to work together to teach you. And eventually you may be called, as Nehemiah was, to stand before a king and give an account of your faith. Or you may not. You may be just called to witness to your neighbor or your child or your or your best friend or help someone through a crisis. But everything you're going through now is important because it's the what the tools God's using to shape you and mold you and teach you. Um, to be that person who's ready to say those words when the time comes. So if you're in that kind of oh, wait for the next stage of life mentality, I'd encourage you to think, I'm here now for a reason. You know, what is God teaching me today? Or maybe you're at the other end and you're thinking, oh, the kids are grown, everything's gone, life is over, I don't have a purpose anymore. That's not true either. Um God has you here for a reason. Um Dave's my husband's grandmother lived to 99 and a half, and for the last few years of her life, we were kind of her, she lived in assisted living, but we were some of her primary caretakers. And she used to complain. She got into a couple years where she'd say, Why am I still here? And she'd she'd say, I'd leave her and she'd say, I'm praying that God will take me tonight. It's like, Grandma. So finally she was complaining that I said, Grandma, I need you. Why do you think you're still here? I need you. What would I do without you? And she kind of she was blind, but she looked at me and just like, hmm. I wasn't sure that was enough for her. But I think it it was funny when when she eventually then passed away. We were all we used to complain about oh, how much time and tell funny stories about the funny things she did or said, and we it was like this big hole was gone in our lives when she passed away, and we couldn't believe how much we missed her. And so I know I was right. She didn't think I was right, but I know I was right at the time. So she couldn't see it, but look around. I think there are um there are people who need you, even if you think it's you know only to do the laundry. There is more than that. And if you are doing the laundry, there are still lessons to be learned. I don't remember those of you who are on the retreat last year. Remember one of the testimonies, she said, if you weren't doing laundry, you'd be dead. So that's the alternative. You know, at least you can give thanks that you're here and you have a purpose. You have to go, you gotta come to the retreat really to understand these things. Okay. Um next week we're gonna do chapters three and chapter four. And the theme we're gonna talk about is community in chapter three and despair in chapter four. So if you've ever wondered how do I fit in or or how do I belong to the people of God, come for chapter three. And then if you've ever looked at a task that is so overwhelming you think there's no way I could possibly face it, that's what chapter four is about. So let me pray to close this, and then we'll have a few minutes for questions. Father, thank you that you're a God who loves us and cares for us, and that you use each day to shape us and mold us in the people you want us to be. And I pray that you'd open the eyes of our hearts so that we could see and understand, so that we'd be alert for the lessons you're teaching and the opportunities you're giving, and that we wouldn't overlook the mundane or the trivial or the routine. Um, but we could see it as a training ground and a and a chance to learn to serve you, to be people who respond with the right words at the right time, or uh to offer comfort when it's needed, or to offer service when it's needed. We just pray that you'd be taking the lessons that Nehemiah learned and working them into our hearts and our minds, and making us more of people who follow you. In Jesus' name. Amen.