We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 2 Corinthians 4:16.

After I read our chapter today, Nehemiah 9, I read in Hearing God: As F. B. Meyer wrote in The Secret of Guidance, “The (written) Word is the wire along which the voice of God will certainly come to you if the heart is hushed and the attention fixed.”

In our chapter they are gathered and are hearing the history of their ancestry. Why hear the ancestry over and over? Because we forget. But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, “This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,” or when they committed awful blasphemies. v. 16-18. I love this: You gave your good Spirit to instruct them…By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets…v. 20, 30. And so they are gathered together at this time as slaves in their own land. v. 36-37.

Not being an historian, I don’t know how many empires ruled Jerusalem before and after the Roman Empire. The British Empire ruled for a time.

I can’t help but think about the sweep of time. God gave us the 10 Commandments that Jesus amplified…Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Matthew 22:37-39.

With that in mind can we consider what sin – any sin – played out to its natural end accomplishes? What do lies accomplish? What does hate accomplish? Again, play them out forever and what do we have? Will the damage they cause ever end?

Now, think about the love that God has for us and consider that love played out to its natural end and what is accomplished? When we choose that love…life…what happens? God’s Love is the wire along which His voice comes to us right into our hearts and minds if we can be still and listen. What is accomplished for eternity? God’s Kingdom.

It’s difficult to give up control that we have relied upon for our lifetimes. Play it out. Where does it lead and how does that end? Whenever I give into fear and try to control everything, huge slabs of worry rise and build. Instead of always trying to control everything, God – Father, Son, Spirit – tells me to trust Him. As I do trust Him, those slabs slink back down and I see level ground with God beside me. That! Right there! God beside me I want to play out for all eternity!