Day 118 – Hold tight to your mission!
Todays Reading: Nehemiah 5 – 7
Nehemiah 6:8-9 “Then I sent to him, saying, “No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.” For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.” But now, O God, strengthen my hands.”
Last night I was ready to give up my mission. All of it. I felt overwhelmed, under-appreciated, unappreciated, and just down right done.
Nehemiah’s mission to complete the wall was almost finished and everything was going smoothly until the world tried to stop him in his tracks. He had virtually lead the people through a massive capital campaign to rebuild the wall, the temple, and the City of David. Nehemiah could have quit, he could have listened to the words or lack of words of others, but he didn’t. He could have taken advantage of the people and said, “We have our homes back, we’ve done a great job; let’s open up a company that does this around the world.” Instead, Nehemiah chose to deepen his mission not widen his purpose.
Ownership of properties and homes was given to newly freed Jewish men, humility was exemplified to all the people by Nehemiah sharing what he was given, and reunification began for all families brought back into the region. Nehemiah knew that just putting up buildings wasn’t the only thing that needed to happen to rebuild his city, there was also an emotional and human mission that had to be added to make this mission complete.
Satan comes in to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came to bring us life. And when we listen to the lies of the serpent, we can either stop our mission or we can turn our mission into a way of power.
I love to do for others more than I do for myself, especially my family, but sometimes I get overwhelmed with all I’m doing that I lose focus on my mission because no one has acknowledged what I’ve done. I’ve wanted to give up, I’ve wanted to flee, and to be honest, sometimes I have. But what God spoke to me this morning is that my doing for others is my mission, and in my mission I’m going to have Satan trying to stop me, but I need to keep going, keep working, until my mission is complete. Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,”
Running 2 Fly 