CokerChurch

All of us are raised with the goal of some level of independence. But sometimes independence is not all that it is cracked up to be. In fact, when we think about the difficulties and complexities of life, not to mention living a life of faith, it can get quite daunting to think about being alone in this. The good news is that we were not created to do these things alone – God has created us for relationship or community.

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When I (Pastor Adam) went on sabbatical I started hearing the Lord very clearly. I thought it was interesting how loud God was during that time. Then it occurred to me that maybe God is always this loud, I’m just actually listening now. When we pay attention to getting “rest” we find that God honors that commitment and helps teach us all kinds of other things as well.

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Often our first response to God is to question what he is telling us or calling us to do. Sometimes we think we can run our own lives and don’t need God as a guide. We can get complacent in our faith and let our prayer life and commitment fall away. Everything seems to be going great until we have a crisis and then the first place we tend to turn for help is to God. Wouldn’t we be better off if we learned to always be in communication with God and always listen to what he is telling us?

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The work is completed on the wall, a dedication service has been held, a lottery has been held to determine who will get the privilege of living inside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything seems completed as far as Nehemiah’s responsibility, so he heads back home to Persia to resume his previous life. But it doesn’t take long before things seem to go wrong back in Paradise. Nehemiah gets word that many of the leaders and even priests have engaged in the same old sins that got the nation of Israel into trouble 200 years earlier which led to exile. So Nehemiah receives permission once again from the king to go back to Jerusalem, clean up the mess, get the people and leaders back into line so that Israel will be blessed by God.

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Work on the wall has finished and Ezra and Nehemiah gather the people together to create a worship service to commemorate the occasion. A massive number of people gather outside one of the gates and a platform is built for Ezra so he can be easier seen and heard by all the people. As he begins reading from the Scriptures, (which would have been Genesis-Deuteronomy) the people stand. Ezra reads some, then stops and leaders within the crowd would teach the people the meaning of the passages he just read. This was repeated over and over again for the next 6 days.

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Work on the wall is making progress. Everyone is helping out, either building the wall or standing guard. It’s great that everyone is involved. But this raises a problem. No one is working the fields, or the shops, or the markets. Food is becoming scarce, bills cannot be paid, so the people are taking out loans from other Jews who have wealth. But they are being charged outrageous interest by their brothers. And those who cannot afford a loan are “renting out” their children as slaves to pay off the debt. Loans and limited servanthood were allowed by God’s Mosaic Law but not the charging of interest and those in servitude had to be released within a certain period of time even if the debt had not been paid off. Nehemiah finds these actions to be reprehensible and charges those holding the loans to stop charging interest and pay it back and to release those in slavery. He himself is going to obey by this as well.

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Now we are introduced to a new character in the story – Nehemiah. He is a contemporary of Ezra but works in the palace as a “cup-bearer” to King Artaxerxes. News gets back to Nehemiah that the work in rebuilding Jerusalem is a disaster and its grieves him deeply. What follows in Chapters 1-4, is Nehemiah praying for direction on what to do, discovering that God wants him, to go back and help spur on the rebuilding efforts. The king agrees and the rest of the story is one of Nehemiah reinvigorating efforts to rebuild the walls and at the same time discourage the constant effort by outsiders to stop the work. It is a story of prayer and action, of faith and works

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The altar and Temple are finished in Jerusalem. Ezra, the priest, is now ready to move from his home in Persia to Jerusalem to start worship practices again in earnest as he is the most learned priest in Judaism. As he gathers us another wave of Jews to make the move back to Israel, he discovers, to his horror, that a great sin has been committed, not only by many of the leaders, but even by some of the priests. The sin? Intermarrying with the families of foreign countries who practiced foreign religion. One of his greatest fears is that God will find the people, once again, to be unfaithful, and may take away the great gift of returning from exile and allow them to be enslaved once again.

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While work on the Temple has started in Jerusalem, meanwhile back in Persia, Ezra is preparing to move there as well to restart Temple worship. The Persian King has blessed the move and provided supplies and support for Ezra. Still there is great opposition to the rebuilding of the Temple, Jerusalem and Israel as a whole by the surrounding countries.   But Ezra has a “secret weapon” – wisdom. Not the wisdom of human beings but the wisdom of God. He knows it, the king recognizes it and the people will see that wisdom displayed. The wisdom of Scripture is seeing things through the eyes of God, not through our own human capability. It is a gift not an achievement and it is obtained by asking for it and God granting it.   Follow us on Instagram: @CokerUMC
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Opposition. Discouragement. Hope? We have all faced opposition in our lives through difficult moments, moments we can’t seem to wrap our heads around and yet, in a way that only God’s grace can, we’re able to overcome the most darkest valleys.   However, to overcome is not automatic for us, especially to overcome opposition. Sometimes the forces of opposition seem to big to handle. And yet, when we say “I feel weak”, God says “My power is made perfect in weakness”.   Overcoming opposition seems to be the MO for believers (and for anyone for that matter). The assuring thing is that God’s eye is upon us, and he promises us that we don’t walk those dark valleys alone.   Follow us on Instagram: @CokerUMC Follow up on Facebook: @CokerUMC Follow us on YouTube: YouTube.com/c/CokerChurch Thank you for worshiping with us!