Foolish Living

God reminded me of a few things I already knew, but hadn’t been thinking about lately when I read Nehemiah 2. I think this is one of the important reasons why we are to be in His Word everyday. He can not speak to us through His Word if we do not read it and know it.

Nehemiah was the King’s cup bearer. The King asked Nehemiah what was wrong and before Nehemiah answered him, he prayed. He prayed. Before even doing something as simple as answering a question, he prayed. This was definitely a reminder that I need to stop and pray for God’s guidance before I do or say anything. I need to remember that every opportunity is an opportunity to show God’s love and be a witness for Him and the best way to do that is to pray for His guidance before starting.

I also saw that the Israelites worked for God despite the fact that the people around them laughed at them. Verses 18-20 tell us that they put their hands to the hard work of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem and those in authority around them laughed and despised them. Nehemiah answered their laughter and derision with “The God of heaven Himself will prosper us”. We know that if we live how God calls us to live, then people who are of the world are going to laugh at us. They don’t understand why we would want to follow God instead of taking charge of our own lives. They think the Bible is foolishness. However, if we are living as God calls us to live, then we know that the Lord will prosper us regardless to how foolish the world thinks we are being. I have seen this proven over and over not only in my life, but in the lives of family and friends who choose to follow God.

Learning these two things has been beneficial to me already as I saw that I was doing things without praying about them first and was making unwise choices. I was able to repent and change my ways and I now have a peace moving forward. I receive that same peace when I move ahead with following God’s commands even though I receive condemnation from those around me for supposedly making “foolish” choices. The funny thing is that the foolish choices I was making and had to repent of were not seen as foolish in the eyes of the world even though I didn’t feel peace with those choices. We have to remember that the ways of God are not the same as the ways of the world. We are called to be different, to stand out, and to be a witness for Him.