Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name. Nehemiah 1: 8-9
Today’s Reading: Nehemiah 1-3; Acts 2:1-21
In keeping with the theme of redemption this is pretty interesting to me.
It’s not so much what he said but how he said it. It was like he was calling God out. This is how I read this one.
“Yo man… you know what you said. You followed through on the bad stuff but will you follow through on the good?” – New Living Clarence Translation
At first I was thinking, man, it takes some audacity to call out God like that. But then the more I thought about it, it wasn’t really audacity… Rather it was a whole lot of faith and humility.
Dude believes so much and so securely that in the same moment of humble repentance he can flip it by asking God to come through on the promise that he made to Abraham.
That’s pretty big to me.
This is a man who clearly understands that God isn’t just this big abstract figure who looms mysteriously large over all the happenings of the earth. God is also an entity with which we all can have a personal relationship.
God made a promise, and Nehemiah is calling him to task on it.
Most people these days view this line of thinking is craziness. Who does he think he is to talk to God that way? Or, why does he think that God cares about his daily life to such a degree?
Well… I feel you Nehemiah. God said that his word is bond. So why not call him to it?
That’s some herculean faith right there.
