The past two weeks I have been going through the book of Nehemiah. I was originally drawn to this book because I had never even heard the name ‘Nehemiah’ until this summer when I babysat a boy named Nehemiah and then later at training camp we had a session on the old testament and they mentioned Nehemiah being a great leader. I wanted to learn how I could be a better leader and how to better serve my squad and team so I began to study this mysterious book in which I found so much direction and clarity and the Lord just opened up scripture to me and allowed me to have a greater understanding of his word and its importance.
In particular last week I studied Nehemiah 3 which goes through the logistics behind rebuilding the Jerusalem wall. Who built what and when they built it. At first I thought it was going to be another one of those chapters that is mostly filled with historical facts and you have to really stretch the meaning in order to get something out of it. As I was reading line after line of ‘he built this and he built that then another built this then that’ and so on I was just beginning to give up on this chapter when I noticed a pattern. After each person had built a section of the wall it said “after him…” and then would have the name of the family that build the next section of the wall. This was extremely interesting to me because Nehemiah didn’t make an announcement saying ‘everyone shall build on this day at this hour’ and it doesn’t say the wall went up all at once, it outlines the slow building of the wall. This means that the wall was built by word of mouth, a domino effect, a slow progression over time. Nehemiah had faith God would rebuild the wall and therefore he was in no rush.
This encouraged me greatly when it game to ministry because often times I want to see results right away, but often we are the seed planters, simply building one section of the wall for others to see and emulate. We aren’t capable of building the whole wall by ourselves and therefore enables God to bring other people into partnership with him. That is what a lot of these past two weeks have looked like – brick after brick but not seeing any wall being built, but that is because I am only in charge of one section and the people who see my section become responsible to build the next.
But praise God that others see our actions and take up bricks for themselves, who go on to build their sections of the wall, their sections of the kingdom. It is a beautiful picture about how the Lord gets to partner with each and every one of us, not only to further his kingdom, but to spur others into partnership with him.
Here in Guatemala, knowing I only have three months makes me want to see daily results of our labor. But I have to constantly remind myself that often times I am the seed planter and sometimes I won’t even get to see the results of my labor and others will, but I am grateful for those simple days that I get to see the fruit, the trees, the garden city that the Lord is bringing to life here in Guatemala.
I am increasingly encouraged by the promise that others will see the work the Lord is doing in me and begin to want to build up the kingdom for themselves. What ways have you been neglecting to build your section of the wall – is it because you don’t see immediate results? Is it because you fear your ‘wall building skills’ aren’t up to par?
Hallelujah we don’t praise a God who sees success and failure but only obedience and disobedience. So what are you waiting for? Go pick up some bricks! You never know how your actions could influence others to do the same.
Fervently-building-my-section-of-the-wall,
El
